Tablet PC

A Tablet PC is a laptop PC, equipped with a stylus or a touchscreen. This form factor  is intended to offer a more mobile PC; Tablet PCs may be used where notebooks are impractical or unwieldy, or do not provide the needed functionality.

The term Tablet PC was made popular in a product announced in 2001 by Microsoft, where it was defined as a pen-enabled computer conforming to hardware specifications devised by Microsoft and running a licensed copy of "Windows XP Tablet PC Edition" operating system or a derivative thereof. Tablet PCs are personal computers where the owner is free to install any compatible application or operating system. Other tablet computer devices, such as eBook readers or PDAs, do not provide this option and are generally considered another category. The original Microsoft licensing specification required proximity sensing of the stylus, which Microsoft termed "hover". This requirement was dropped with the later announcement of the UMPC.