According to this article at The Register, TabletPC sales are terrible. Which is not surprising at all to me.  What is surprising is that they are trying to blame Microsoft for the poor sales.

The OEMS basically have 3 main reasons why TabletPCs aren't selling:

1. Cost. Microsoft is over charging for the Tablet PCs version of Windows XP.
2. Marketing. Microsoft isn't marketing Tablet PCs hard enough.
3. Bundling. Microsoft isn't delivering compelling software to make Tablet PCs stand out.

These are probably contributing factors but they're not the main one. Instead of blaming Microsoft, they should be looking in the mirror. Tablet PCs aren't selling because the tablets they produce is not compelling. Sure, the software isn't perfect but the problem is mainly one of hardware. The image on the right is the Tablet PC I own. It's considered to be one of the best ones out there. And like every other Tablet PC I've used, it sucks.

But the suckitude of Tablet PCs is a team effort. It's not just Microsoft fault. They all have worked very hard to create an inferior product that doesn't meet the needs of the market the claim to want to support.

First, they're too heavy. That kills them right away. This Tablet PC is over 3 pounds in weight. 3 pounds isn't a lot until you try lugging it around like a notebook (real notebook not a laptop) for an hour or two. Us geeklings have weak arms you know. The OEMs are to blame for that. Until they can get the weight down to 2 pounds or less, they should just not bother.

Secondly, they're tedious to write input into.  Microsoft's hand writing recognition doesn't work. I mean that. It's not just bad, it basically just doesn't work.  If you are one of the 47 adults on earth that still use cursvive to write, then it works fine. But the other 99.999% of us write our characters in print and for that it fails dismally. Microsoft can be blamed for that.

Thirdly, the voice recognition flat out doesn't work in any useful way. I even bought an expensive headset to train it. I went through the lessons and trained the thing. It's unworkable.  I've used the products from Dragon and IBM and they work pretty well (at least on the PCs I've used them on). What's built into the Windows XP Tablet Edition is just junk.

Fourthly, they're not durable enough. There's not much one can do about this but anyone who's had a PocketPC or Palm Pilot knows that in the back of their head, they're worried about dropping it or damaging it but can at least take solace that they didn't cost say $2000 like the above TabletPC costs. And you're a lot more likely to drop a big thing like this and do real damage than a Palm Pilot which you can, literally, fit into your hand.

Fifthly, the screen edge is a few millimeters below the writing surface which makes drawing and taking notes much more awkward than good old pen and paper. On a similarly sized paper notebook, I can take real notes with a pen.  Yet on the Tablet PC, all my writings tend to be overly large because I can't get quite the precision on a Tablet PC as I can with a paper notebook.

Lastly, Tablet PCs just don't solve any common need. They have to compete with paper notebooks which do the job pretty well and cost almost nothing. I'm not sure the OEMs or Microsoft have really thought out what exactly we're supposed to use a Tablet PC for.  Sure, there are niches galore I can think of that these things can come into play in. But for the average user? They have too many downsides and cost too much to be compelling.

The bottom line is that it's too early. The technology just isn't there yet. I don't think it's an engineering possibility to build a 1 pound TabletPC that is remotely affordable.  I don't think the software (XP) is quite ready for the task yet. They need to license Dragon Naturally Speaking and better hand writing recognition. But even those things wouldn't make much difference in sales.  The first issue I mentioned, weight, trumps everything. Until they can get the hardware to be more practical it's just too early to expect much of these devices.