Day 140: Tablet PC Owner notes |
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This post has sat in draft mode for a little while as I’ve more closely and critically monitored my Tablet PC usage pattern, so it isn’t really my Day 134 of Tablet PC ownership any more as I publish this, it’s actually day #140. And when you read this if you look on the home page in the stats section, it probably is even later than that.
: My Tablet PC usage has changed somewhat since my last update (Day 78) where I finally broke down and bought an external CD-RW drive. I’ve only used that drive a few times, but it’s one of those things I needed to have. Now I wish I’d bought a DVD/CD combo drive with firewire and USB so that I could also have used it on my eMac.
- My primary orientation is still Portrait.
- Still love reading digital magazines on the Tablet. In fact, I signed up for two more Zinio subscriptions (total of 3 now). I only have one print magazine subscription (EGM), which I’ve been thinking about changing that to Zinio as well.
- I spent part of one day checking out the e-Book scene. Was mildly impressed with the actual e-Books once I could actually get them to run, but I felt the opposite toward the number of formats and the ease of working with these competing formats (see e-possible to read e-Books)
- Installed the excellent AT & T Text-To-Speech (TTS) Natural Voices that I purchased a couple years ago for another project. I set Claire as the default voice which I find to be much superior to the default and very robotic Microosoft ones (Microsoft Mary and Sam). It seems to me, though I didn’t look up exactly how much I paid, that the price has gone up for these voices and the TTS engine. Also, it’s been farmed out to Wizzard now, instead of AT & T for the actual distribution. One of my plans is to use this for reading RSS feeds to me in my own private RSS podcast.
- I tried using the trial of Multiplicity for a few days so that I could control the Tablet with my main keyboard and mouse. A few quirks in that program plus the price which seemed a bit too high ($69 for up to 6 computers and full functionality, $29 for two computers) kept me from registering. I may come back and try this again once they release their full ThinkDesk suite.
- I still haven’t done any significant Tablet PC development, but Visual Studio 2003 is installed. I did make a small ink test application. I have a few ideas for possible programs, but nothing that just blows me away and would have me working on it right away.
That’s where I’m currently at with the Tablet PC: it is still primarily a business meeting notetaking tool, it’s not my main machine (it was never intended to be), it’s not my development machine (again, never intended to be) but will be my main development machine for ink-enabled applications when and if I start producing them.
As far as personal use goes, it is used primarily for reading (or being read to now with the addition of the Natural Voices). I wish Zinio would make it so that the magazines could be read to me while I work (TTS). Maybe that will be coming in a future version. I still very much enjoy using the Tablet PC and I’m looking for new ways to integrate it more into my daily work and home routine. Unfortunately for the Tablet, it has to share my very limited pleasure time with my Mac, which I’m also using for personal productivity.
Related Posts- E-possible to read Books
- Tablet PC artists in the making
- Ooooo Compute! Magazine
- B12: Zinio to offer Wayport customers sample digital magazines
- New York Times Reader a Windows and Times only affair
- More digital reading and why is Sony Reader black and white only?
You should try using Synergy instead of Multiplicity.
http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/
It is open source and works great. I have even used it to run three computers across two operating systems using 1 keyboard and mouse. (It works in Windows and Linux)
The setup can be daunting, but once you’ve got it running it works great.
Comment by William Spaetzel — May 3, 2005 @ 4:00 pm PST
Thank you for the tip, William, I’ll check that out! Somebody else mentioned this program to me recently too but I hadn’t had a chance to check it out. It’s bookmarked now.
Comment by TDavid — May 3, 2005 @ 5:13 pm PST
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