Technological advance in the last five years has given birth to previously unforeseen possibilities in computing, and tablets are here to kickstart what will probably be an effervescent computing decade.

If you’re a technology enthusiast and you haven’t heard about ‘the tablet’ yet -or Apple Inc’s iSlate, as the rumour goes-, you’ve most likely been hiding under a rock. On the moon.

But there was a time long before planets aligned for 2010 to bring you renewed electronic delight when another company you might have heard of -Microsoft Corp.- was a firm believer that this kind of devices would leave the drawing boards and move into our offices and living-rooms, in much the same way Microsoft’s own Bill Gates clairvoyantly predicted the personal computer would make it into our homes, more than thirty years ago.

Microsoft first demonstrated their product Windows XP Tablet PC Edition in year 2001, programming specifications were developed, and real world products by HP, Panasonic and others were produced to match Microsoft’s blueprints.

Unfortunately these tablets as conceived by Microsoft -despite having heightened the hopes of many techies and evangelists for years- so far have proved an elusive rara avis in the real world that is even more rare in the realm of our households.

If Tablet PCs were a reality early on the noughties, and the public seems to be excited about these products, why has it taken so long (in “internet time”, anyway) for them to become more widely used and available?

The public seems to be indicating that the problem is not so much with the tablet bit of the term, but with the PC part of it.

For most of 2009 (and still going strong) there was a leakage of information details dripping from Apple and on technology and gadgets blogs, pointing to the almost certain conclusion that Apple will be making a major product announcement in late january 2010, very likely a slate-type of tablet device. Programmers around the web also saw new code being shared by Apple (as part of the Webkit project that powers Apple’s Safari browser) which left little doubt in their minds that these programming instructions could only be necessary for use in a tablet-like device.

Little else is known about the Apple product at this time, but the rumours seem to be credible enough that Apple’s competitors thought it was necessary to show their cards in advance to Apple’s -real or imagined- big event. The more stunning of the competing rumours surfaced in relation to Google’s partnership with Taiwanese manufacturer HTC and joint announcement of Nexus One -the much awaited Google Phone. It gave rise to the expectations they could be working on a tablet project of their own, running Google’s Chrome OS or a variation of Google’s mobile phone OS Android.

But we had more than just rumours as well this week at CES 2010, with Lenovo, MSI, HP, and -you guessed it?- Microsoft rushing to occupy whatever mindshare is left in tabletspace that Apple has not taken already. Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer in person demonstrated HP’s Slate running a tailored version of Windows 7 with e-reader capabilities, but the specialised press and blogosphere have been largely underwhelmed by this second Microsoft attempt. BusinessWeek reports that Microsoft took a hit in the stock market as a result of this perceived underperforming act.

Other worth-mentioning announcements include Lenovo and MSI who have demoed variations on the tablet theme, months ahead of general availability of their products -as is often the case in tech fairs like CES.

Lenovo are going the way of the hybrid laptop-tablet, an otherwise perfectly normal business notebook can have its display screen removed and used as a slate tablet, which is able to operate independently of the main computer body and comes with an operating system of its own, Lenovo’s SkyLight.

MSI have surprised with a different and completely novel concept: a dual screen tablet, with the ability to fold them together like a book -and presumably use it as an e-reader, of course- but also with the possibility of setting it up horizontally the way you put a laptop on a table, using one of the screens as virtual keyboard and mouse. Not only that, but the virtual keyboard that appears on screen is also a haptic device, meaning that it offers tactile feedback as you touch the surface, producing a sensation on your fingertips similar to the touch of an actual flat keypad.

Is it possible that the more things change the more they become different in computing?

Whilst manufacturers essay their best attempts in their tablet/slate/e-reader endeavours , Microsoft seem unable to escape the centre of gravity of the PC, and continue to advertise the power of Windows as a much necessary tool everywhere.

Counterintuitively so, if we take into account Microsoft’s XBOX -arguably Microsoft’s most succesful hardware product after Microsoft’s Mouse- doesn’t run the familiar -now almost venerable- Windows graphical user interface. Although technically there is a Windows kernel somewhere there underneath, it’s conveniently hidden from the XBOX user.

When Microsoft tried to do the same for mobile phones with Windows Mobile, they failed to translate that familiarity with the brand into marketshare, letting a relatively late comer like Apple’s iPhone to disrupt and dominate the smartphone space.

The public seems to be telling us that they’re as uncomfortable taking a full-blown Windows PC in their pockets as they would be taking a Windows PC to read an e-book in bed.

However impressive on the technology side, so far none of these products, rumours and performances from different companies have been able to capture the same level of expectation Apple Inc. seems to master, steadily building up in emotion towards the grand finale.

That is, if the 90% chance that Apple’s iSlate is a real product turns out to be true, after all.

Whatever is the case, public perceptions seem to be changing, a culture where the TV set is no longer the sole source of information and entertainment was developed in the last ten years, almost inadvertedly making the long-touted convergence so much of a reality that it now doesn’t need to be singled out as a particular event. In the first half of the noughts YouTube was a phenomenon yet-to-be-seen, and video on the Internet in general was a less-than-edificant experience.

But the rise of the so-called web 2.0 paradigm paired with improvements in bandwidth and availability of internet connections helped to deliver a continuum of almost imperceptible changes that have affected forever the usage patterns that we once thought were monolithic and incontestable.

As a result there’s a myriad of new use cases, waiting for a myriad of products to match.

Passing videos around in the living-room? Taking your bookshelf to college with you to give a lecture? Sending your toddler’s fingerpaintings to her grandparents at the other side of the world?

Some of these companies are trying to match these newly developed usage patterns with products to satisfy them. There’s still a lot to be designed, developed and tried and we will see plenty of that in the effervescent computing decade that’s about to begin.

And now, with tablets to get started with.