Motion Computing today unveiled its latest Tablet PC design, hoping to fire up a PC category that has not lived up to early expectations.
The new Motion LE1600 uses Motion's familiar slate design, but in a much lighter and powerful package than its predecessor, said Elizabeth Clark, director of product marketing for the Austin, Texas, company.
Tablet PCs were touted by companies such as Microsoft as the future of mobile computing when products were first released in 2002.
Tablets resemble notebooks but allow users to enter information on a touch-sensitive screen and to hand-write notes into certain applications.
To date, shipments of the devices only represent a small fraction of the notebook PC market, according to industry market researchers.
Convertible devices, released by companies such as Hewlett-Packard and Toshiba, resemble conventional notebook PCs but have a flexible screen that rotates to cover the keyboard when used in Tablet mode.
Motion's new device is its most powerful to date, with the introduction of Intel's latest Centrino mobile technology into the LE1600, she said.
Sonoma was the code name for the latest version of Centrino, which includes the Pentium M processor, the 915GMS chipset and a wireless networking chip.
Intel improved the performance of this new technology by adding support for the PCI Express interconnect technology, which increases the speed of data as it travels around a system.
Motion used the new chip set in the LE1600, but also upgraded from the Ultra Low Voltage Pentium M processor to the Low Voltage Pentium M processor.
There is a direct relationship between power and performance in processors, but the drawback to that relationship is that increased power results in increased heat.
For that reason, Motion used the Intel chip that consumed the least amount of power in its initial design, Clark said.