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Surely, there are going to be some people beating their heads against a wall in Redmond today.

After a decade of pursuing the notion of a tablet computer for consumers, it now appears possible, if not likely, that Apple laptop battery will be the one that gets credit–and the revenue–for making the product mainstream.

Although PC makers have been selling tablet-shaped computers for years, the idea has caught on mainly in niche business markets like health care and transportation, rather than as a device for the average Joe.

But that’s not to say Microsoft hasn’t been trying. Bill Gates first talked about the idea of a Tablet PC at Comdex back in 2000.

A year later, Gates rolled out various models, including one Compaq prototype that resembled a giant version of its iPaq handheld PA3191U-3BRS,PA3191U-4BRS.

“Next year I hope a lot of people in the audience will be taking their notes on a Tablet PC,” Gates told the Comdex crowd.

But few took him up on the offer.

Microsoft continued to refine the notion, improving the handwriting, but the products remained a niche. Most of the “tablet PCs” that have sold have actually been notebook computers with a rotating screen as opposed to the slate models that are similar to Apple’s device.

More recently, the company worked on a consumer tablet effort known as Project Origami. Microsoft managed to get considerable buzz for the notion–even before people knew what Origami was.

The first few details sounded appealing. The idea was to lay the groundwork for a consumer device that was like a Windows PC, but smaller, powered by touch, had all-day battery life, and cost well under $1,000, ideally around $500.

The products that emerged though, such as the Samsung Q1, ended up costing too much and had limited battery life, blunting their appeal.

Apple, meanwhile, has a tablet that starts at $500 and has 10 hours of battery life.

That could be a key selling point. “Folks have always been interested in tablets, said IDC analyst Richard Shim. “It’s just that the price points have always been too high. That’s changed, clearly.”

Shim said IDC estimates that Apple will sell four million to five million iPad tablets this year. That compares to an estimate of just 1.3 million Tablet PCs–only 170,000 of which will be slates. (Last year IDC says about 1 million tablets were sold, 125,000 of which were slates, as compared to about 875,000 that were convertible PCs)

Of course, the fact that Apple has unveiled the iPad tablet doesn’t guarantee its success. Although the company has had a string of hits, it has also had products that either had only modest impact (think Mac Mini) or less (Apple TV). That said, it has come in at a lower-than-expected price and also has the option for relatively cheap 3G data, albeit from AT&T.

Microsoft, meanwhile, hasn’t given up on the tablet. With the addition of multitouch in Windows 7 the company is hoping that a new generation of tablets will hold more interest. At this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer showed a prototype HP tablet running Windows 7. I’m told the device is expected mid-year and uses an 8.9-inch display. In a video, embedded below, HP’s Phil McKinney says that the PA3284U-1BRS,PA3285U-1BAS company has been working on an entertainment-oriented slate for the past five years.

Microsoft is also exploring the notion of a dual-screen tablet, code-named Courier, a video of which leaked out early last year. In an interview with CNET, Microsoft entertainment unit head Robbie Bach confirmed the video was genuine, but wouldn’t say where the project stands now.

“We do a lot of exploratory videos on a lot of different products,” Bach said in the interview, which took place at CES earlier this month. “The video that went around the Internet that was the so-called Courier is just another example of those. We do a lot of those. We don’t comment on them.”

With Apple’s tablet unveiling just a week away, more rumors are bubbling to the surface regarding the mythical product’s capabilities as an eReader and all-around life changer laptop battery.

Both personally and professionally, I’m most intrigued to figure out what the Apple tablet will deliver in terms of music and media playback. Will it run a full version of iTunes, or act more like an iPod or iPhone as an extension of your personal media collection?

We aren’t going to know the concrete details for sure until next week, but the rumor mill is at least getting some good speculative grist.

First up, we have a rumor from Electronista and Digital Music News pointing to iTunes LP support on the tablet. Currently, the interactive LP format Apple PA3191U-1BAS launched last September can only be viewed through your computer, and is not supported by mobile products such as the iPhone and iPod Touch.

I think the iTunes LP has been a misfit format on the computer, and I’m glad to hear that it might break out of the box. As a fan of vinyl LPs, a big part of my retro obsession is being able to hold and appreciate the album artwork from the comfort of my living room chair. Sitting in front of a computer and pointing and clicking around iTunes just doesn’t offer the same relationship with the media.

Now, whether or not people care about albums anymore still remains to be seen. But if iTunes LPs do make it onto the tablet, I expect that will spur more interest in the format for both consumers and record labels. The Apple tablet will undoubtedly be the “show-off” product of 2010, and users will find it hard to resist downloading at least a few iTunes LPs just for the thrill of impressing friends.

The second important tablet rumor music fans should be aware of comes from a TechCrunch interview with Michael Robertson, CEO of the music locker site MP3tunes. Michael seems certain that Apple PA3191U-1BRS is working on an iTunes update that will take advantage of the music-upload and fingerprint technology from Apple’s recent acquisition, Lala. Like Lala’s own music-scanning tool, the new iTunes feature would examine your music collection, upload any material it doesn’t already have in its vast library, and give you the capability to stream your music from Apple’s servers to any of your iTunes compatible wireless devices.

What the TechCrunch article doesn’t point out is the unlikelihood that Apple would provide this iTunes cloud service free of charge. It makes more sense that this would get rolled out as a feature of Apple’s existing MobileMe service.

At $99 a year, MobileMe doesn’t come cheap. But if the service promised music fans the ability to have a central, cloud-based back-up of all their music files, plus the ability to stream everything to their iPhone, iPod Touche, tablet, PC, or Mac, then it could solve some very real issues for people.

For example, a cloud-based iTunes music library solves the problem of storage, especially for users with music collections that run in the hundreds of gigabytes. Even users with modest music libraries may be able to leverage the MobileMe service to offload music playback to the cloud, and get by with a lower-cost, lower-capacity iPhone (8GB), thus expanding the appeal of the iPhone and seemingly lowering the cost of entry.

It could also solve the problem of the scattered music collections most users have between the multiple computers in their lives, by automatically linking them all to a master collection, or perhaps syncing media across computers via the cloud. Considering that many iTunes users are already at a breaking point when it comes to syncing media across their iPods and iPhones, it makes sense that Apple would want to address the problem before throwing a completely new type of device (a tablet) into the mix.

HP laptop battery today announced a comprehensive security services portfolio to empower organizations to more effectively manage risk, protect critical infrastructure, safeguard the continuity of operations and maintain regulatory compliance.

To address the comprehensive information security requirements of businesses and governments, HP is integrating a wide variety of security services from across the company into a unified HP PA3176U-1BRS Security, Compliance and Continuity Services portfolio. The portfolio consists of consulting, training and managed security services that leverage a common reference model to reduce complexity and cost for clients.

HP also introduced two new services in the portfolio: the Cloud Computing Security Assessment and Application Security Center of Excellence (CoE) Services. The portfolio and new services are part of HP Secure Advantage, HP’s portfolio of security products and services.

“Organizations want to enable new models of collaboration inside and outside of their organizations, but can only do so if they comprehensively address security vulnerabilities,” said Gary M. Budzinski, senior vice president and general manager, Technology Services, HP PA3178U-1BRS. “HP provides a heritage of trust and integrity that is key for a security services vendor, with deep capabilities that cover the security needs of simple to the most complex environments.”