(Special Report) - At CES 2008, a few companies were still touting Tablet PCs, but they were more realistic about the future than previous years. Unlike Bill Gates and Microsoft's vision of Tablet PC taking over the mainstream market, companies said they don't expect that to happen anymore, at least not for quite sometime. In fact, they expect Tablet PCs to be a niche tool for a select few fields, such as medical and legal. While doctors and lawyers are still getting used to Tablet PCs and there isn't a lot of demand from them, companies said they expect these industries to flourish with more and more medical and legal professionals digitalizing their information for easy access and portability. Another emerging field for Tablet PCs is surprisingly real estate.

Just like all mobile PCs, the intention is to increase battery life, improve efficiency, make them lighter and more portable. From the design standpoint, there's nothing particularly new. However, a great amount of focus is being put on the handwriting recognition tools for obvious purposes. That feature has always lacked the perfection it could've offered, and it's nice to see companies put an active effort towards improving the most sought after feature in Tablet PCs.

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On the price point front, don't expect them to get overly affordable over the year. It's not going to happen. The Tablet PC market is a very Mac-like market where the atrocious price tag puts you in a league of your own. It comes with the bragging rights and the cool factor simultaneously. Yay for perception!

Another issue we discussed with companies was regarding glossy (or reflective) touchscreens. Is that a possibility? Surprisingly enough, "No" was the dominant answer of the two options. The key reason for lack of a glossy screen is outside visibility, which we can agree with. We have to wonder, though: how many professionals would actually sit outside, in bright sunlight, to get serious work done where visibility would be a problem?

That about covers the future of Tablet PCs in 2008. It's nothing what Bill Gates envisioned, but the developments are still ongoing and life's moving along just fine for a lot of companies in the market. It'll be interesting to see if any one company takes the initiative to release an updated model that makes substantial improvements over its existing competitors.

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