There's also a possibility that Microsoft may show off a reference platform on Monday as an example of what the Windows RT machine could do, Gold said. That would be the design that other manufacturers, like Asus, Lenovo, Acer and others, would implement.

However, Gold thinks that Microsoft would not want to compete with its own vendor ecosystem. "That makes about as much sense as Microsoft building PCs to compete with HP, Dell, and others," he said.

Finally, as for the specs, I think what we've seen so far indicates that PC makers are treating Windows tablets as they would other categories, and they're not thinking outside of the traditional PC box.

This is the same kind of product planning reasoning that explains why it was Apple, and not a PC maker, who introduced the first laptop with a . And that kind of thinking could keep Windows 8 tablets from achieving their full potential.