From all the buzz about iPad, or Android tablets, you'd never know that Windows slates are available and that they offer many unique benefits. I recently bought the ExoPC from Microsoft Store. It is a Microsoft Signature Series PC selling for $399 and running Windows 7 Home Edition.

The company says this about Signature Series PC: "Microsoft engineers carefully tune your PC to help it achieve maximum performance, and include software that really makes it fly. Add world-class antivirus security software with no renewal fees along with 90 days of technical support directly from Microsoft. That gives you a PC that's the best it can be, made that way with Microsoft Signature". The computer, or in this case tablet, isn't loaded up with performance-sapping, third-party software.

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Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt has told an Italian newspaper that the company would release a Nexus tablet within six months. Google's sudden turnabout on releasing a signature Android tablet may reflect his confidence that regulators will approve the Motorola acquisition and concern about Amazon coming to dominate the Android tablet market.

Six months is way late in a market overrun by tablets -- more than 100 -- but with just a handful pulling meaningful sales. Apple's iPad 2 is the market leader by huge margin, according to IDC. In second quarter, iPad media tablet share, based on shipments, was 61.5 percent. Second-ranked Samsung: 5.6 percent. There's no question Google should have released a tablet -- that's past tense -- as in six months ago instead of six months from now. Year ago would have been even better.

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The year 2011 will go down in the history books as a great year for tablets mostly for Apple’s iPad, however -- not all tablet vendors fared as well as Apple. It'’s not for lack of products that prevented Android tablets from taking any market share away from Apple this year. By our calculation, over 100 tablets were introduced since the iPad.

However, we defy even the most tech-savvy of you to name more than a few of them. What was so wrong with the competition that it failed to make any inroads in the tablet market, at least until the Amazon Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble Nook came along? I'll explain why we think Apple and Amazon will continue to dominate the market well into 2012.

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New data from NPD confirms something I claimed in February: "The real reason Android tablets don't stand a chance against iPad -- onerous monthly data fees". American consumers simply aren't opting for 3G/4G, preferring WiFi for tablets instead. That's good news for Amazon Kindle Fire and Apple's iPad, particularly, but doom and gloom for Motorola Droid XYBOARD and other tablets requiring onerous, two-year data contracts from cellular carriers.

In April, NPD surveyed tablet owners about their wireless connectivity. Sixty percent said WiFi-only but 5 percent planned to add cellular broadband within six months. Fast forward to December and 65 percent are WiFi-only. So much for buying/adoption intentions.

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All signs point to an iPad Christmas, for many people this year. But it's a pricey gift, starting at $499, and Apple isn't giving much away. Over the past 24 hours, I stumbled onto some unexpected Android alternatives that will put more than just a shiny new tablet under the Christmas tree.

Simply put: If you're looking for a tablet but need to accessorize, iPad 2 will tighten your gifting budget. Meanwhile, competitors serve up some sweet deals that will let you give more for about the same price, or even less. If you think nothing compares to iPad 2, you're wrong.

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So says IHS iSuppli, which released projections for fourth-quarter tablet shipments on Friday. The firm predicts Kindle Fire will take about 13.8 percent of the market after having no share in the previous quarter. Kindle Fire went on sale at the end of September, with Amazon taking preorders right away but shipping November 14.

iSuppli expects Amazon to ship about 3.9 million units during the quarter, taking second place and all but tripling Samsung tablet market share. Kindle Fire's success comes at the expense of Apple as well as Samsung, however.

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This is one of the more uncomfortable years the PC ecosystem has ever endured. It started out sluggish, and never really recovered. Early on, Intel’s CEO chided market researchers who didn’t echo his call for double-digit unit growth. (Full disclosure: so did I.) AMD’s board booted its leader in part for taking much the same stand.

Slow growth alone, though, isn’t what draped 2011 in a soot-colored hue. The industry has seen its share of ups and downs. But this year is different. Because while PC sales were under-performing, shipments of these new things, media tablets, skyrocketed. Coincidence?

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Verizon kicked off helluva holday sale for XOOM LTE on Black Friday -- and you can still get it today online: $199.99 with new two-year activation. But hurry, if interested. Surely pricing like this can't last. That's $529.99 less than the closest comparable iPad 2, and you won't get an LTE radio from Apple.

Is that price low enough for you to buy? In February, when XOOM pricing first leaked, I asked: "Would you pay 800 bucks for the Motorola XOOM?" Eh, no, you wouldn't. You didn't like $600, when I asked about it later on. But now the price is way less, so I'm asking again. Would you pay $200 for Motorola XOOM LTE? Please answer in comments.

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"Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo."

