Toshiba may beat Apple to the tablet-computer market with its JournE tablet for Internet access and multimedia. The company showed a prototype of the tablet this week at the IFA electronics fair in Berlin.

The brushed aluminum tablet weighs under two pounds and has a seven-inch touchscreen. The operating system is Windows CE 6.0 Pro (now called Windows Embedded Compact) with a Toshiba interface and Wi-Fi. The JournE uses an ARM chip and has 1GB of NAND Flash memory.

The tablet runs Internet Explorer 6 and Toshiba said it comes ready to access Picasa, YouTube, Flickr and instant messenges. It includes Windows Multimedia Player 9.0 for viewing pictures and videos and playing music.

A base station cradle with USB and HDMI outputs will be sold separately. The dock also charges the JournE and has a memory-card slot that can add up to 320GB of memory.

On bootup, the JournE shows three rows of shortcut icons, five to a row. Each icon provides access to an application or a service, including a Toshiba Store that will offer apps for the device. A keyboard appears on-screen as needed.

The tablet is expected to launch in Europe in the fourth quarter and roll out to other countries later. It is expected to sell for 249 euros (US$356.43), much less than the $500 to $700 range expected for Apple's tablet.