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It's taken about a decade, but Microsoft has finally managed to move PC makers away from two main operating systems--Windows 9x/Me and NT/2000--to just one, the NT-based Windows XP. Now, the company has time to invent a few embellishments. This fall and winter, three debut: Windows XP Media Center Edition, Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, and Windows Powered Smart Display (the last, though based on Windows CE.net, requires an XP Professional desktop).

Each is a hardware-specific platform--the only way you can get Windows XP Tablet Edition, for example, is by buying it on a tablet-format PC that meets Microsoft's minimum hardware requirements. But should you?

We don't expect any of these new Windows devices to take the computing world by storm. But XP Tablet and Media Center PCs especially could well find appreciative niche audiences. We found PCs running Tablet Edition, scheduled to ship in early November, to be promising for certain business users on the go. Media Center PCs, due by the holidays, are an expensive but intriguing option for digital media enthusiasts and for people living in confined spaces who would like to fold their television and PC into a single system. We can't pass judgment on Smart Display until we've spent some time with shipping products (due in early 2003), but we have some concerns about the concept.

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Despite superficial similarities--both come with handheld screens that you write on using a stylus--the Tablet PC and the Windows Powered Smart Display (known earlier as Mira) target different audiences. Tablet PCs are ultraportable systems that have high-end digitizer screens and styluses designed to work with the OS's powerful digital-ink and handwriting-recognition engine (see "Putting Pen to Tablet"). They're intended for business users who want to enter handwritten data at meetings and other away-from-desk locations.

In contrast, a Smart Display is basically a specialized monitor upgrade for home users who want to work with their apps on an existing Windows XP Pro desktop as they roam about the house. When docked to its included PC-connected base, a Smart Display functions the way an LCD touch-screen monitor does. But when you detach the screen, it turns into a Windows CE.net-powered terminal that accesses the PC via a wireless Wi-Fi (802.11b) network (see "Smart Displays: Smart Enough?"). Its handwriting recognition capability is essentially the same as a Pocket PC's.

Microsoft may have an easier sell with XP Media Center Edition, given that users are already accustomed to treating the PC as a media hub. The first Media Center PC, HP's 883n, was due in stores by late October. Overall, we liked the prerelease version that we reviewed in last month's issue ("Multimedia Windows XP Takes Microsoft Out of the Office"). To a cutting-edge multimedia PC, HP adds a TV-mode interface that users can control from across the room with an included infrared remote. The result is a computer that lets you watch TV, record your favorite shows, and--incidentally--do everything else you might want to do on a PC. It's great for students and anyone else who lives and works in cramped quarters. (For more about the HP Media Center 883n, see "PCs With Personality.")

Our main gripe was with its draconian copy protection scheme, which let users view recorded shows only on the PC that recorded them. But in a last-minute turnabout following customer and vendor complaints, Microsoft withdrew those restrictions. Windows XP Media Center Edition PCs will be able to play back video recorded on any other XP MCE PC--as well as all Windows XP PCs equipped with Windows Media Player 9 (due late this year). And by year's end, Microsoft promises, a patch will enable Media Center Edition PC owners to record television shows on DVDs that will be playable in any DVD player.

This flexibility could give Microsoft's new platform an edge over competing products such as TiVo and SonicBlue's ReplayTV. At $1999, HP's MCE PC is five or more times the price of a basic TiVo or ReplayTV unit, but it offers far more than just time-shifting capability, including the ability to make DVD copies of shows for archiving and for viewing anywhere.

Microsoft notes, however, that your ability to play back a copied show could be limited if the broadcast contains an industry-standard (but at the moment, rarely used) no-copy flag. The approach puts the copy-control ball back in the content providers' court.

Another problem all three platforms face is price. Yankee Group analyst Laura DiDio predicts that only a comparative few upscale buyers will spring for the new Windows XP devices, in light of the fact that conventional computers containing most of the same features are readily available for substantially less.

Gartner vice president and research director Michael Silver gives the new XP-based PCs better odds. "While they aren't going to cure world hunger, they may find successful markets," he predicts.

As in the past, businesses and consumers may wait for the best elements of these new offerings to appear in mainstream PCs. Like some aspects of once-exotic products such as Windows for Workgroups, the multimedia PC, and Windows NT, the best features of tablet PCs, wireless displays, and personal video recording may eventually become elements that no Windows user will dream of living without. For now, the users most likely to buy into the new offerings will be people with specialized needs and some extra cash.

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