Business uses? Well, I’m atech geek who dropped out of the business with enough money to start work in a creative field. In otherwords, I’m essentially a project manager for a nightclub. One Note’s functionality is good, but there are a billion other uses for it in the office. Here are some of the things I’m using it for:

1: Inventory - Keeping track of inventory is arduous, and I’ve used and abandoned solutions from palm pilots to traditional laptops, using Excell and Access. With the tablet PC, I use an Excell spreadsheet and the keyboard replacement applet to punch in the seemingly endless sucession of two didget deciamals for a huge 300 bottle bar inventory. Using simple formulas, the inventory worksheets can automaticaly figure out a suggested order, tell how much the order is going to cost, and (of course) tell you who to call. Knowing I would be working with my Tablet and the General Manager’s (WHich is identical to mine) I was able to rewrite an existing inventory system I had done two years ago to make the process MUCH MUCH FASTER.

2: Recording - IN additon to all the other stuff I Do, I run my own project studio, where I’d soundtrack work, remixes, Mastering, and vocal recording. Using my experience with that, and an old external USB soundblaster card, I have been able to drop my tablet PC in our soundbooth, and at the end of the night, I have six hours of DJ sets recorded and ready to rip to an MP3 CD. DJs LOVE to get copies of their sets, and being able to burn a CD while we’re counting the money is a great thing.

3: The Command Center - One of thehardest tasks in running a nightclub is keeping track of everything going on with bookers, bartenders, DJs, promoters, managers, security staff etc. I’m presently training the managers in using outlook to it’s fullest postential. With both myself and the general manager armed with tablets, we can easily use theincluded WiFi to keep our calendars linked, with the added ability to update any group withinthe company with a click of the mailing list. Depending on the number of empoyees in your company, this is a great thing abou tablet PCs, is the ability to use it as a mobile command point, letting you stay on the sales floor (Or in my case, the dance floor) while doing administrative work. I’m still woring on implementing full talet PC functions in outlook, but Microsoft has done alot to spimplify this with their Office Tablet PC Add on.

4: Library: With acrobat reader and the easy access to equipment manuals online, my manual library has been reduced to a 3 ring binder for the few bits that I don’t have in PDF files and a CD-RW. Now, when the Multi-Effects unit gets a weird buzz, I have a searchable manual right in my hands, with the ability to google any problems right from the booth thanks to a few conveiently placed WiFi access points.

And yes of course, people magnet. On a dead night, sitting at theend of the bar, you do indeed get lots of customers coming up and asking about the computer. Just having an open instance of Illustrator to swap to(with an upcoming event flier loaded in it) allows you to turn “What ya doin” into an opportunity to promote upcoming events. Even better when it’s a cute girl. Hey, I left the tech arena for the nightclub arena for a reason, ya know?

That being said, I’m not that thrilled about One Note for note taking. It doesn’t recognize my handwriting well after the fact. And, for whatever reason, I haven’t naturally adapted to the UI style offered by that program. I’m sure its great, it seems to have a lot of depth to it and thought behind it, but there’s something about it that bugs me.

As far as the power - that was a concern of mine. I only have 512 MB of memory, but that seems to be very sufficient for my needs. The applications I run most frequently are the office products and MS Project.

It sounds like you might be happy with a slate design, as TDavid uses. With the slate designs the keyboard can detach from the primary Tablet (display / digitizer, CPU, hard drive, memory, etc.) and you can leave it behind if you don’t want it. Check out products like the Fujtisu Stylistic ST5020 (or 22), Motion Computing M1300 or M1400, Electrovaya Scribbler, or TabletKiosk Sahara i213. They’re all 12″ with XGA display resolution. Appearance, weight, battery life, and cost vary. TabletPCTalk.com, TabletPC2.com, and TheTabletPC.net all have comparison charts that might help you sort through the differences quickly. Also, feel free to just keep asking around

Convertibles are great options for people who are relatively keyboard bound. Many more options there too

Any recommendations? Gaming/etc isn’t a factor to me.. Just connectivity, moderate graphics.. Being able to draw directly to the screen with a pen is a plus too..

http://tabletdev.com/Andy/archive/2005/01/05/202.aspx

– Andy

TabletDev.com: resources for Tablet PC developers