I still mourn for my Palm Tungsten E2. I never fully exploited its capabilities, but it left me with a 4.5 x3.1 x .59 inch handheld habit. It’s a relief to know someone else with more technical nous than I have still thinks smaller is a plus.

With half the display area, a seven-inch touchscreen should cost less than $50. All told, analysts reckon a seven-inch tablet based on Android should be over $100 cheaper to make than a basic iPad. That means it could retail (with a comparable profit margin) for $299. If tied to a two-year data contract, a seven-inch Android tablet could even be given away by mobile carriers for free. It won’t, of course—at least not while early adopters have shown themselves willing to pay top dollar for tablets that are still something of a novelty.

Verizon, America’s largest mobile carrier, is racing to cash in before the fad fades. It is expected to charge $599 for the Samsung Galaxy Tab when it goes on sale in November, with an additional $20 a month for a one-gigabyte data plan. AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile have yet to announce their plans and prices for the Samsung tablet.

Obviously, such profit margins (approaching 100%) are not going to survive the flood of tablets due early next year. Even Apple will be forced to slash iPad prices when the early adopters have been catered for and tablets are ten a penny—just as it did a year after the iPhone was launched and the euphoria had worn off. In the meantime, Mr Jobs will continue to trash the competition in a bid to maintain the iPad’s profit margins and market share for as long as possible. But say what he will, the trend in tablets is now towards seven-inch models like Samsung’s.

More than anything your correspondent has seen so far, the Samsung tablet actually comes closest to being a worthy replacement for his dead palmtop. It boasts an expandable memory slot, front- and rear-facing cameras, a speaker-phone and a removable battery (none of which the iPad possesses) as well as the usual 3G cellular radio for data communications plus WiFi, Bluetooth and a DLNA connection for sharing digital photos, music and videos. Like all Android devices, the Galaxy Tab is a proper multi-tasking computer capable of running several programs at once (the iPad is due to get background processing later this month, though not true multi-tasking). And at 13 ounces, the Samsung tablet is half the weight of a comparably equipped iPad.

What your correspondent does not like about the Samsung tablet, nor the rest of its ilk, is the lack of a slide-out qwerty keyboard. There are many applications where a virtual keyboard is acceptable—sales and marketing, education and field work, for example. And an on-screen keyboard is perfect for interacting with content on the web. Alas, it makes a terrible typing tool. Somehow, as pretty and clever as it may be, your correspondent does not see himself sleeping with a Samsung.

I’m not in love either. Yet. The Samsung Tab still looks more like an iPad, not a Pixi (although a phone is the last piece of hardware I care about). I’m still dismayed that the HP Jornada went with Microsoft 7, and not WebOS. I’ve vowed my next computer will not include any Microsoft product. So, I’m still outlining my priorities for a new computing option, but, at least I know now that choice will not include an Apple or a Windows.

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