In my experience the main problem with older tablets (pre-2006) was that they had a horrible usability/cost ratio. If you had lots of cash to blow (from corpor

In my experience the main problem with older tablets (pre-2006) was that they had a horrible usability/cost ratio. If you had lots of cash to blow (from corporate IT budgets) on gadgets you could get a slow, awkward version of windows to browse the web and work with your powerpoint presentations. The touchscreens were finicky, power-saving features were crude, there was no 3G wireless, and multimedia capabilities weren't impressive. The iPad wasn't feasible until those technical problems had been solved.