The Write Stuff

Bill Gates has been waxing lyrical about a device called the Tablet PC for so many years that it's become a running joke in the tech press. Finally last week, at the computer industry's big annual Comdex trade show in Las Vegas, the famous Tablet became more than just talk. Nine major manufacturers--including Toshiba, NEC and Compaq--unveiled Tablet PCs that they're about to bring to market. Each will sell for roughly the price of a laptop, and all will run Windows XP Tablet PC edition and a handwriting program called Journal. Microsoft promises both programs will be finished by the second half of 2002.

Eager to get a feel for what these new machines can do, I took a Tablet PC--made by Acer and running Journal--out for a test-drive. The hardware is pretty slick. It starts off looking like a laptop, but then you unhook part of the screen, swing it around 180[degrees] and push it down. Press a button to go from landscape to portrait view, and presto! Instant Tablet. The whole thing is about the size of a thick legal pad, weighs under 3 lbs. and sits comfortably on your thigh. It doesn't get hot, and you can rest your wrist and arm on the screen without messing up your work. That's because the stylus that operates the thing works by constantly beaming low-frequency radio signals to the computer, telling where it is. That way, Windows knows where you want the cursor to be even before you touch the screen. Once you do put pen to virtual paper, a pressure sensor starts the flow of digital ink. Journal takes note of the pen's position 133 times a second, so the line looks very smooth.

There are still a few bugs. When you write in Journal, the cursor drags ever so slightly behind the pen, so if you scribble too fast, your letters sometimes appear a second after you make the mark. In Microsoft's defense, this was an early version of the software. No one will accept handwriting software unless it feels just like handwriting, but Microsoft knows that and figures it has eight months to get it right.

I hope it does, because you can do a lot of neat things with Journal notes. Searching is easy: jot down the words you're looking for, and Journal instantly offers a list of matching documents. Converting handwriting to text is surprisingly accurate, and when Journal doesn't recognize a word, it gives you drop-down menus of possible replacements. You can handwrite replies to e-mail or draw diagrams in instant messages. You can turn sentences into to-do items in Microsoft Outlook or dump them into Microsoft Word. No doubt this is all part of Gates' plan to take over the world. That may not please the antitrust lawyers, but at least it isn't a joke anymore.

Questions for Chris? E-mail him at cdt@well.com