Back in the day, a mobile device that could browse the Internet was incredible, expensive, hard to find, and often cumbersome.  I remember how absolutely cool it was to browse the mobile web from my Sprint PCS Vision phone, although it was only black-and-white text, of course.

Before the advent of the iPhone, the Palm Pre, the BlackBerry Storm, HTC Mogul, T-Mobile G1, and other phones fully capable of browsing the Internet gracefully - the Internet tablet attempted to bridge the gap. 

I always wanted an Internet tablet, but they were far too expensive and limited to make it worth it, and besides, only a few years later I was able to browse the web reasonably well on my PocketPC with a tethered Bluetooth connection.  My phone didn't have a decent browser or PDA capabilities, but my PDA did.