"We have corporates that have ordered 500 tablets," he said.

The Protege R400 does resemble a notebook, but the lid is easily swiveled and folded to turn it into Toshiba's fifth tablet PC on the market.

"It may seem like a simple concept to have display where you can view e-mails and calendar appointments without opening, but this represents a leap forward in productivity for the mobile user," Whittard said.

Jointly developed by Toshiba and Microsoft, the R400 comes pre-loaded with Windows Vista and sports an Intel Core Duo low-voltage processor, 2GB of memory, an 80GB disk, and a biometric fingerprint reader.

Emerging portable computing technologies appearing with the R400 include Ultra-Wide Band (UWB) wireless USB, which allows cordless docking, and integrated 3G connectivity for wireless broadband. The 3G version of the notebook won't be available until the second or third quarter and the wireless docking station is still awaiting approval for use locally by the federal government.