Las Vegas, Nevada (CNN) -- For all the buzz about "tablet computers" in recent weeks, one fundamental question about this supposedly break-through computer category remains unanswered:





What exactly is a tablet?





Computer industry representatives here at the massive and hype-heavy Consumer Electronics Show can't seem to agree.





Some say a computer just needs a touch-sensitive screen to be a tablet. Others say a person should be able to write on it with a pen. Still others say it's screen size that's important -- tablets must fit somewhere between phones and laptops. For Philip McKinney, vice president and chief technology officer at Hewlett-Packard, it's partly the keyboard -- a tablet should have one of those.





Break off the keyboard, leaving only a touch-screen device, he said, and the gadget falls into another buzz-worthy category: the slate.





Others say the terms slate and tablet are synonymous.





So what's a confused consumer to do? And how can anyone judge the many products here that claim to be from tabletland when there's no consensus on what one is?





Simple. Just get over the name, said Steve Baker, vice-president of industry analysis at the NDP Group, a market research firm.





Computer makers are introducing a shotgun spray of newish -- or at least newly named -- products in hopes that one will be a big recession-era hit with consumers, he said. None of these new devices, which he said are characterized only by their medium size, fix any obvious problem consumers have with their current computers, he said.





Companies are releasing these new products without knowing exactly why consumers would want to use them, he said.





"That's the problem, but the exciting part of it is that we really don't know what the right product is for people -- what they want to do with this."





Hot products





The tablet buzz at CES is somewhat overshadowed by a tablet that Apple is rumored to announce later this month. Still, the array of tablet-esque devices here is getting tons of attention from show attendees.





The two most talked-about tablets at CES are Lenovo's IdeaPad U1, which the company refers to not as a tablet but as a "hybrid-notebook;" and a yet-to-be named and largely unseen "slate" tablet from HP.





Lenovo's device looks like a smallish laptop on first glance. But the screen on the gadget pops off of a plastic shell and can be carried around separately from its keyboard. That's the tablet part of the hybrid.





When separated from its keyboard home, the slender touch-screen tablet -- which looks like a stretched-out iPhone -- is well suited for watching movies, browsing photos and reading books, said Michael Littler, who markets the device. The touch-sensitive screen, made possible by Microsoft's Windows 7, lets users spin photos and scroll through text with their fingers, which might seem more intuitive than a pushing a computer mouse. Watch CES attendees get acquainted with the dual laptop-tablet





That product will debut in six months and will cost less than $1,000, Littler said.





Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer briefly trotted out HP's unnamed "slate" device during his opening keynote address at the show, stirring up lots of interest. The device was thin and flat, without a keyboard, and with a touch-sensitive screen. HP decided not to show off the unnamed product at CES, however.





McKinney, the company's CTO, said the HP slate has been in development for five years and will be sold to consumers sometime in 2010. He would not discuss the product's price or provide further specifics.





Tablet origins





Part of the tablet confusion comes from the fact that the term is not new.





In the 90s, Microsoft and others introduced tablet PCs with swivel-around screens and keyboards. Consumers couldn't touch the screens with their fingers to control the tablets, but many had stylus pens that let people write on the screen.
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