Motion Computing adds Celeron to low-cost Tablet PC

Motion Computing increased the performance of its entry-level slate Tablet PC Tuesday with an upgraded processor, the company said in a press release.

The new addition to the M1300 Tablet PC product line comes with Intel's Ultra Low Voltage Mobile Celeron processor running at 800MHz, 256M bytes of DDR (double data rate) SDRAM (synchronous dynamic RAM), a 20G-byte hard drive, a 12.1-inch display and Intel's Pro/Wireless 2100 chip for connecting to 802.11b networks in its base configuration. The device is also available with an 802.11g chip from Broadcom Corp.

Both configurations cost $1,699, and are available immediately through Motion's Web site.

The new M1300 Mainstream Tablet PC will replace the M1200, Motion's original Tablet PC, which was sold at the same price with Intel's Ultra Low Voltage Mobile Pentium III-M processor.

The newest M1300 Tablet PC is targeted at customers in the health care and education markets who cannot afford the more powerful Tablet PCs manufactured by the company, Motion said. But as part of Tuesday's announcement, Motion cut the base price of its M1300 Power Tablet PC to $1,999, which includes a 1GHz Pentium M processor from Intel.

Tablet PCs have been slow to catch on among mobile users, but vendors and analysts think the device still has a bright future. Users can handwrite notes with a special pen directly onto the display of a Tablet PC, which comes in two varieties, slate and convertible. 

The slate devices, such as Motion's, come without a keyboard, while the convertible devices feature a display that swivels to cover a standard notebook keyboard when the device is used in Tablet PC mode.