Despite a CES introduction and a little information on the Dell Mini/Streak, we still haven’t gotten the full story on the device–just bits and pieces. Today, some new bits entered the picture when a sales flyer showing the tablet in all forms of different dress leaked. So we know the Dell will be colorful. And it looks like it will be called the Streak–nothing like visions of hairy, naked sports fans and dirty undergarments to make you want a tablet computer.

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Well, we knew tablets were going to be a pillar of the modern electronics architecture, but we never really thought about exactly how many tablets that we’re likely to see over time. An executive with chipmaker ARM has put a number to the tablet explosion, predicting we’ll see no less than 50 tablets launched around the world. That’s a lot of options for the burgeoning market. ARM’s worldwide mobile computing ODM manager Roy Chen expects that the third quarter of this year will see a large number of launches.

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According to rumors about in-the-wild Mac Mini prototypes, Apple looks to be adding HDMI connectivity to its next generation of Minis, a first for a Mac. The Mac Mini prototypes have reportedly been spotted with an HDMI instead of DVI connection (thanks for joining us here in 2010, Apple).

Since HDMI is pretty much a universal standard for HD, and DVI is all but obsolete, the addition of HDMI will make it easier for Mac users to connect to an HDTV. Current-generation Macs rely on either a DVI port or mini DisplayPort for connection and require a converter to connect to an HDMI port. Those connections do not support audio output as HDMI does, requiring a separate cable to deliver audio.

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We’ve seen a little bit of information and pictures of the Dell Mini 5, a compact, sleek tablet that will debut in a few months. Wired recently spoke with Dell’s general manager at the tablet division Neeraj Choubey and he confirmed that Dell does not plan to stop at the five-incher.

“We are going to have a family of tablets,” he said. “The first one is a 5-inch screen but we want to scale that up to a variety of screen sizes.”

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Finding it difficult to type in all those L’s in LOL? Is TTYL a little too tedious to write out to each of your friends every single time you chat with them? The Fast Finger Keyboard is designed to help. Aimed at younger computer users, the keyboard features an alphabetical layout and is also capable of switching to Qwerty at the press of a button.

For the laziest of lazy social networking and IM fiends, the keyboard also includes functions for those common abbreviations like LOL, TTYL, L8R and IMO. These are laid out on the F1 to F12 keys. So if cramming three or four words into three or four letters isn’t easy enough for you, you can do it all with one tap. The keyboard also features Internet shortcut buttons and media shortcut buttons.

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If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. Or, join another player in the market that also can’t beat ‘em and needs you as much as you need it, hoping that your combined efforts will indeed beat ‘em. That about sums up the recent Nokia/Intel cooperative effort to bring a new mobile phone OS to the market. MeeGo is a combination of Nokia’s Maemo and Intel’s Moblin. We would have preferred Momaemo, but MeeGo it is.

MeeGo keeps the open-source, Linux roots of its parent OSs and provides a rich, new operating system positioned for high-end smartphones, netbooks, tablets and connected televisions. MeeGo supports both ARM and Intel chips. The OS is a divergence from other operating systems, which tend to be purpose-built for smartphones or netbooks, but not both.

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I always thought stamp collections were about as cool as spewing anxiety-vomit all over your sweater when trying to speak to a member of the opposite sex (something that many stamp collectors likely did at one time or another), but if your stamp collection is actually made up of tiny SSDs, well then, it’s far cooler. In a nerdy sort of way.

Some Japanese researchers are working at drastically shrinking the size of solid states by a whopping 90 percent. In addition, the new SSDs promise to be 70 percent more efficient and cheaper to produce. The technology would make it possible to squash 1 TB worth of space into a the size of a stamp. Sounds a little too good to be true so far.

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The iPad may be great for those trendy yupster types sipping their soy lattes while pulling Wi Fi in the latest faux-Euro cafe on the block, but do you really want to carry your shiny, skinny iPad stuffed with photos of kittens and ponies into the firehouse or labor union local?

Before you go down that lonely road, put on some pants and, yes, some bright yellow work gloves, and grab a hold of a Panasonic Toughbook H1 Field. This is clearly a tablet designed to get work done where work gets done. To that effect, the H1 features a 10.4-inch display, 1.86 GHz Atom processor, 2 GB of RAM, 64GB SSD,  Wi Fi, hot-swappable twin batteries and Bluetooth. It comes with your choice of Windows 7 or Windows XP–real men don’t upgrade to the next latest thing–and offers six hours of battery life.

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Today Nvidia introduced a new switchable graphics technology called Optimus. Designed for laptops, Optimus automatically switches between built-in chip graphics and the graphics card based upon the application being used. Optimus is designed to conserve battery life and automatically switches between graphic options without requiring any rebooting or user action.

The graphics will be routed through the graphics card when running applications like games and video. When performing tasks with lower graphics requirements, like email and document editing, the graphics will seamlessly switch over to the built-in graphics to save power. The company compared the switch to a hybrid vehicle, which automatically shifts between electric and gasoline driving, depending upon power and driving demands.

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