If you haven’t been on the interwebs and tech blogs in the last six months, you may have missed the passion (or obsession) with the idea of the Apple Tablet and what that piece of technology will look like. If you have been reading all of the blogs you may have become extremely annoyed by the idea that people are talking about a product that doesn’t even exist. Even though “people close to the matter” have “said” that an Apple tablet is completely real, we have no idea what it is going to be like. Since we don’t know it seems natural to ask the question; what do we really need in a tablet?

First, I am just going to make a quick list of my needs and wants in a tablet device:

• At least a 10′, capacitive touchscreen that has the ability to be written on with a stylus
• It would be nice to have a dual screen like the Microsoft Courier Prototype or the Entourage eDGe (but sexier)
• lighter than 1 pound
• at least 7 – 10 hours of battery life
• a camera (3MP or greater)
• Wifi and possible 3G integration
• 16GB or more of memory
• able to read any type of text from ebooks to PDFs
• a fast interface (iPhone OS would be OK, but I would really like a modified version of Android)
• good browser based on Webkit
• $500 or below

I’d say that is pretty good. I think that if a tablet comes out that promises and delivers these features it will do relatively well. Something that I see here though is that Apple may not meet these criteria with their tablet, if any of the proposed features of the Apple Tablet are true. One of the big features of my proposed tablet, sub $500 price point, seems cannot be reached by Apple’s premium pricing. So, I may have to wait for a different company to produce the tablet I am looking for (c’mon MS, where’s your Courier at?).

What would a tablet have to have for a non-regrettable purchase? Do we think that Apple will hit the mark? Or are we going to have to wait for another company to rock the lust-worthy tablet?