With Apple’s mythical tablet supposedly being unveiled next week and tons of companies trying to beat them to the punch: a lot of people are talking about the perfect tablet.  Here’s my take.

The perfect tablet needs to fill the -somewhat narrow- gap between smart phones and netbooks.  The iPhone has a 3.5″ 480×320 display and weighs under 5oz.  The typical netbook has a 10″ 1024×600 display and weighs under 3lbs. A tablet will compete with ereaders so those must be kept in mind as well.  The Kindle has a 6″ 600×800 display and it weighs 10oz.

So tablet should have a 7-9″ with at least 800×600 resolution up to either a 1024×800 or 1280×720 depending on aspect ratio.  It should weigh between one and two pounds with lighter being better except at the expense of battery life.  A 2lb tablet with 6 hours of battery life will out sell a 1lb device with just 2 hrs.  And battery life is key meaning that the hardware should either a snapdragon ARM or Nvidia’s tegra: both can power HD video at a smart phone level power draw.  The screen should be the Pixel Qi as it supports multi-touch and conserve power in e-ink mode.  Not to mention helping any tablet compete with the dedicated ereaders.  As for OS you have two choices really: windows 7 or Android.  Win 7 has the advantage of easy transition from PCs but may bring with that unrealistic expectations.  Droid has much promise but is still a tad high on the potential to actual software ratio.  Lastly, the perfect tablet should include the most commonly overlooked port in these devices: SD.  People bring netbooks on vacation for web or work sure – but also to view/backup digicam pics which is why an SD slot is crucial to utility.

So to summarize the “Perfect Tablet” with currently available hardware:

• 8.9″ Pixel Qi 1024×600 multi-touch screen
• Nvidia Tegra CPU/GPU
• Wireless: b/g/n & BT
• 60GB 1.8″ HD or SSD
• 256MB RAM
• Ports: Headphones, mini USB, SD
• 256 x 134 x 17 mm
• 800 grams
• Android 2.1
• 10 hr battery life

* dimensions taken from the Archos 9 tablet

It also has a brand new JavaScript engine that will address IE’s historically weak rendering in web apps and similar code. Microsoft already claims the engine is as fast as the improved engine in Firefox 3.6 and that more optimizations are enroute.

The company also made a renewed pledge to web standards and said it will support both newer technologies like HTML5 as well as those it has ignored in the past. CSS code can now show rounded borders, and CSS selectors are now supported. Sinofsky explained that this area still needs significant development time but that a perfect score on the ACID standards test is the ultimate goal. IE9 in its very early state only manages a 32/100 score where the latest Chrome, Opera and Safari versions are already at 100.

There are “a lot of things we need to do” at Microsoft to follow standards, the executive added.

No roadmap has been given for the browser, but the development is likely to prove crucial for Microsoft. Despite the release of IE8 and many users receiving the new browser by default with Windows 7, total IE use is continuing to fall as Firefox, Safari and Chrome respectively draw more users. – Microsoft vows GPU acceleration, standards in IE9

I’m sure those two tidbits are unrelated: a crappy browsing experience and diminishing market share.  Why is Internet Explorer even still around anyway?   Oh yeah it’s pre-installed on 95% of computers and most people are too dumb to download & install anything from the internet that isn’t a virus or spyware.