Today is my two month anniversary since buying an M1400 Tablet PC 60 GB HDD 1 GB RAM and it’s time to review whether there is buyer’s remorse or if it has become an integrated, useful tool in our businesses. Going back through prior entries and some of my offline notes, I’ve compiled the list below that indicates specifically what we’ve used the Tablet PC for in the last 60 days in both personal and business as well as what we’d like to learn more about over the rest of the first year of being a new Tablet PC user.

Our Tablet PC owner experiences over the first 60 days:

• Tested the handwriting and speech recognition. First the handwriting recognition, which is very good, but I find that I more often use the handwriting for notes in my handwriting than trying to convert to text. Haven’t used the speech very much in real world scenario to date and don’t know if we ever will. I don’t see a whole lot of application in either of our businesses for speech recognition (at this time, anyway) because while the Tablet PC speech recognition quality and accuracy-wise is right up there with products like Dragon Naturally Speaking, it’s still more accurate to type what I want to say than to ink or speak it. This seems to be one of the major gripes people have with handwriting and speech recognition. The Tablet PC excels in both these departments, but things still aren’t quite far enough along in this technology to beat typing in terms of speed and accuracy, even though I can speak faster than I can type. Admittedly, I haven’t worked with the speech recognition as much as I’d like to in the first 60 days, so it might be possible for me to someday be able to blog and podcast this way … wouldn’t that be a cool experiment?
• We bought a USB keyboard at CES. For the first month I tried using in slate-only mode, but there are times and specific tasks (blogging being one of them) where one simply cannot operate a Tablet PC without a keyboard. Most of the time, however, the Tablet PC sits beside my main work station in slate mode with no keyboard hooked up and MSN Messenger turned on (see next list item). I still like the fact that whenever I want to use a keyboard I can plug it in but I do not like the wire sticking out like a third arm, so I need to look into getting a wireless keyboard (the M1400 is Bluetooth-enabled). Anybody have any good wireless keyboard recommendations?
• Use MSN Messenger more frequently than before to talk with various family members across the network. This may sound silly to say because I could just get out of the chair and walk into the other room, but I like using the ink to send a quick Instant Message to family members. I still use Qnext (with Yahoo, AIM and ICQ) for business IM contacts, so this is sort of acting like a private family communication tool. It’s particularly fun, in an artsy way, to draw stick man with happy faces (sort of the Tablet PC smiley) and send those along in various colors to our children’s PCs. They are running MSN Messenger too on their PCs and can receive my ink. I have occasionally sent my wife the heart “love you” wink. There’s something about IMing in ink which makes the experience much more personal than typing, even though my handwriting and art is lousy.
• Our youngest son (age 11) enjoys using the Tablet PC and ArtRage to draw. He especially likes it when I post his drawings on this blog, which I’ve done two times now. In fact, he keeps asking me where his most recent picture is, so I’ll post it right now below this list item. I find it very serene looking at children’s drawings and the Tablet PC is a great tool for children to explore their artistic sides. Don’t have any children and don’t like to draw yourself? Then this would be no incentive to buy a Tablet PC, but for artists especially, the Tablet PC is the computer to buy.

• My wife would like to buy a Tablet PC! To my surprise yesterday while we were heading to take the ferry, my wife said she liked the Tablet PC because it “wasn’t as bulky as the laptop” which I agree. It’s like carrying around a notebook and even though there are convertible tablets out there, I think the slate is better because of the size and weight. If you use the keyboard a lot, then a convertible would probably make more sense, but if portability is the primary issue, a slate should strongly be considered. Sounded like my wife was hinting to me for the Tablet to be a possible birthday gift (her birthday is in December, which would be about the time we’ve owned the Tablet for a year). I’m not sure specifically what she’d use the Tablet PC for because she already operates the most powerful desktop computer in our business and since she doesn’t drive yet, she isn’t very mobile, but it would be interesting to see how that developes. She’s been using our Sony VAIO laptop for studying and research and lugging that around from room to room, I can see where she gets the “bulkyness” feelings. And also she recently got her driver’s permit so she is thinking about getting her driver’s license for the first time. A Tablet PC is definitely on her wish list.
• And speaking of Tablet PC weight and walking around while using it, I definitely need to get something to hold the Tablet PC around my shoulder so I’m better able to move around operating it hands-free. Something a little bit stylish would be nice. At CES these guys from otterbox.com had this waterproof, dustproof, drop protection case that goes around your shoulder, but upon deeper consideration it looks a bit too rugged for my tastes (sorry, I know that’s corny). In business I don’t want to walk in with a three piece suit and something that looks like it should go with a rifle around my shoulder. It is definitely miltary grade looking, if it isn’t actually, really military grade. This is a purely personal taste/style issue and absolutely no slam against the Otterbox Armor Tablet cases because for $349.95 USD this looks like the best way to protect our investment against the elements. Maybe if we do buy my wife a Tablet PC then we’ll buy one of these otterbox cases so in case she drops or wants to take to the beach or whatever, this sentinel will be at her side. For me, though who will mostly use inside in office / meeting / business environments, pehaps a simple, yet durable nylon and/or leather strap with hands-free prop for the Tablet PC in the $50-100 price range would be better. Anybody?
• We bought a screen protector ($59.99 USD) online, thanks to a recommendation by Rob Bushway from TabletPCBuzz, and it’s on the to-do list to install. According to the instructions, you have to get in just the right environment to install so that no dust is captured beneath the screen protector.
• While in the car, we still need a Tablet PC stand. Jamie Jamison pointed (thank you!) to YourMobileDesk.com that sells a car stand for $199 USD. This will come in handy for road trips.

