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There’s been a lot of talk lately about Apple’s rumored tablet computer. And while it’s fun to speculate on whether or not this product will come to pass and when, why not focus on tablets that actually exist in the here and now? The Mac market has plenty of graphics tablets available that appeal to everyone from professional graphic designers, artists, and photographers to businesspeople and the scrapbooking crowd.

And they can certainly come in handy, even for people who’ve opted for a total keyboard workflow in order to avoid mousing. Mouse refugees have various reasons for giving up on the things: mice are kind of clumsy and don’t provide enough precision; some artists who are used to drawing with a writing implement such as a pen, pencil, marker, or charcoal stick, can’t stand the thought of pushing a mouse on a tabletop. And there are those who, for ergonomic reasons, learned to use a graphic tablet to avoid repetitive stress syndrome (the kind where every click registers in the shoulder or neck). Whatever the reason, tablets can be fun to use, and an increasing number of them are targeted to general consumers and businesspeople. While I personally would love to use a pen and tablet instead of a mouse, I have a left hand-right hand issue that prevents that from happening. (In case you’re interested, I’m one of those lefties who mouses rightie. So while I can navigate through documents and do general selections with my right hand, any detail work such as photo editing would have to switch to my left hand, and all that switching back and forth is awkward.)

Here at Macworld, when someone says “tablet” we think “Wacom.” There’s a good reason for that. For the longest time, Wacom was practically synonomous with graphic tablets for Mac users, and in terms of sheer numbers and variety, Wacom continues to dominate the Mac graphic tablet market. Today, Wacom sells several varieties of tablets for different segments of users: There’s the high-end (read: pro-level and expensive) Cintiq, the middle ground (read moderately priced business and professional) Intuos 4, and the consumer oriented (read entry level, and cheaper) Bamboo line. It also has a wireless (bluetooth) Graphire model. Other companies such as Adesso also offer Mac-compatible tablets. All these come with pens, and some even ship with a companion mouse too.

Some brand new entries into this arena come from Genius, which has just released a couple of consumer oriented USB graphic tablets. The EasyPen i405 ($79) and MousePen i608 ($99) are designed for for business folk, graphic designers, and artists. The EasyPen i405 has 28 programmable hot keys while the MousePen i608 has 29. These give you instant and easy access to common Microsoft Office and internet functions, according to the company.

The accompanying cordless pen (which requires a AAA battery) features 1024-levels of pressure sensitivity and two buttons for controlling shapes and thickness while drawing or writing. The EasyPen i405 has a 4-inch-by-5.5-inch working area for portability such as use in a car, coffee shop, or mobile office. The MousePen i608 has a larger 8-inch-by-6-inch working area and includes a cordless mouse with an integrated scroll wheel.

Both tablets can be used to write, draw, sketch, or sign documents. You can use the device to edit photos, make comments, personalize documents, and navigate your workspace. The tablets work on both the Mac and the Windows OS, but may be a tad alienating to us because the software bundled with them is targeted to the operating system that is not ours. Nonetheless, they do ship with a Mac driver. Right now, absent any real testing, I can’t say how well the Genius tablets actually work, but stand by. We’ll get back with you on that soon.

If Apple doesn’t introduce a tablet computer soon, we’ll all be sorely disappointed. With all the ongoing speculation about the alleged iPod-on-steroids, I feel like the device is already here.

Today’s scuttlebutt from Apple Insider has the Big Tablet arriving early next year, a prediction that matches one two months ago by Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster.

So what do we know about the tablet? Reports say it’s an iPod-like device with a 10-inch screen, a handheld slate that’s large enough for HD movies, video gaming, and Web browsing without all the window-resizing and screen-tapping calisthenics that smartphone users endure. Apple Insider says the tablet will feature 3G broadband, which seems logical. And since we’re speculating here, I’d like to request Wi-fi, Bluetooth, and GPS as well.

