and also according to Paul Thurrott

Tablet PCs Set to Soar
"Tablet PC sales only account for about 1 percent of the overall market for notebook computers, making them a niche market at best, but various trends and changes to the underlying platform will see sales surge, analysts say. The original generation of Tablet PC devices was hobbled by two huge problems: Poor performance and poor battery life, the latter of which is obviously a deadly sin for machines that are meant to be used untethered. Both of these problems will be solved by the Centrino platform, which combines Intel's Pentium-M processor with dedicated chipsets and wireless functionality, leading to excellent performance and stellar battery life. Another change involves the common-sense move away from slate designs--which target certain niche markets, but aren't viable for normal office use--toward the so-called convertible laptop, which can work like a normal notebook when needed, or be switched into slate mode for handwriting-based work. Market research firm IDC predicts that Tablet PCs will thus account for 20 percent of the notebook market by 2007"

am not sure whether the centrino will be the savior of this mode of computing, but i agree that battery times are ridiculous and though there are a bunch of promising ideas and trends in computing power management that are coming of age, i still think for some time the demands of the average mobile computa (computa is my term for a human using a computer) will exceed the ability to provide the kind of power experience that hand watches provide (when was the last time that you thought about you watch battery). The one single factor that will make all the difference will probably be the proliferation of "internet in the air", another of my terms that means hotspots. The fact that a place like New York has a minimal number of hotspots available the entire day, actually am not even sure that you can find a 24 hour hotspot location at all , i haven't found one. I continoulsy bashed Denver,saying how the telecoms infrastructure there was horrible, and now in New York city i see the same thinking....that might be the real reason untehered computing is failing and that might be the reason that the Tablet is languishing