The reason many people have considered tablets a niche product with little market appeal since 2001 is because companies keep making them wrong. Last night Microsoft unveiled a Windows 7-based HP tablet computer, which will be so utterly crushed by the devices we'll see in 2010 that you might as well forget you ever saw it.

Tablets and netbooks/laptops need to have different use cases and goals, otherwise they just duplicate each other. In order for tablets to succeed, they need to make consuming media + the internet a unique and desirable experience. You don't run MS Excel or Photoshop on a tablet. You don't compile code on a tablet. You don't download security patches on a tablet. To put it bluntly you don't need all of the functionality of Windows 7 (or Mac OS X either, for that matter) on a tablet. These are tasks that are already most efficiently accomplished on a laptop or netbook. Throwing a touch interface on top of them is ridiculous and makes a tablet redundant.

Know what I can't do on my laptop? Consume rich media comfortably. Get information in seconds with 1 click. Not worry about security upgrades and virus checking. At my house I have a Windows laptop and a MacBook within 20 feet of me at all times. I rarely fire them up any more. The only times I do are a) When I need to do work and run laptop-grade applications or b) When I need a larger screen. Again, the only time I use a laptop to for media is when I need a larger screen. That's your sweet spot for a tablet right there- media. To make a successful tablet, you need to design an interface that delivers an unparalleled media experience to the user.