Months later, nobody has announced any detail on the Chrome OS machines which will supposedly be shipping in just a few months. But there are rumors–courtesy of rumor kingpin Digitimes–that Asus has plans to release a netbook for $200-$250 in June. One that might conceivably run Chrome OS. (I say “might conceivably” because Digitimes’ sources say that Asus “should” use either Chrome OS or Android on the machine–which is a whole lot vaguer than saying that Asus will use either one of those operating systems.)

Could Asus sell a decent Chrome OS laptop with an 12.1″ screen and built-in wireless broadband for $250 or less? That sounds aggressive to me. But if they can manage it, the deal sounds a whole lot more appealing than the $449 Chromebook I envisioned. And if they can sell a clamshell device at that pricetag, couldn’t they whack off the keyboard, add an on-screen one, and have a plausible low-end tablet?

The WAVI Xtion is a motion sensor for browsing multimedia and Internet content, using PrimeSense’s camera and infrared sensor tech to track users in 3D space. It’s meant for home theater PCs and will be commercially available in the second quarter, price unspecified.

More exciting, I think, is Xtion PRO, a tool for third-party developers to create their own gesture-based applications and software. Asus plans to host an online store for developers to hawk their motion-sensing apps, presumably to consumers who buy the WAVI Xtion sensor. The PRO development tools are coming in February.

It all sounds kind of lofty, given that Asus is primarily a hardware company, but if all goes to plan on the software front, Asus could be the the first company to create a market for the creativity of Kinect hackers. We’ve seen some pretty impressive tech demos from hobbyists, so I can only imagine what would come from financial incentives in the form of an app marketplace.

PrimeSense will have the whole setup on display at the Consumer Electronics Show this week. I plan to check it out.

We do, however, have two Windows portables. There’s Acer’s Iconia, which ditches a physical keyboard in favor of a second screen that can display information or serve as a ten-finger multitouch keyboard. And there’s Asus’s U36Jc, which looks far more conventional than the Iconia but packs components–an Intel i5 CPU and discrete Nvidia graphics–which you might not expect to find in a thin-and-light laptop with a 13″ display.

Two interesting-but-very-different machines. Your take, please:

Price: $999

The computing world is awash in powerful laptops. There are also more and more thin-and-light notebooks with 13″ screens. But 13″ thin-and-lights that are truly powerful? They’re still a rare breed. That’s what makes the Asus U36Jc-A1 intriguing: It looks like a typical 13-incher that emphasizes portability over potency, but it packs a standard-voltage Intel Core i5 CPU and Nvidia G310M discrete graphics. It also has Nvidia’s Optimus technology, which lets the system switch between the G310M and integrated graphics on the fly for better battery life–Asus says it can run up to nine hours on a charge.

The U36Jc-A1 has an aluminum-magnesium alloy shell, is .76″ thick, and weighs 3.4 pounds. Asus says it’ll go on sale on January 17th.

As Engadget is reporting, Asus is showing off something called the Eee Pad at the show–a vaguely iPad-esque looking device that runs Windows 7, packs an Intel ultra-low voltage CPU, and (like the iPad) claims ten hours of battery life on a charge. It’s safe to say that Asus still has heavy lifting to do to make the Eee Pad a reality: It isn’t planning to ship it until next year. By then, it’ll face competition from other Windows 7 tablets, such as this Computex debutante from MSI, not to mention Android tablets (MSI is showing one of those, too)

Both the Asus and the MSI look pretty much like Windows subnotebooks that have had their keyboards chopped off. Assuming that Windows-based tablets have a future, though, they’ve got to amount to something more than that. And they’ve got to amount to something which neither Microsoft nor any of its hardware partners have articulated so far.

Steve Ballmer’s CES keynote was only five months ago, but it’s already something out of an era that feels ancient. He showed off upcoming “Slate PCs,” including a much-hyped HP model which is now mysteriously missing. At the show, a Microsoft executive told me that Microsoft had no plans to customize Windows 7 any further for touch-screen devices. Meanwhile, the Microsoft “Courier” concept tablet which a lot of people loved turned out to be destined for the dustbin of concept PC history.

Even though Microsoft hasn’t had much to say about tablets lately, it would be stunning if its tablet strategy hadn’t evolved a lot since early January. Actually, given its track record in recent months, it’s probably just as well if it stays mum until it can show products which will definitely ship in our lifetimes.

So what’s Microsoft thinking? I see three possibilities:

• It could continue with its current strategy of putting full-blown Windows 7 on tablets;
• It could mimic Apple’s approach by building a version of the Windows Phone OS designed for bigger screens;
• It could do both, by offering both full-blown Windows and mobile Windows for use on tablets–a little like the duality of Google’s Chrome OS/Android gameplan.