• GPS with Microsoft Streets & Trips 2005 using the Tablet PC as a big screen PDA for navigation rocks! My eyesight is terrible and the Pocket PC is too small to use while driving, but not the Tablet PC. In our business one of our duties is inspecting homes and commercial property, so with using a GPS with Streets & Trips this can actually be a time saver because no longer do we have to premap all the appointments in advance using online mapping services. Also because situations would arise when we are out and about and the office would call and say: “you need to take a look at this house in Tacoma, ASAP. And even though I’m familiar with Pierce country, finding specific houses or commercial property still often required consulting a map or calling the customer for directions. Also, I can find the optimal route using hte trip planner. I’m not sure how I ever got along without a great tool like this. I notice the GPS receiver does lose the signal more than it should, like yesterday when we went on the ferry we could get no signal moving across the water and in port (it was pretty cloudy though, so I’m wondering if that had something to do with the signal interference). Also, on the personal side, when taking a vacation, we forsee that this will be an invaluable tool as well in plotting the best routes. Forget all those paper maps that never fold back together correctly!
• Still don’t have a CD/DVD-ROM. Like being without a keyboard, initially I thought this would be a huge issue, but it really hasn’t been thus far. With the built-in Wi-Fi, I can temporarily share the CD-ROM on one of our desktop machines on the LAN to use that as an external CD-ROM for moving files and installing software (ever try this? It works pretty slick, just remember to unshare the drive when you are done). We will probably buy an external CD-ROM drive in the next year or two, as they run around $50-$100 (the externeral DVD burners are around $200-300). I’ve only missed the existence of this drive a couple times. I’d rather have the device be more lightweight to carry than have the drive which I’ll rarely use. For watching DVDs, we already have a portable DVD player or we could watch on our laptop which has a built-in DVD player. We didn’t buy the Tablet PC to use to watch DVDs or listen to CDs, anyway. Again, there are models that do include a CD/DVD player, but of course this extra drive adds weight and bulk. Spend the money on extra memory and disk space instead.
• Microsoft OneNote has been the most used notetaking tool so far. I’ve used it to capture audio and video notes from several meetings now, including a couple blogger events, an MSDN event, some of our district meetings, notes from a doctor’s meeting and more! This has pretty much been the de facto tool I’ve switched to using for note-taking. I’m breaking the habit of reaching for the legal pad because with the Tablet PC beside my desk and almost always turned on, it’s easy to quickly write notes on. OneNote can convert a section in your folder to a single compressed page (handy) that Internet Explorer can read. Here’s an example: demo.mht. If this doesn’t display correctly in your browser then right click and save to your desktop (you probably need to reassociate MHT files to open with Internet Explorer). To be able to do this in Firefox you need the Mozilla Archive Format (MAF). By default this saves in the default .MAFF format but can also read and write .MHT files which IE users can open.
• Reading magazine subscriptions. I prefer the portrait mode to traditional landscape mode on the Tablet PC, especially when it comes to reading magazines which are more suited to standard 8 1/2 x 11 sized paper. In particular, I’ve enjoyed reading PC Magazine and my newest subscription: MacWorld. The reason this so handy is if you want to visit a website when you are reading the magazine with a print magazine you’d have to go to the computer and type in the URL — what a time waster — but digitally you just click on the link and the browser is launched and you are taken there. You can also annotate the magazine and search through it. For reading computer-related magazines where website links are the norm, then there is no better way to read.
• Use the free Powertoy Snipping tool to cut out images and text of interest in the magazines, websites and other interesting things online. It’s like a screen capture tool on steroids! I wonder if Jose Canseco put this in his book? (which comes out Monday 2/14/2005, BTW) To use this tool, you just click a button in the taskbar and then outline what you want to digitally cut out and then you can add text, drawings and other things to the cutout. I create cutout directories for each magazine and add these snipped items to there. Great for bloggers.

These are the primary uses we’ve found for the Tablet PC, but certainly I’ve left out some small uses in the interest of time. I haven’t used the Tablet for any programming or web work really, although I did install FTP and SSH clients. Haven’t really used the Bluetooth or communicated with our Pocket PC yet. Haven’t used it for very much blogging directly either, though I’m encouraged to hear that some potentially exciting and useful Tablet PC blogging tools under development. 60 days gone and there’s still so much to explore …

The bottom line: is the Tablet PC worth the extra money? In our particular case, yes. With the full 1 GB of RAM and 60 GB HD, I feel like this purchase will give us 24-36 months of usage and won’t be completely outclassed, outpriced and outfeatured within the first 12-18 months. With that said, I’m still not sold on the concept that everybody should have, want or need a Tablet PC (sorry Microsoft), but for those who attend meetings, take lots of notes, are into art or travel and are frustrated by small screen sizes of PDAs, then the Tablet PC seems to fit this niche very well. Business users will be more likely to find a Tablet PC a beneficial tool than a traditional laptop, specifically those in the sales, medical and engineering fields.

Professionals who need to reduce the amount of ’stuff’ they have to carry into a client’s home or office will appreciate a slate and as I’ve stated before: the Tablet PC has the “wow, that’s cool” factor which can be very helpful in getting the attention of a potential sales lead. In fact while it is still a relatively rare commodity, a Tablet PC purchase is a no brainer for salespeople.

The problem for the mainstream continues to be the price, and fortunately they are talking about a 25% reduction, but in order to get the prices really down to laptop levels Microsoft is going to have to subsidize or incent vendors somehow or take a loss on the software and a lot more Tablets are going to need to be sold (the old supply and demand rules) to get the hardward costs down, which I don’t see these things happening any time soon. Competition, more than anything else, brings lower prices (just look at what Google did to the email scene). However, just as the Xbox has continued to gain ground in the console gaming community, I see Tablet PCs continuing to make similar strides in the business sectors and if anybody can pull off making Tablets a viable market in the mainstream, it would be the camp in Redmond.

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