I have been using a tablet for the last 3 years, my first one was HPTC1100 and now I'm on the x61t from Lenovo.
It is sure not for everyone, though I don't think I will ever want to buy another non tablet laptop/netbook/notebook etc.
A lot of people gave up on the tablet ideas as you would expect your fingers to work the screen and for it to be sort of like on a portable GPS clicking buttons on the screen... just to no avial.
Using a pen on the Tablet takes time an practice and you kind of have to know what you are doing and accept the limitations.

Multitouch and Windows 7 are finally (hopefully) going to bridge this gap where the tablet is actually going to do what you think it should be doing. Sayng this though the interface will really have to change as everything on the market today has been designed with a mouse in mind and even the smallest of fingers are bigger then the tip of a pen or mouse cursor. If any of the Apple rumors are true we should be able to see the first kicks at the implementation of a usable interface where your fingers (not a mouse or a pen) that drive the screen.

He was hired to fix the Storm not to reinvent the Curves and Bolds.

Holy Sh*t... this is like the largest pile of posts ever.
No one is going to read mine but still going to contribute.

Everyone who thinks that macs have the best value are so far Apple's ars their can see Steve's tonsils.
Mac is a great system but over 2 grand for a laptop? what is this 2001?

The only reason to even consider this over x61 is the multi touch.
But then again the only multi touch I know is the iPhone.
Does windows have anything to offer here until v7 comes out?

I mean without tweaking it to death and installing some bizzare programs that would support the multi touch... is there something in place that would actually help me to use Word, Excel, Outlook, One Note, Firefox/IE/Opera, Sony Vegas, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, iTunes... not neccesrily the only progrs but they came to mind while I was typing this message.

@ dclamster, keyboards are better when they are tacktile and on screen keyboards are usually not. Blackberry tried this pseudo tactile touch screen with the Storm but the fact is it works better for occasional buttons and mayble limited typing. Iphone doesn't have any tacktile feedback when you type. It is human nature to have a feedback when you push something to sense a move acknoledging in your brain that it is indeed moving, we are wired this way. Swiping you finger on the screen works beautifully simply because you are sensing the move through the friction when your finger is gliding on the screen. Typing just doesn't feel right because of lack of that type of feedback. We can sure train ourselves to overcome this and become very good at typing on that type of screen, yet it will never "feel" right.

All that Rim has to do is to add a sliding keyboard to Storm.
...this is like a dejavu in miniature reminding of the origami project where the frustration was fixed by the addition of a keyboard and as a result creation of a netbook market

Everyone there is searching for a holy grail that would replace a normal keyboard. It spread out like a wildfire like a disease...touch this!!!
Touch is great except for the keybaord and iPhone is an awesome example of everything working nicely... except the keyboard.
Google and Palm see this limitation and Rim was trying to build a better iPhone instead of a better Blackberry.

There is no such thing as free lunch and what is what wimax promised.
It still requires infrastracture but there is no way to get the profits.
The same way you would not go to work if you don't get paid, no one really wants to invest in it without seing a return on that investment.

it will be a mutitouch Foleo that would connect to Pre wirelessly

Tablets are going to suck and everyone is going to hate them until they have as super huge resolution something like 3840x2048 and has a proper software support that addresses the text so it is proportionately reflected for the smaller size of the screen.
Today the video cards and screens can't do it in the small size yet and the OS(s) all of them are not sophisticated enough to recognize the need for the resolution/font size relationship.
Netbooks suffer from the same (not enough resolution) thing.
What the hell am I going to see on the 800x400 screen? ...Microsoft DOS? Can you really work in that thing beyond simple texting? I have two monitors 1680X1050 side by side. I sit away from them about two feet. On a 7-8" screen the away distance will be about half of that. Sure you can't work on that thing all day long, but you would be able to work on it. Until then it is going to be a toy.
Sony has been on the right track with the resolutions on their devices and it needs to go higher. Issues such "the text is too small" should be addressed intelligently through software.

iPhone, Iphone 3g, Android, Blacberry Bold and now Storm... it ate a lot of the available market interest.
Majority of, who bought their device in the last 3-6 months are very unlikely going to jump into this and spend another $um... and unfortunately the other 90% of the marke will yet have to be converted into using smart phone.
This will put Palm in a predicament where they will be interested in getting to Canada way earlier than iPhone did.
Hopefully this device is as easy to use as their video shows and their hardware is rock solid without seriious problems with suppliers etc.