Motion to ship Centrino Tablet PC in May

BOSTON -- Motion Computing will unveil the new M1300 Tablet PC on May 12 with Intel's Centrino package of chips, the company said Tuesday.

The new Tablet PC will feature the ultra-low voltage version of the Pentium M processor running at 900MHz, said Scott Eckert, president and chief executive officer of Motion Computing. It will ship a week to ten days after May 12 through Motion's network of resellers, and will also be available through Gateway and Dell Computer, he said.

The device builds upon Motion's first Tablet PC product, the M1200, launched along with Microsoft's Windows XP Tablet PC Edition last November. The M1300 will come with a 20G-byte hard drive, 256M bytes of memory, three USB (universal serial bus) 2.0 ports, and Intel's Pro Wireless 802.11b wireless networking chip.

Motion will make a version of the M1300 available with 802.11a or 802.11g wireless capability later this year, Eckert said. Intel was supposed to ship Centrino with 802.11a capability at the product's launch in March, but the company delayed that release.

Motion is not releasing pricing or battery life information prior to the launch. The Centrino package is more expensive than the previous Pentium III-M chip used in the M1200, so the newer Tablet PC will likely cost more.

Health care organization have been the largest purchasers of Tablet PCs to date, Eckert said. Motion, based in Austin, Texas, is also seeing increased interest from colleges and universities, he said.