NEC unwraps tiny tablet PC

NEC introduced on Thursday the VersaPro Tablet PC, which at 2.2 pounds and half an inch thick is said by the company to be the world's tiniest tablet PC. The new tablet is set to go on sale for 296,000 yen ($2,500 U.S.) in Japan next week and will hit markets in the United States and Europe later this quarter, the company said in a statement.

The VersaPro, which is built around a 10.4-inch screen, uses Microsoft's Windows XP Tablet PC Edition software. It includes a 933MHz Intel Pentium III processor, 256MB of RAM, a 20GB hard drive and 802.11b wireless capabilities, but no keyboard. NEC is targeting business customers with the tablet PC, competing in the United States with similar tablets from Motion Computing and ViewSonic and keyboard-based models from Acer, Hewlett-Packard and Toshiba.