Given that they've been formally released now, and their functions are being described almost everywhere on the web, I've been able to start comparing the function of this new breed with the functions offered by current portables. The only problem being that I don't actually have a real Tablet to compare my current laptop to. (yup, still using the brick that our lan-guys lent me in place of my anorexic Dell.)
One of the more obvious features that I wasn't sure I could adjust to was the capability to rotate the screen. I mean, it makes sense when I do it on my Pocket PC, but these work out of the box in portrait mode. Its only when I'm working on a Word document or watching divX clips on the handheld that I really have a need to rotate the screen into wide-screen mode. Regardless, I've never actually used a "real" computer in portrait mode so I went hunting for a display driver that would mimic the "rotate display" feature on my PDA to see what value vertical might hold for me in everyday use. I found one, installed it and immediately fell in love with my new view of the dekstop. I've spent the last three hours lying on the couch with a full size keyboard plugged into my laptop with the portable lying on its end on the coffee table about three feet away.
Portrait display is a substantially better way of dealing with the windows into your computer operating system. Let me guess, those shiny Apple computers have been offering this capability for years now, right?
More on my quest for the perfect computing device at some point in the future.