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Tablet PCs have really swept in to take a good chunk of the sales of gadgets this year because of their versatility and strengths. Although smartphones have become the all in one device — phone, digital camera, video camera, device for browsing the Web, music player, etc. — they are just too small to replace computers. That’s where the tablet PC can help.

The New Wave of Tablets

Unlike previous incarnations of tablets, this new group of tablet PCs is better than previous versions. Previous tablet PCs were bulky, for one. They typically were laptops that had a touch screen that could swivel around. To truly make these tablets portable, they needed, really, to be bigger versions of smartphones with large screens that were sensitive to the touch.

It was Apple’s iPad that really revolutionized the design, showing other manufacturers what table PCs should look like. Since then, many companies have produced amazing new tablets including the G-Slate, Samsung Galaxy Tab, and Dell Streak.

Designs for Tablet PCs

With the new wave of tablet PCs comes new designs. For portability, many companies are producing tablets with 7″ screens. Other companies are creating tablets that imitate the size of text books and even have double screens so two pages can be seen at the same time. There are many operating systems to choose from as well, including Apple’s iOS, Google’s Android, Microsoft’s Windows 7, and Research in Motion’s QNX (a variation of UNIX).

If you’re in the market for a tablet PC, you’ll have a lot of products to choose from, so research wisely.