Ex-Dell Employees Form Start-up To Offer BTO Tablet PCs To Channel

The company, Motion Computing, is one of several companies publicly fleshing out their Tablet PC plans.

Motion Computing plans to offer its Tablet PC, based on the Windows XP Tablet PC Edition initiative lead by Microsoft, via its direct-sales force and through solution providers and ISVs, said Ralph Spagnola, vice president of sales.

The Tablet PCs will be built by Compal Electronics, a Taipei, Taiwan-based OEM builder of mobile PCs and monitors.

Customers will be able to chose from a variety of storage-device, docking-station and media options, as well as memory capacity, when placing orders online either by themselves or via their solution providers, said Spagnola. The order will be transmitted to Compal, which will in turn build the system and ship via airfreight so that it arrives at the customer's or solution provider's door in a matter of a few days, he said.

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Software will initially be limited to the Microsoft bundle, but the company will consider additional value-added software products in the future, Spagnola said.

Motion Computing is interested in developing relationships with solution providers with experience in mobile computing or verticals such as health care or insurance, said Spagnola. Solution providers will have the opportunity to provide value-added services such as add-on hardware and software for specific vertical markets, services such as hot-spares, online support or wireless technology, he said.

The company also plans to offer other hardware, software and accessories for the Tablet PCs in the future, Spagnola said. "We plan to be early adopters of these technologies," he said.

Malcolm Mendonsa, co-owner of NetServ, a Santa Ana, Calif.-based solution provider, said he would be interested in trying products drop-shipped from Taiwan. "Most of the portable PCs seem to be preassembled in Taiwan with final testing done in the U.S. anyway," Mendonsa said. "In any case, we burn them in before we take them to our customers."

Mendonsa said he's concerned about whether the deliveries can be made fast enough to satisfy customers. However, he said Dell, whose products his company resells, usually takes eight or nine days to ship.

Steve Manteros, general manager of GST/Micro City, a Cerritos, Calif.-based white-box builder, said he doesn't see the logic in drop-shipping from Taiwan when the systems could be configured locally.

"Once you build the base unit, the cost of official integration here is about the same as in Taiwan," Manteros said. "How do you do service? Airlift another unit? How much can they save? They've create such a logistical nightmare, with far too many points of failure."

Several other vendors are finalizing their plans for Tablet PCs but are less likely to include drop-shipping from Taiwan in their plans.

At the Computex Exhibition held this week in Taiwan, several local OEM vendors showed Tablet PCs based on the same Microsoft specifications, but with enough minor differences to make the market interesting when the systems become available, expected to be in October.

Acer's model, which Microsoft recently presented to the CEOs of several large U.S. corporations for testing purposes, is unique in that it includes a full-size notebook PC-type keyboard, as opposed to the software keyboard featured on most other vendors' models, said Campbell Kan, chief officer of the company's NoteBook product line.

The Acer version also features an LCD screen with a moveable bracket that allows it to be rotated for use horizontally or vertically, Kan said. However, other vendors question the logic of the Acer arrangement because of the complexity of the bracket.

The Acer Tablet PCs are expected to ship during the fourth quarter with 850MHz and faster Pentium 3 mobile processors.

Other vendors' Tablet PCs, for the most part, look more like handheld LCD panels but have the capability to also work with a wireless keyboard.

An executive at First International Computer said that company plans to offer a model based on Transmeta processors up to 1GHz starting in October. This will be followed a couple of months later by a Pentium 3-based version, he said.

Via, known mainly for its chipsets and processors but which recently started producing motherboards, will also offer a Tablet PC to OEMs, company executives said. The Via models will feature 800MHz-to-1GHz Via C3 processors and come with built-in 802.11b wireless capability, the executives said.

Elitegroup Computer Systems, which recently acquired a portable PC manufacturer, plans to offer Tablet PCs in December.

HP earlier this week unveiled plans to produce the Tablet PC in the United States using Transmeta processors.