Come with me on a journey through time.

We'll start in the late 1960's when Gene Roddenbury's vision hit the small screen in Star Trek. The 23rd century gave everyone the LCARS PADD. It's a small tablet computer with an organic touch-screen interface and wireless link to a vast library of information.

Jump forward to 1992, when John Sculley coined the term "Personal Digital Assistant" referring to the Apple Newton. It was small but not altogether pocketable, with an organic touch-screen interface. While never wonderfully successful, it did lay out an idea of what was to come.

Let's fast-forward to 1996. US Robotics released the Pilot 1000 and Pilot 5000. These were not as revolutionary compared to the Newton, but were pocketable and had one thing the Newton lacked: Success. Great success. The Pilots, with both portability and an intuitive interface, led the way for PDA after PDA storm through the market over the next 9 years until poorly designed products combined with massive corporate mergers and the rise of smartphones and convergence devices finally killed off the PDA.

What happened in that time? Starting in early 1990's, companies strapped touchscreens to laptops with swivel screens and made the "Tablet PC." Again, they suffered from one poor design after another and still aren't well embraced, but operating system support and software continued to grow. Where were slates in this time? Failing in the consumer market, that's where. They weren't well embraced in the vertical markets either: relegated to specific embedded systems.

In 2002, tablets started making a comeback. Large corporations such as AT&T and Microsoft often included the wireless slate in advertising projects showing the "vision of the future." Some examples:

1. •Send a fax from the beach.
   

2. •All textbooks are replaced by tablets, allowing students to attend class from hundreds of miles away.
   

3. •Video calls to a family member in Africa.
   

4. •Having an emergency room in Hawaii pull up your medical history from Chicago on a notebook-sized tablet.
   

Even with all this vision and advertising, little was done to put this in the hands of the average consumer. All that changed with Origami.

The Microsoft Origami Project has been the biggest consumer-targeted slate tablet push to date. The goal of a sub-$500 wireless tablet - the ultra-mobile PC, halfway between PC and Consumer Electronics device - got many consumers and analysts excited. The reality was much more harsh: The machines turned out to cost twice the target amount and lacked the computing power to handle much of the most common mass-market software.

The release of Vista further crippled market adoption of the UMPC. Vista skyrocketed the base hardware requirements of new computers. Since most of the existing UMPC owners and target market were early adopters, they became loathe to embrace the latest technology when it couldn't run the latest operating system. UMPCs are beginning to catch up, but the average consumer will buy a $700 laptop before they will buy a $1,200 ultra-mobile with comparable specs.

Watching this history, we see a trend emerge. Users can choose between power, portability, or a good user interface. They can get one and, if lucky, two. They can't get all three.

Does this mean that UMPCs are dead in the water? Not at all. Flash back to the Star Trek LCARS PADD. The acronym means Library Computer Access/Retrieval System Personal Access Display Device. This implies that the central computing and information storage takes place on a remote server and the the access and interface are on a portable device. What do we have in 2007 that is analogous?

It's called the Internet. Web applications are getting stronger every day, with Google a driving force behind it. In 2000, a decently powerful laptop loaded with map software on several CDs of map software was required to get directions to the closest Starbucks - assuming you knew what the address to the coffee shop was. In 2007, a tiny smartphone with Windows Live Search can do the same thing for you in seconds. With a GPS receiver, you don't even have to know where YOU are to find the closest triple Venti mocha.

How will all the dreams of the future come true? Here are the four simple steps.

1. 1.Ditch the operating system and create a streamlined, always-on access device. (The Nokia N800 is ahead of it's time in this concept.)
   

2. 2.Move all heavy data storage from the tablet to the server like Google Maps, Gmail, and other similar services already do.
   

3. 3.Push for proliferation of wireless broadband everywhere.
   

4. 4.Turn software into services.
   

People are loathe to adopt that last one. Why would someone pay a monthly fee for software when they can just buy it once? The simple fact is that you already don't own the software you buy. You're buying a license to use the software. In eight months when the latest version comes along, you'll just have to buy it again or be stuck with the old version and be left behind.

Consider:

1. •Buy two CDs per month for $16 each or pay $30 per month to get access to every song you want to listen to, when you want to hear it, wherever you happen to be.
   

2. •Pay $20/month for all the Photoshop you can use or pay $300 every 18 months when the latest version?
   

3. •Risk buying Microsoft Office for $350 when the next version could come out any day now?
   

Software, media, and storage "as a service" is not perfect, but it can address consumer price complaints and corporate piracy worries at the same time. The worst part would be the fear of losing your entire computer and data if you neglect to pay your bill or if the server has a glitch. I know enterprise computing though and know that it's MUCH more likely for a home computer to crash than to have an well-designed enterprise application server crash.

The current ultra-mobile PC isn't underpowered. It's overpowered and incorrectly focused. They tried to turn a gadget into a PC with an operating system and standard software. To realize the vision of the future, computing power, storage, and user interface have to be split. When the three-way fight between horsepower, mobility, and organic interface ends, each can take a new life of it's own.