Name Your Price
Specs aside, what should Apple charge for the Big Tablet? Some reports say $800 is likely, but that seems high for a consumer electronics device. My prediction: $499. Here’s why:
According to a 2007 study by the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), the average American household spends about $1200 annually on electronics products. Would the typical household blow two-thirds of its tech budget on one handheld device? Probably not.
And that CEA study was two years ago — before the current recession and consumers’ belt-tightening ways. To me, $500 seems like the sweet spot for a premium consumer gadget.
And then there’s Apple’s product lineup. Currently, there’s a big gulf between the 32GB iPod touch ($399) and the $999 MacBook. Let’s assume Apple drops the iPod touch price, as it did recently with some of its MacBooks.  The Big Tablet would fill the void nicely at $499.
Of course, for Apple to achieve its desired profit margin, that $500 price tag may include a 3G service contract with a major wireless carrier. Given the enormous success of the iPhone, it wouldn’t be surprising if AT&T, Sprint, or Verizon would be willing to subsidize the tablet’s cost to sign up new subscribers. Netbooks with wireless-style plans are becoming increasing common, so the subsidized model for consumer hardware is already in place.
And, no, I didn’t call the Big Tablet a netbook. Apple would hate that.
Contact Jeff Bertolucci via Twitter (@jbertolucci) or at jbertolucci.blogspot.com.

Microsoft Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner may have done “cartwheels down the hallway” when Apple called him to complain about the Redmond, Wash.-based company’s “Laptop Hunters” campaign. But he must have cartwheeled past Microsoft’s legal department because, as Advertising Age reports, the company has quietly altered its ad campaign in an apparent response to Apple’s complaints.

The “Laptop Hunters” campaign, you may recall, features actors-on-the-street looking for low-cost laptops that meet some rather specific technical specifications. I do not believe I am spoiling the outcome of the TV commercials when I tell you that each one ends with the person choosing a Windows-based laptop. As easily as it may be to pick apart Microsoft’s argument, there’s no denying the ads have been effective, even forcing Apple to tweak its own “Get A Mac” campaign in response.

In June, Apple revamped its laptop line, which included price cuts for the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air models. Microsoft, however, continued to air its old — and now outdated — TV ads, prompting that phone call from Cupertino to Microsoft’s Kevin Turner that the Microsoft executive was crowing about last week:

“. . . two weeks ago we got a call from the Apple legal department saying, hey — this is a true story — saying, “Hey, you need to stop running those ads, we lowered our prices.” They took like $100 off or something. It was the greatest single phone call in the history that I’ve ever taken in business. (Applause.)

I did cartwheels down the hallway. At first I said, “Is this a joke? Who are you?” Not understanding what an opportunity. And so we’re just going to keep running them and running them and running them.”

Microsoft may be planning to “keep running them and running them and running them,” but they’ll be somewhat altered, according to the Advertising Age report. The original version of an ad featuring a law student and her mother includes a scene in which the two sniff about Apple pricing. “This Mac is $2,000, and that’s before adding anything,” moans Mom.

And now? Says Advertising Age:

In the latest version of the ad, that portion has been edited out. The original ad has been removed from YouTube and other sites by Microsoft, and replaced with a version in which Lauren doesn’t talk about how much the Mac costs, but she does say: “It seems like you’re paying a lot for the brand.”

A Microsoft spokeswoman confirmed to Advertising Age that the change was made to the ad to reflect Apple’s new pricing. “This does not change the focus of the campaign, which is to showcase the value and choice of the PC,” she added.

Does it seem disingenuous to boast about Apple’s apparently-quite-legitimate complaints one week and then quietly accede to that same request the next? Maybe. But from Microsoft’s vantage point, maybe it’s better to eat a little crow than stare down an FTC complaint.

Remember last week when Microsoft was so ecstatic about Apple’s complaints over the laptop hunter ads? Well, the software maker may have been overjoyed that it finally agitated its rival, but Redmond has quietly complied with Apple’s complaints, according to AdvertisingAge. The Mac maker’s beef was the fact that Microsoft’s laptop hunter campaign kept saying Macbooks carried a price tag of $2000 or more, even though Apple recently improved the specs and lowered costs across its laptop line.

Microsoft’s laptop hunter ads feature people on their personal quest to find the best computer for their needs. The commercials focus on the decision to buy a PC instead of a Mac, but have received some criticism over the fact the ads never mention Windows or Microsoft by name.

Last week at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans, Redmond’s chief operating office, Kevin Turner said he did “cartwheels down the hallway” after receiving a phone call from Apple’s legal department complaining about the campaign. “We’re just going to keep running them [the laptop hunter ads] and running them and running them,” Turner said.