That's some of the text from Apple's famous "Think Different" marketing campaign from 1997 to 2002. The promotional likened Apple and Mac users to legendary individuals who stepped outside the mainstream, who expressed their independence and defied convention. Today, iPad is the status quo for tablets. What irony. Buyers of 1.2 million non-iPad tablets, sold at US retail, are the individualists -- the rebels who dared buy something else.

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Yesterday I coughed up $6.99 for Loud Crow Interactive's digital pop-up remake of the Charles Schultz holiday classic. "A Charlie Brown Christmas" is available for Android and iOS from the Amazon, Apple and Google mobile apps stores -- for smartphones and tablets. The digital book delights, is more than worth 7 bucks and demonstrates how tablet apps/books should utilize the touchscreen. "A Charlie Brown Christmas" is the must-have addition to any tablet you gift. Tablets top this year's holiday wish lists.

But "A Charlie Brown Christmas" also reveals a problematic similarity to the early PC era: Application incompatibilities across operating systems. Schultz's remade classic is available from the three aforementioned stores, and buyers will have to cough up for at least two platforms, if, say, Junior has Android phone and Janie iPad and both want the same digital app/book. They can purchase from Android Market but will have to again at Apple's App Store. Buyers pay twice if they want what functionally is the same content for two different platforms. This isn't a new problem, but visible example because of price (compared to, say, a 99-cent game). Loud Crow's "The Tale of Peter Rabbit" is available from the same three stores and Nook, too. The situation presents hardships for some developers and consumers.

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What are bargain hunters going to be looking for this coming Black Friday and what’s on everyone’s holiday gift wish list? The latest Retrevo Pulse Study asked consumers about what they want for the holidays and what they’re going to be looking for in the bargain bins. For bargain hunters, tablets top the list followed by HDTV sets, laptops and smartphones.

Would you get up at four o’clock in the morning to get a deal on a tablet or laptop computer? Apparently there are plenty of bargain hunters who plan of braving the elements this Black Friday to buy electronic things. Although we don’t expect to see too many doorbuster deals on iPads or even other tablets, it’s at the top of the bargain hunter’s list this year.

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Adobe is a name associated with design tools, and it has long been associated with desktop software that can be used to create everything from websites and product designs to page layouts and perfect photos. But in recent years there has been a huge interest in mobile devices, and while handheld devices are a little limited when it comes to being used as design tools, the same cannot be said of tablets. The larger screens found on tablets have been put to great use in Adobe’s latest Android apps -- Adobe Photoshop Touch, Adobe Proto and Adobe Debut.

Adobe Photoshop Touch is, perhaps unsurprisingly, a touchscreen compatible version of the company’s flagship image editing tool. The selection tool has been redesigned to make it easier to control with just a fingertip, and the usual raft of filters and effects can be found here to help enhance images on the move. For most people, this app will be the one that appeals most from Adobe’s new range of Touch Apps.

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Book retailer Barnes and Noble on Monday unveiled the third generation of its Android-powered Nook e-reader, the Nook Tablet. Nearly identical in appearance to its predecessor the Nook Color, the Nook Tablet is designed for improved multimedia consumption to better compete with Amazon's new Android tablet, the Kindle Fire.

The Nook Tablet has a 7-inch IPS touchscreen display, a 1GHz dual-core processor (currently of undetermined brand,) 1GB of RAM, and runs Android 2.3 (Gingerbread.)

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Taiwanese consumer electronics company Asus has been heavily teasing the impending release of its second-generation Transformer Android tablet, known as Transformer Prime. On Tuesday, it pushed out the teaser video we've embedded above, and last night at the AsiaD conference, the company's president Jonney Shih brought the tablet on stage for another quick look before its official November 9th debut.

The Transformer Prime has a 10" screen, an 8.33mm thick chassis, and a laptop dock comparable to its predecessor; but of the features that we know so far, it will have one that makes it different from all the other tablets out there: a quad-core Nvidia Tegra processor.

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Android tablets got what can only be described as their greatest endorsement to date, with stunning support from one of the world's largest and most successful software developers. Today at its MAX 2011 conference, Adobe unveiled the suite of six Touch Apps, which will be available for Android tablets in November. There is no ETA for iPad, except announcement planned for 2012. Considering how much better iPad is selling than Android tablets, Adobe's choice can't be meaningfully described. The developer has chosen the lower-volume competitor instead of the overwhelming leader.

Adobe's decision says much about its increasing rivalry with Apple, the sometimes onerous App Store approval process (particularly for competitors) and relative openness of Android compared to iOS. It's perhaps a slap across Apple's face that the marketing photos on Adobe web pages for Touch Apps show Android tablets. There's nothing subtle about that.

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