We know almost everything there is to know about the upcoming Eee Pad Transformer Prime device from Asus except for two very important things: how will it perform and when is it going to be released? Fortunately, while we don't have concrete answers to either of those questions, there are enough clues to make educated guesses about both of them, and they're both encouraging.

What could potentially be your next high-end tablet just went up for pre-order. We're of course talking about the Eee Pad Transformer Prime from Asus, a next generation slate oozing with tech sex appeal. It has an Nvidia Tegra 3 quad-core processor, for starters, along with a 10.1-inch WXGA IPS+ capacitive touchscreen display. And did someone say Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS)?

Computer system builders like Hewlett-Packard and Dell may look to pull out of the tablet market now that both Amazon and Barnes & Noble cannonballed the shallow end of the pool. Over in the deep end is Apple with its full-size (9.7-inch) iPad line, the only one that seems to be able to stay afloat at the $500 mark and above. Is it worth trying to compete anymore?

Asus and Acer, the same two companies largely responsible for the success of the netbook form factor and, by association, Intel's Atom platform, are having a hard time selling Intel's Ultrabook concept to the masses. To wit, both companies recently reduced their Ultrabook orders by as much as 40 percent simply because initial sales numbers weren't looking all that hot.