2. Slate Or Replacement Notebook?

Microsoft specifies two different designs for tablet PCs: slate and convertible. In slates, all hardware is located underneath the display. A keyboard is always optional. The advantage: slate devices such as the Viewsonic V1100 are light and flat. The last feature is particularly important - after all, the aim is to use the tablet PC as a writing pad on the desk. If the sides are too high on the machine, stylus input will prove to be a nuisance. Anyone who is sold on the powerful recognition feature will also make frequent use of the device instead of paper. In testing, the software recognizes even illegible handwriting very reliably - and without any training. Tip: recognition works considerably better with cursive writing than with block letters. Even as a replacement for a clipboard, i.e., when the machine is held with one hand, the flat and light slates are clearly at an advantage.

But all slates have one technical disadvantage when they lie flat on the table like a pad of paper: the user must sit up extremely straight in order to get the most vertical view possible of the display. That's because the legibility of the text on the screen depends heavily on the angle at which it is viewed. If the tablet user's head is tilted slightly backward, for example if he leans back in his chair, the contents on the screen become hardly discernible. Only the display on HP's device offers sufficiently high contrast and good color reproduction even at a bad angle.

At first glance, convertibles such as the Toshiba Portégé 3500 look like conventional sub-notebooks. Components like the CPU and hard drive are underneath the keyboard and the display is fixed in the usual place. But the screen can be turned 180 degrees and then folded over onto the keyboard. This turns the convertible into a tablet PC that is more like a slate. However, the user pays for the flexibility with heavier weight - because of its larger display and integrated keyboard, the Toshiba Portégé weighs 500 grams more than the HP model. Those who need to input large amounts of text and only occasionally use handwriting will be better off with a convertible.

Limited Contact Sensitivity

One specification of the tablet PC design is that devices can only have modern ports like USB, PC card or W-LAN and are therefore "legacy-free." Accordingly, tablet PCs have no parallel or serial ports - not even on the optional docking stations. If a parallel port printer is to be connected, a USB converter is needed.

Journal, too, offers only one interface: this crucial handwriting input program, and thus the showpiece application of the tablet PCs, is compatible only with Outlook. Among other things, the application can convert handwritten notes into digital text and copy written material into an email - assuming Microsoft Outlook is installed. Journal does not work with other email applications. This means that, for the moment, a tablet PC cannot reach its full capabilities with a Lotus Domino server and Lotus Notes clients, for example.