(There are probably other strategies Microsoft could persue, such as building a new OS utterly from scratch or hoping that the iPad is a fad; those seem unlikely, though.)

Trouble is, there are major gotchas with all three of the likely scenarios:

• Even if the new Windows 7 tablets are solid from a hardware standpoint, they’re doomed to be unsatisfying compromises unless both the operating system and the apps that run on it are designed with touch in mind–not as an afterthought, but as the primary interface;
• Microsoft clearly has its hands full just getting Windows Phone 7 out there as a phone OS;
• Two mobile versions of Windows is a recipe for confusion.

If I were forced at gunpoint to guess what Microsoft will do, I’d venture that it’ll try possibility #3 and offer multiple Windows variants for tablets. This is a company that’s more comfortable placing multiple bets than letting everything ride on one gigantic gamble. I also think it’s going to be 2011 before Microsoft’s strategy is clear and products based upon it are widely available.

So what would get you excited about Windows tablets?

I ended up buying a 12-inch PowerBook. I’ve purchased and used both Macs and Windows machines in the years since, but have unquestionably logged more hours on Macs than on Windows PCs over the past two or three years.

That’s about to change, at least for a little while. Now that Windows 7 is the current version of the operating system, I’m not only going to use it–which I’ve been doing with various versions for a year–but to run it as my primary OS. What better way to come to some real-world, up-to-the-moment conclusions  about how Windows and Apple’s OS compare?

The Windows 7 computer I’m going to be spending most of my time with is an Asus UL30A-X5. It’s one of those newfangled ultra-low voltage, thin-and-light laptops that the PC industry hopes will replace netbooks. It’s got a 1.3-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo CPU, 4GB of RAM, no optical drive, and the most hard-disk space I’ve ever had in one PC: 500GB. The screen measures 13.3″, the keyboard and the touchpad are comfy. The touchpad button is too small, and the claimed battery life of twelve hours feels like an impossible dream so far. Mostly, though, I’m happy–especially for the $675 I paid.

A few initial thoughts about life with Windows 7 on the UL30A-X5:

This thin-and-light form factor is nice. I don’t think it’s going to kill off netbooks, since there’s a price premium–this UL30A-X5 cost $300 more than my Asus Eee PC 1000HE. But I like the balance of size, weight, power, and price. It’s sort of like a hybrid of the best features of the $999 white MacBook and the $1499 MacBook Air, only much less expensive than either.

Windows 7 runs well on this system. Last year, I bought a Lenovo ThinkPad with Windows Vista preinstalled, and it was a chokey, pokey dog of a PC–until I downgraded it to Windows XP, whereupon it became quite pleasant. The Asus comes with the 64-bit version of Windows 7 Home Premium, and it’s run pretty smoothly so far. It hasn’t been quirk-free–at one point it shut itself down and rebooted for reasons I couldn’t determine, and PowerPoint sometimes forgets to render thumbnails–but Macs can behave oddly, too.

Windows remains kinda messy. This is something which Windows  7 didn’t seem to address. I have two Downloads folders–one alongside my My Documents one and one inside it. Different software companies still have different philosophies about where they should program files. Some programs install a folder on the Start menu, and others just stick an icon there. End result: I spend more time looking for stuff than I do in Snow Leopard.

Macs still make a better first impression. This Asus isn’t crippled by unwantedware, but it does have a cryptically-named advertising demo on the desktop, along with a bunch of Asus utilities which don’t really need to be there. The Trend Micro security software demanded my attention from the moment I booted up the PC for the first time. And I don’t quite understand why Asus’s system backup software tells me to have blank CDs ready when this laptop doesn’t have an optical drive.

The Control Panel needs work. It performs roughly the same tasks as Snow Leopard’s System Preferences, yet it’s about five times more intimidating. (The dumbed-down interface that it’s had in recent Windows releases makes it harder to use, not easier.) I’d put reinventing it among the top ten items in my personal wish list for Windows 8.

My MacBook Pro comes out of sleep mode way quicker. I open it up, and by the time I’m ready to begin doing something, it’s ready to accept my input. With the Asus, by contrast, I have to press the power button, and then sit through a lengthy sequence of screens.

Hey, what’s with computer names in the Windows world? “UL30A-X5″ is a typical moniker, but it’s also nearly impossible to memorize. Don’t manufacturers want to help us remember the names of their systems so we can recommend them to our pals and relatives?

Despite all of the above quibbles, I’ve enjoyed my first week with this system. In most respects that matter, it’s the nicest Windows computer I’ve owned in many years–I’m defining “nicest” as “least annoying”–and Windows 7 deserves much of the credit. More thoughts as I continue to use it…and I’ll let you know whether it stays my main machine or I end up segueing back to the Mac.