(FORTUNE Magazine) – PLASMA: IT'S A GAS Prices for these wide-screen, superthin TV sets are still inflated, but they're falling rapidly. Should you watch or wait? Here's the skinny on Hitachi's new 42-inch dazzler.

Sleek and thin, gas plasma TVs aren't just for obscenely rich CEOs anymore. Prices have been cut almost in half over the past year. Even though the TVs still cost thousands of dollars, they're becoming almost affordable for consumers--well, rabid technophiles at least--who put a high value on high-definition picture quality and space-saving convenience.

Take Hitachi's new UltraVision 42 HDT20 plasma display panel. Although it measures 42 inches diagonally with a wide-screen 16:9 ratio, the display panel itself is less than four inches thick. The whole set, including the stand and a pair of stereo speakers, weighs just 86 pounds. It fits comfortably on a credenza or, if one is so inclined, mounts on the wall. (Forget those commercials showing plasma sets mounted flat on the ceiling. It's bad for the monitor, but worse for you if you're underneath the TV when it falls.)

Plasma TVs produce sharp, vibrant images and have several advantages over other types of TVs. They're exceptionally bright, so watching in daylight is not a problem. The viewing angle is wide. The image is flicker-free and stays in focus, corner-to-corner, for the life of the set. Plasma sets are digital, so they can be used as computer monitors as well as TVs. Coupled with an optional high-definition TV converter box, a plasma display can produce a picture that's almost filmlike in quality.

Other types of digital TVs--picture tube, rear and front projection, and the newer LCD flat panels--may also be capable of producing high-def images. Many people are willing to pay a premium for plasma, however--$7,999 in the case of the Hitachi 42 HDT20, or $5,999 for its 32-inch sibling--because plasma sets offer big-screen video without bulk. They're exotically svelte and stylish. Okay, so we put a premium on being thin. Does that mean we're shallow?

Obviously, $7,999 is a lot of money for a TV, even one that can hang on the wall. It's a lot of money even knowing that virtually the same set, for the corporate boardroom, cost $15,000 a year ago. (And it will seem like a lot of money six months from now if prices for plasma display TVs continue to plummet--but more on that later.)

The Hitachi 42 HDT20 comes with an external Audio-Video Control Center box, which is something of a cheat since it's the size of a normal stereo component. But it can be placed on a shelf nearby without spoiling the clean lines of the display. Unlike with some other plasma rigs, you don't need to hire a specialist to set it up.

Hitachi uses proprietary technology to produce deeper blacks--for better contrast--and largely eliminates the gridlike effects often seen on other plasma sets.

The 42 HDT20's maximum resolution is an impressive 1,024-by-1,024 pixels, as opposed to the 1,024-by-768 pixels of many rival sets. It also has special circuitry that "upconverts" regular TV signals to take advantage of its display capabilities. Watching a DVD movie on the wide-screen Hitachi is a revelation.

Any discussion of plasma TVs inevitably gets back to price. In this case, the question is whether to take advantage of recent dramatic price cuts or wait to see if prices will tumble even more by the end of the year. For advice we turned to Paul Semenza, who tracks the plasma industry for iSuppli/Stanford Resources, a display market-research firm.

"I would actually advise waiting six months," Semenza said after relentless prodding. "We're on a really aggressive downward cost-cutting trend. I'd wait for things to settle out to minimize the chance for buyer's remorse."

But if a plasma TV excites your need for immediate gratification, you won't regret looking at the Hitachi HDT20.

For more on plasma TVs, visit Peter Lewis' Web log at www.fortune.com/ontech.

BIG SHOTS FROM CANON A new wide-format color photo printer goes beyond the eight-by-ten.

Canon's new S9000 wide-format color photo inkjet printer is for digital photographers who ink big.

At $499, the S9000 sets new benchmarks for print quality, speed, and versatility in consumer photo printers. While there are plenty of good standard-size photo printers for less money--the $149 Epson C80 is my current favorite in the budget category--the Canon S9000 allows digital photographers to make prints larger than the maximum 8.5-by-11 inches of most desktop inkjet printers. The S9000 can print as big as 13-by-19 inches.

Going beyond eight-by-ten hasn't been much of an issue until the recent arrival of relatively affordable four-, five-, and even six-megapixel consumer digital cameras, including the Olympus D-40 and the Nikon CoolPix 5000. These high-end cameras capture enough image detail to allow photographers to create oversized prints of their favorite digital photos, suitable for hanging on a wall.

There are other wide-format photo printers on the market, including the impressive Epson Stylus Photo 1280, also $499. Epson will soon have a new wide-format photo printer, the Stylus Photo 2200P, a $699 model that uses archival-quality inks for fine-art printing at home.

The Canon S9000 outperformed the Epson 1280 in my tests, but serious photographers may want to wait to try out the 2200P. The 2200P will replace the Stylus Photo 2000P, which delivered superb photo prints, but very slowly. Epson says the 2200P is much faster.

Speed is important in photo printers, and the Canon S9000 is snappy. It cranks out a 13-by-19 photo-quality print in nine minutes, compared with 12 minutes for the Epson 1280, and its image quality is superb. An eight-by-ten print takes just over a minute.

The S9000 is a six-color printer, meaning it blends six separate colors (including black) to generate the full spectrum of photo color, and it creates realistic flesh tones. Unlike some other photo printers that use expensive, multitank ink cartridges, the S9000 employs separate $12 cartridges for each color, which cost less to replace in the long run.

A ten-pack of Canon's 13-by-19 paper costs $25. Figure another $1.25 for ink per picture, yielding a cost per giant print of $3.75 or so. Choose your shots wisely.

Feedback? technology@fortune.com

In the works LAPTOP DOES THE WRITE THING

Tablet PCs will come to market in October, Microsoft says. Unlike regular portable computers, tablet PCs use digital pen and speech technologies to capture and manipulate information, making them useful for mobile applications where typing isn't practical. The new pen and voice tricks are part of Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, a superset of the Windows XP operating system.

I've been testing the Acer TravelMate 100 Convertible tablet PC for the past month, along with a pre-release version of the new operating system. The Acer is a regular ultranotebook PC with a standard keyboard, but its ten-inch LCD screen also pivots and reverses to allow writing on it with a special digital pen (hence the "convertible" moniker). Handwritten notes can be converted to text or stored as "digital ink," allowing handwritten messages to be sent as e-mail. Handwritten files can also be searched for keywords.

While the new capabilities of both the operating system and the TravelMate 100 Convertible are impressive, it's clear that a lot of work remains to be done between now and the official introduction in October. But if Microsoft can get the bugs out--and if they don't cost a lot more than regular notebooks--tablet PCs could be the next big thing in portable computing.