In 2010 we will see a yet another 1960’s Star Trek inspired device become a mainstream item.  Both Apple and Microsoft have taken a stab at the tablet before, with mixed results. Windows mobile currently resides on a subset of pricey, purpose built portables that are loved by corporate overlords and hated by most of their users.  Apple’s iPhone / iPod touch have been very successful, but are too limited as productivity devices and are too tied to Apple’s iTunes monoculture to be a serious computing device.

Tablets have been on the rise as a niche product. Ebook readers came the closest to offering a more desirable from factor, but fell short as general purpose devices. Many expected Apple to do a big brother to the iPod touch over a year ago as rumors of its existence were heard from insiders. A growing basket of new, cheaper, more capable components is inspiring new designs from a wide variety of manufacturers.  While there have been announcements from number of vendors, including a laughable announcement from the OLPC group with a $75 price target.  Most notable in forthcoming announcements is the absence of Microsoft and Intel. In fact, I expect most disgns to be built on nVidia and ARM chips with the Anriod OS or Linux powering them. The one notable exception will be the Apple tablet, that I expect to be based on the iPhone model.  Of course Apple is also the player building the most buzz.

How will this impact the Tightwad? We expect a $300 - $400  price point for most the units that will be shown at CES in January makes this a premium priced product. Expect Apple to push more towards $1000. The first wave will certainly offer less than the devices that will appear in the following 12 months.  The Tightwads will be watching with great interest, but not buying in the first wave.

Intel and very likely AMD’s biggest headache in the near future is likely to come form a company than does not make CPU’s. By creating a dirt cheap but powerful graphics engine, Nvidea is extending the performance of cheapie CPU’s into premium processor territory. That’s a real game changer when commodity chips from Via or any number based on the ARM design can play in Intel’s space.

“New affordable and powerful PC hardware like ION is going to change the landscape of PC gaming,” said Ben Cousins, executive producer at DICE, a division of Electronic Arts. “This new mass-market target audience is a perfect match for Battlefield Heroes.”

While one wouldn’t want to venture into Photoshop with any current Intel Atom-powered netbook or nettop, the Ion’s GeForce 9400M makes it more usable with GPU acceleration.

Bryan O’Neil Hughes, product manager for Photoshop at Adobe, said: “Along with the built-in productivity features and time-saving capabilities in Photoshop CS4 and Photoshop CS4 Extended, the Nvidia Ion platform supports new hardware-accelerated functionality in the software and extends the feature set on small, low-powered systems.” (Toms Hardware)

Then there’s a potential to upgrade slower old sustems with only a video card.  Great news for the Tightwad!