4. Tablet PC: A New Approach To Office Computing, Continued

Entering text into a more traditional application, WordPad using Tablet PC's stylus-based graphical input interface. The graphical interface is at the bottom of the screen and set for OCRed handwritten input.

And if you're the adventurous type try using voice input. Tablet PC voice recognition is about the best thing I've found in this vexing technological area. Still it is far from perfect. Speak a little faster or slower or less distinctly or work in a different room from where you trained VR and what was near perfect recognition can become garbled gobbledygook. Using a tablet PC's built-in microphone is also to flirt with disaster. A high quality headset with microphone is best, but corded headsets can easily interfere with the mobility of a tablet PC. So, think Bluetooth if you're going to add a headset.

For the record, Microsoft Windows XP Tablet PC Edition is based on Windows XP Professional, not Windows XP Home. Among other things this means you get much better networking functionality.

Videos Of Tablet PC In Action

If you're like I was when I first encountered Tablet PC, you were probably far from convinced by the discussion in the last section. Well, maybe you'll become a little bit of a believer after you take a look at some of the videos that Microsoft has produced about people who are using Tablet PC technology. Sure these are promotional pieces, but they show real people in real organizations using a new tool to do their work in sometimes radically differently ways. The videos are in WVX format.

You can see all of the case studies Microsoft has produced on Tablet PC here. All of the studies include text-based discussions; some have accompanying videos.