Leaving pen and paper behind with the Tablet PC
Of all the personal technology advances we've seen over the past five years, the Tablet PC serves as a great example about how important marketing is in the world consumer tech. For the Tablet PC -- truly one of the most innovative and useful products I've seen -- is virtually unknown to the public. These machines, which are powered by a specially tweaked Windows XP operating system, allow users to scribble notes on a screen with a pen-like stylus, turning handwriting or block printing into what's called digital ink.
Some Tablets are slate models only. There's no keyboard, just the screen. You write on them like those old Etch-a-Sketches. Others, like the new Fujitsu Lifebook T4210 (starting at $1,729), are called convertibles.
Flip the screen up and it looks and works like a notebook computer, with a keyboard, CD/DVD slot, track pad and the like. But swivel the screen around and down over the keyboard and it's a slate.
I've been using Tablet PCs on and off for the last two years. This T4210 model, powered by the latest Intel Core Duo processors, is the fastest, most intuitive and useful one I've yet to use.
But before I tell you how handy these portable little devices are, back to my main point: Microsoft and the various computer makers that produce Tablet PCs have done a lousy job in marketing them.
To be fair, Tablets are selling fairly well in what are known as vertical markets, among niche interest groups like students (great for note-taking and recording lectures), medical professionals (for keeping track of patient records) and salespeople (for forms and order-taking).
But I'm convinced the real market is much larger ... and largely untapped, if you'll excuse the pun.
For the past week, I've left my handy reporter's notebook in a desk drawer. Instead, I've brought my Fujitsu tablet with me and used it for note taking. It weighs around four pounds and, with a 12-inch screen folded atop the keyboard in slate mode, it's about an inch-and-a-half thick and the length and width of those paper yellow legal pads my colleagues take to our meetings at the office.
At my desk, I flip up the screen and use it as a laptop.
The Tablet PC does everything a regular computer does. It has a complete Windows XP operating system. The big difference is you can also use that electronic stylus to run many programs, taking notes by hand or tapping on the individual letters of an on-screen keyboard representation to type.
Handwriting can be converted to type with just a tap of the stylus, though, obviously, the neater you write or print, the more accurate will be the conversion into type.
I seldom convert handwritten notes on the Tablet. I bought a $39 add-on to Outlook that lets me use digital ink to enter calendar, to-do, journal and contact info. But a $99 program called PlanPlus from Franklin Covey puts the equivalent of a Franklin Planner on my Tablet. I've fallen in love with this application.
Then there's Microsoft OneNote, which come bundled on the Fujitsu Lifebook T4210. I've written about this program before. It is, I believe, the most amazingly useful application for any platform I have ever tried.
Besides the digital ink note-taking and organizational features, OneNote uses the built in microphone on the Tablet to record meetings, lectures, interviews, whatever you want. As I take notes of the presentation and hear something that's important, I make a star or exclamation mark next to someone's words, just as I do with pen and paper notes.
Afterward, I review my notes and can tap on the special mark I made to hear the recording of the subject as he spoke the information. No matter how much I use OneNote, it blows me away every time.
If you're thinking about a new laptop and if note-taking is a part of your life, I urge you to consider a tablet.
After a week of no pen and paper notes, I am carrying my pen again. If the computer is off, it doesn't make sense to have to wait for it to boot up to write something down. But for probably 75% of my workday, the Tablet has become the central repository of my notes.
It's that handy.
Hear me, Microsoft? You need a Tablet evangelization campaign. The public doesn't know what it's missing.
The author is the publisher of the Tablet PC Scoop (www.tabletpcscoop.com), a directory of Tablet PC resources and Tech Tips Today (www.techtipstoday.com), a computer gadget help site.
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