During the holiday season, there’s always that frantic search for that cool, new gadget to give your friend or significant other, who happens to be a technical bent.

And, like it or not, there is always that discussion about what should be the “latest and greatest” from Apple [AAPL]… It seems to have escalated during the holiday season, despite the typical timeframe for Apple product announcements starting in mid-Januarys (generally at least twice a year, sometime in January and in September). There was quite some frustration and confusion this past September, since there was no news about a Mac tablet.

But never fear: if you want/need a tablet-based Mac, there’s still Axiotron’s Modbook. For many folks who are getting a new Mac or MacBook this holiday season who already have a MacBook, this may be a pleasant extra gift for yourself: transforming your MacBook into a Modbook.

One thing you should consider, however, is that you are exchanging a “regular” notebook for a tablet notebook. Although the display surface now becomes your main input interface as well, it shares many common characteristics with a portable computer. If you are looking for something significantly different, in terms of functionality, you may be forced to consider an iPod touch (despite its much smaller size factor) instead.

Axiotron Modbook site

The Setup

The tablet computer… Ah, that odd-ish accoutrement for fancy businesspeople. Or, the funky toy for the truly geekish crowd.

Or is it something else?

Actually, regardless of what you intend to do with it, just make sure it can do everything you need it to do…

And perhaps that is the key reason why there is not much impetus is pushing out the super-dooper-mega-powered tablet PC. The models floating around have been traditionally fairly small-screened, anemic in terms of computing power and memory, and sluggish in performance.

And yet, for years, Apple-watchers and pundits have been clamoring for some sort of response to the tablet PC question by Apple [AAPL], the perceived bastion for innovation and “the cool factor”.

But for the past few years, there has been a ready Mac-based solution for the lack of a decent tablet platform. Of sorts.

The Premise

The manufacturer is Axiotron. And their product is the Modbook.

Modbook? What?!?

You may be thinking, “What a strange name for a tablet!”

As a non-Apple company, Axiotron does not sell Mac clones. Rather, they offer a couple of options: either send in your Intel-based C2D MacBook (that 13.3″ model), and they will convert it to their signature Modbook configuration, or merely order a modified MacBook with the specs that you select into the comparable Modbook configuration.

The Action

So, unconvinced, eh? Check out Axiotron’s site for more details on their offering.

In the future, if there is going to be a competitor, there will probably be a lot of “wow factor” around the newer offering (especially if it’s from Apple), but the need for notebook-quality computing power and memory and storage, and the existing library of Mac native and virtualized apps that work with OS X supplied libraries and virtual machines makes the Modbook for viable option for quite some time.