This week I had the opportunity to attend the TabletKiosk Demo Days cocktail hour in Orlando.  And yes, it was indeed a cocktail hour with an open bar, but as I had to drive back to Tampa that night I didn’t avail myself of the free booze.  I did avail myself of the opportunity to chat with Martin Smekal, the President and CEO of TabletKiosk who was kind enough to show me the various eo UMPCs and Sahara Tablet PCs they had on display.

They had all three eo models there in various configurations; the v7110, v7209, and v7210.  The v7110 is the first model they introduced and is geared primarily towards vertical markets.  They will build it to order and it is available in black or white and with an extended battery as well.  It has a very precise touch screen which requires the use of a stylus (or at least a sharp fingernail) to activate it and will resist touches by a finger (or a wrist when you’re writing).  They don’t currently offer a cradle dock for it but may have something coming out soon.

The v7209 and v7210 are positioned more for the consumer market and do include a cradle.  The way they dock into the cradle, however, means that there is no extended battery available for them from TabletKiosk. I believe there are third-party options out there, but you would have to put in the stock battery when docking it, however.  They also have a less sensitive touch screen which means you can use your finger on the screen, which is great for use in a car, but could make writing on it more difficult.  The primary difference between the two is the processor: The v7209 has a 900 Mhz Centrino and the v7210 has a faster Pentium M CPU.

On the Tablet PC side of things, TabletKiosk has two options in their Sahara line of tablets.  Although actionally, one of them isn’t technically a Tablet PC at all.  The iSeries pen computers have a touch screen, like a UMPC, and ship with Windows XP Pro or even Linux.  The i215 series is the Tablet PC with the standard active digitizer, although from the outside it is impossible to tell the two apart.  Both have nice curved corners, white shiny plastic, and resemble giant iPods (that’s a compliment).

They are not Vista certified, but I did get to take a sneak peak at something coming out soon that is.  And really, that’s about all I can say about it. It’s under NDA and I was asked not to take photos of it or talk about it.  I can say this, however.  It has some unique features, is very very cool, and I want one.  The rest will have to wait until it’s officially announced at CES in January.

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