Earlier today, GBM's Matt Faulkner did a live un-boxing of the Toshiba M700 tablet PC (via Ustream). What was really cool, though, was that I took part in it by asking Matt some questions which he then answered. And though that's not quite as cool as having access to the M700 myself, it was certainly better than nothing. (Matt: if you read this, thanks a million.)

I'm now almost a hundred percent certain that this'll be the tablet PC that I buy for myself a few months from now. The question I now need to answer is: what hardware configuration do I go for? Unfortunately, that doesn't have an easy answer.

As Faulkner mentioned in his video, for example, going from the 2.4Ghz to the 2.6Ghz processor actually increases the price of the tablet by about US$300. On the other hand, when you went from the 2.2Ghz to the 2.4Ghz, that was only a US$100 price increase. I wonder, then, how much of a difference that additional 0.2GHz (to get to 2.6GHz) actually makes. This is something I need to investigate.

I also need to investigate Turbo Memory some more (the current consensus seems to be that it's not worth it) and I wonder whether it's worth it to get 4GB or RAM (or 3GB, or should I just stick with 3GB?). Fortunately, those questions -- and their answers -- don't need to be addressed for another six months or so. And by then, things might be different (and someone may already have answered them).

Meanwhile, Aaron Hall just got his hands on the M700 and he's posted a review of it on his blog.