And who can blame them? Since 2006, Apple’s Get A Mac campaign has successfully capitalized on the variety of stigmas about Windows machines, including buggy software, a virus-prone operating system, and incompatibility issues. For many consumers, the Get A Mac ads have also equated Windows with comedian John Hodgman’s character as a lovable yet inept PC. Microsoft has tried to counter Apple’s ads with several rather unfortunate experiments, but the laptop hunters campaign is where Redmond really gained ground.

But Microsoft did recognize the laptop hunter ads needed some tweaks, and so the company has quietly revised at least one of its commercials. A recent ad features Lauren (not the original laptop hunter) and her mother Sue on the hunt for a portable computer. In the original version of this ad, Lauren’s quip about Apple was, “This Mac is $2000, and that’s before adding anything,” according to AdvertisingAge. But in the version of the ad currently available online, Lauren has altered her words and only says, “it seems like you’re paying a lot for the brand.”

Microsoft told AdvertisingAge it had adjusted its advert to reflect the new pricing for Macbooks, but the laptop hunter campaign’s core message is still the same, which Microsoft says is “the value and choice of the PC.”

Connect with Ian Paul on Twitter (@ianpaul) or on FriendFeed.

<br/><a href=”http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?vid=6c7197c6-e6ac-4070-8aa0-e76ec5634ebe” mce_href=”http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?vid=6c7197c6-e6ac-4070-8aa0-e76ec5634ebe” target=”_new” title=”Laptop Hunters $1700 – Lauren and Sue get a Dell XPS 13″>Video: Laptop Hunters $1700 – Lauren and Sue get a Dell XPS 13</a>

In an industry that gets off on throwing obscure benchmarks at buyers ( “pixel fill rate,” anyone?), laptop battery life is one of the easiest to understand.

It’s also long been one of the least useful, critics charge, due to the industry’s deceptive use of the dominant standard, the MobileMark benchmark created by the Business Applications Performance Corp. (BAPCo), an industry consortium whose members include Intel Corp., Dell Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and others.

“Everyone in the industry knows this benchmark is wildly optimistic and that the actual battery life you’ll get is often less than half what MobileMark suggests,” wrote analyst Rob Enderle last month. “This is because MobileMark measures battery life much like you might measure gas mileage if you started the car, put it in neutral, and coasted down a long hill.”

The latest MobileMark 2007 report measures laptop battery life under three scenarios: reading a document, watching a DVD movie, and doing a “representative” mix of productivity tasks, such as reading and composing documents, editing photos and encoding Flash videos (see page 13 of white paper).

But rather than using an average time based on all three measures, BAPCo designates its third scenario as the way most people use their laptop.

There are several problems with this, according to critics. First, doubters such as AMD say that the productivity test assumes that the notebook is idle 90% or more of the time.

Second, MobileMark’s “productivity” scenario assumes that users, when active, are using only software such as Adobe Photoshop or Microsoft Office. They don’t test usage of music or video applications such as iTunes or Windows Media Player, games or Web browsing. The test also assumes that Wi-Fi is turned off.

That seems particularly unjustified today, since netbooks are touted as on-the-go, Web-centric devices, or high-definition video-capable machines.

Finally, MobileMark 2007 allows PC vendors to set their laptop screen brightness at the lowest possible setting, provided it is no lower than 60 nits (a nit is a measure of brightness. The problem, again pointed out by AMD, is that 60 nits is quite dim, being only about one-fifth of most notebook PCs’ maximum screen brightness.

According to an informal reader poll at Neowin.net, a Windows community site, fewer than 15% of respondents run their notebooks that dim.

BAPCo defended its MobileMark benchmarks. “The content of BAPCo benchmarks are vigorously debated and cooperatively developed by BAPCo members according to a long and rigorous process,” the company said in an e-mailed statement. “As is the case with all BAPCo benchmarks, MobileMark 2007 was approved by BAPCo according to a democratic voting process similar to ones used by most industry work groups.”

Despite the criticism, many vendors are willing to tout the battery life from the Productivity test as their overall MobileMark score. See these offers from Hewlett-Packard Co., Lenovo Group Ltd., and Dell Inc.

