One day we'll all be taking the tablets. That's what we've been told by industry experts for 10- years or more -even before they were called tablet PCs (anyone remember the Dynabook?)

One day every e-potato will have one. But in the meantime we'll have to make do with reference designs. Latest off the drawing board is from VIA Technologies, which showed its take on the concept yesterday at WinHec in its home town of Taipei.

There's an 'digital ink' system - no, we don't know what it means either, but it's innovative. There's a 10.4in electro-magnetic digitizer portrait screen, USB 2.0 and Firewire connectivity and optional 802.11b wireless support.

The beast is built around the the VIA Apollo 2002, VIA's mobo for thin and light ultra portable applications. It uses either a VIA C3 or Eden processor and the VIA Apollo Pro266T DDR SDRAM chipset which supports low voltage - c. 3.3 volts - meaning lower power drain.

VIA's tablet PC runs on MS Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, it's less than an inch (2.54cm) thick and it weighs in at just over a kilo.

But how much? When? Any OEM customers yet? One day, we'll find out. In the meantime, here's VIA's tablet release. ®