I got my first peek at a Tablet running Aero Glass yesterday. Wow! Considering that it's currently all visual effect and not really worth anything other than eye candy, it was hardly worth the effort/expense involved to make this particular Tablet run Glass, but then, that's a practical issue and Vista is destined to get people to buy new machines with Vista preloaded, Glass turned on, etc. Existing mobile PCs in general won't be able to run Glass. Period. End of story.

For the majority of folks who are running productivity software, surfing the web, sending email, chatting on IM, it won't make a darn bit of difference to your experience with Vista whether you have Glass or not. Go on ahead and load Vista on your Transmeta or P3-ULV CPU machines. I dare you to run Vista on your 256MB or 512MB maximum portables. Just don't think that you'll be happy about it.

In my opinion, the same value decisions we Hardware Junkies use to determine parts for our desktop systems are still valid for determining specs on our portable systems.

  • get the most RAM you can put into the system; most Tablets today can support 1.5GB or more
  • get a fast HD; you'll probably have to resort to a 3rd party to get 7200rpm drives, but it's worth it and it won't kill your battery life
  • buy a video solution one or maybe two generations behind the bleeding edge; you're not going to be running Quake4 on your mobile system, so c'mon get real. That's what your SFF (Small Form Factor) box is for anyway.
  • get the highest resolution, with the most screen real estate you can comfortably carry; if this happens to be a 10.3", 12.1" or 15.4" make it so. You won't be sorry for getting a larger screen - your eyes will thank you while your arm/shoulder will hate you. Maybe Josh's solution will appeal to you.
  • buy a spare battery or two and keep them charged because the day we'll have affordable all-day batteries will be the one where there is oinking coming from above and an Arctic chill coming from below

No, I won't tell you which Tablet was running Glass. Next question please...