“A Tablet PC is about the size of a legal pad and includes a digital pen for handwritten data entry and navigation. Its advocates say it will be just the thing for the most mobile workers, including those who work standing up and those who just don’t like to type. But naysayers point out that tablet-style computers have been tried before and failed (albeit with technical flaws that vendors now claim to have overcome). Tablets will remain niche products at best, say these critics.”

—Future of the NotebookComputerworld)

The original Star Trek series featured a prop, that we never got a good look at, that was obviously supposed to be some kind of electronic clipboard. I’m surprised that nobody seems to have given the prop designers for that show the credit they probably deserve.