DIdn't you bother to read what I wrote to Cold Heat in reference to the Windows 98 tablets? In case you didn't here's what I wrote:
"As for slate computers in Windows 98, and later, they were not successful, being big, bulky, and heavy, requiring a stylus to use. They were essentially a kludge. However I won't let you put words in my mouth. I did not say that and don't, unlike some of you guys say that Apple ripped off the iPad concept from that. . . a when they bear no resemblance and Apple's worked."
Microsoft launched no tablets a full decade before the iPad. They were not a hardware manufacturer; they were then a software publisher. They provided a kludgy tablet OS version of Windows which a stylus driver could be added by a hardware maker.
Bill Gates with the Windows 98
(Note: this is apparently NOT a tablet computer, but merely an
LCD screen, under shadow removal, there is a coil cable connecting
the device to a box under the table! LOL! — Swordmaker)
Several hardware makers tried to make the Windows 98/Vista/NT tablet designs successful and essentially failed, not finding a large enough market to make it profitable.
Microsoft's Bill Gates showed a reference design at CES 2002 made for Microsoft by Fujitsu, one of the OEMs, for other OEMs to make.
With Windows XP, there was another attempt at a Windows tablet with a bit more success, but not much as fewer than three million were sold by various manufacturers, mostly to Enterprise businesses and truckers for warehouse and trucking management purposes. The user interface was a failure because of the technology available ten years before Apple invented the multi-touch systems that made it work with finger inputs on capacitance screens. From your own non-working link (fixed it for you), which is entitled "Microsoft Invented A Tablet A Decade Before Apple And Totally Blew It":
Bill Gates with the super cool but kludgy Windows XP
"Last July, during an interview with Charlie Rose, Bill Gates explained that Jobs "did some things better than I did. His timing in terms of when it came out, the engineering work, just the package that was put together. The tablets we had done before, weren't as thin, they weren't as attractive."
Note that the article claims that Microsoft merely invented "a tablet" not "the tablet" because it was not the first. The first touch screen tablet computer with a stylus input goes to Apple's Newton MessagePad, the first PDA—Apple's CEO John Sculley even coined the term Personal Digital Assistant—which defined the market for all later PDAs which then became the smartphones.
Apple Newton MessagePad 100— developed 1987-1991 release
Yes there were personal organizers prior to the Newton, but they were generally keyboard driven calculators with limited address book capabilities such as the original Psion Organisers.
Psion Organizer 1 -1981 (right) and Psion Organizer series 3 - 1991 (left)