Microsoft may have cancelled the double-screened, fold-up Courier project earlier this year, but that doesn’t mean they are done with tablet devices, as Steve Ballmer made very clear at the company’s annual Worldwide Partner Conference in Washington, DC today.

According to Mary Jo Foley at ZDNet, Ballmer told the thousands of attendees to expect plenty of Microsoft tablet devices by the end of this year, which will retail at a wide range of price points and be fitted with a huge variety of different features. “They’ll come with keyboards, they’ll come without keyboards, they’ll be dockable…… many price points, many sizes. But they will run Windows 7″, Ballmer says.

Asus, Dell, Samsung, Sony and Toshiba are amongst the companies who will be launching Windows 7 slates. However, it’s not all going to be “just that easy”.

Noticeably absent from the line-up of names is HP, who provided the hardware for the slate device that Ballmer showed off at CES in January. Now, this shouldn’t be too much of a surprise now that HP have their own, rather excellent WebOS after buying out Palm, but when you bear in mind that another one of Microsoft’s key partners, Dell, partnered with Android for the Dell Streak, it’s pretty clear that Ballmer & Co will have their work cut out coming up with the goods.

With Windows 7 notorious for adding to the price of a PC or a laptop, is it going to be the same for the tablet devices? Price will be a key component in the battle for tablet supremacy and if a flashy but expensive slate costs the same as a more powerful but functional netbook – which one would you choose? We’ll watch this space with interest…………

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