Only Acer Inc. (download PDF here) identified its MobileMark time as a productivity score. Asus Inc., Apple Inc. and Toshiba Corp. didn’t mention MobileMark on their Web sites.

In late June, a class-action lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in San Jose, targeting Intel Corp. for, according to the San Jose Mercury News, “essentially rigging those tests to inflate the battery life of laptops powered by its chips.”

Intel denied the claims, and noted that the same law firm, Girard Gibbs of San Francisco, unsuccessfully filed a separate class-action lawsuit against Intel several years earlier, according to the Mercury News.

Intel also disputes the claim that the public is being misled. “Anyone who criticizes consumers’ intelligence when shopping for laptops is underestimating the consumers,” an Intel spokesman told the Mercury News.

Carol Hess-Nickels, director of marketing for business notebooks at HP, took the same line. “I’d say we are pretty pleased with the benchmarks used today,” she said in an interview last month several days before the lawsuit was filed. “I’ve not personally gotten complaints.”

HP claims business netbooks such as the Mini 2140 and the Mini 5101 can run up to eight hours, or a full business day, on an optional, extended battery.

Lenovo, which has claimed as long as 7.5 hours of battery life for its laptops on extended batteries, acknowledges there is a problem, however.

“We don’t really like the fact that something is supposed to get four hours and users routinely say, ‘We divide that number by two and that’s what we get,’” said Lenovo segment marketing manager David Critchley in an interview, also several days before the lawsuit’s filing.

Dell appears to agree with Lenovo. “Customers expect the advertised battery life to reflect the way they really use the product,” Ketan Pandya, head of AMD-based products at Dell, told Newsweek last month.

As a counterbalance, some magazine reviewers go overboard to turn off all of a laptop’s power-saving features, Critchley said, which is equally inaccurate. “We put a lot of time and effort into our power manager,” he said. “You’ll see some significant gains from the way we handle sub-components.”

AMD, which complained that MobileMark essentially discriminates against its chipsets because they are more graphically powerful than Intel’s, is all for reforming MobileMark.

In a blog entitled “There has to be a better way,” AMD suggests turning the widely used performance benchmark, 3DMark06, into “an active battery life test” that it argues would be a more accurate measure of average battery life.

Lenovo, although game, is more cautious. “If Dell, HP and Apple all said, ‘Yea, verily,’ Lenovo would be right there with them,” Critchley said.

Not to be outdone by competing companies in the current netbook craze, Gateway has announced a new addition to its compact notebook line: the LT2000 series. With a 10.1-inch screen, 1GB of memory, a 160GB hard drive, three USB 2.0 ports, a built-in Webcam, and the ability to connect to the Internet, the LT2000 sounds just…like…every…other…netbook.

Seriously, we’re at the point now where we need more differentiation between these miniature laptops, not more bargain-box confusion. But since the specs and a handful of images are all we have to go on, let’s get to it.
To judge from the photos, I’d say that the LT2000 looks similar to other budget netbooks.It lacks awesome design flourishes, it isn’t pink, it doesn’t look as though it might transform into an awesome robot. Though I have yet to lay a hand on a review model, this offering is definitely not the Optimus Prime (or the Gobots, for that matter) of netbooks. It does seem on a par with other budget netbooks on most key specs, though: a 1.6GHz N270 Atom CPU, 1GB RAM, and a 160GB hard drive. Less impressive is the LT2000’s three-cell battery, which (if you’re lucky) will last 3 hours according to Gateway reps. We’re talking about a $300 machine here, but rival netbooks (like the Toshiba NB205-310) that don’t cost much more can last over three times as long.

On the software side, the LT2000 netbooks come equipped with Windows XP and preinstalled software–some free stuff (such as Adobe Reader), and some trial bloatware (such as Microsoft Works with Office Home and Student 2007).
One somewhat unusual element of the LT2000 is its multigesture touchpad, which allows users to swirl and flick their way through Web pages, music, and media.But even this feature appears on other models such as the Acer Aspire AS5536.

The LT2000 series netbooks are available now, in your choice of Cherry Red or NightSky Black. Stay tuned for a full review once test units arrive at our PC World Test Center.