Microsoft tablets will be, arguably, more than just fashionably late to the tablet party. As such, tablet makers need to eschew last year's specs, and go straight to something that will get shoppers' attention. And like it or not, specs do get attention.

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Things like a minimum of 32GB of built-in storage, and a high pixel-density display (at minimum, a resolution of 1920 pixels by 1200 pixels, which is less than iPad's 2048-pixel-by-1536-pixel resolution but superior to the existing baseline resolution of 1200 pixels by 800 pixels on a 10.1-inch display) feel de riguer.

And upping memory wouldn't be a bad move, either; current tablets are locked at 1GB of memory, but 2GB could go a long way to smoothing the playback experience while using the tablet for other tasks, too.

Next: True Multitasking and App/App Data Sharing