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.

It's looking as though tablets will pick up the slack left by less than expected Ultrabook sales, at least for Asus. Asus, along with Acer, figure they'll each move as little as a third of the number of Ultrabooks by the end of the year as they initially hoped, which is the result of prices simply being too high. But as far as tablets go, Asus expects to reach its goal of 1.8 million units in 2011.