Yesterday Dell announced their new tablet. The technology media wrote about it, and it got some good buzz. The first thing that went through my mind was, how does this jive with their deal to re-sell Motion tablets? Are they competing now? Did Motion just lose a huge reseller?

As you can see from the picture, Dell’s new Latitude XT is actually a convertible. It looks kind of like a regular laptop, but then the screen spins around and lays down against the keyboard, screen up, so that you can use it as a tablet. They also announced that it will have "capacitive touch" which I guess means you can use the screen with your finger, kind of like an iPhone. With a motion tablet, you use a special stylus on the touch screen.

So it’s not really a direct competitor, since the Motion computer is an actual tablet, and not a convertible. You can buy a small external keyboard for it, and then it acts pretty much like a laptop too.

The biggest shocker was the price. It starts at $2499, so by the time you add enough RAM to run Vista and MS Office, plus other goodies you’re definitely talking about $4K for a decently working machine. Toshiba has had offerings in this market for a while, and they’re definitely more cost competitive. Dell has always had a reputation is a low cost provider because of their direct-to-consumer model, but these days buying Dell definitely means you’re paying a premium. Maybe people will call it the "Michael Dell Tax" the same way people used to complain about the premium for Apple equipment.

In our estimation, the headlines should have read "Dell Takes High Priced Convertible for a Spin."