6. In Practice: The Tablet PC's Weaknesses

Important icons like the printer are missing from the Journal's menu bar.

For a first try, the tablet PC design works well. In spite of this, however, while working with the devices, testers noticed a number of critical points that cannot be blamed on the hardware manufacturers and thus do not have a negative impact on the test. The weaknesses can be traced back to the Microsoft software.

For example, there is absolutely no way to configure menus in Journal, the main application of the Windows XP Tablet PC Edition. Frequently used functions such as printing or converting handwriting into text should be quickly available as icons that can be clicked. As it is now, only a detour through the menu works. Although a right-click can call up the lasso function for use on handwriting to be recognized, the options that then become available only allow the recognized text to be copied to the clipboard. The user can only select one screen page at a time. Selecting longer texts takes several steps.

In addition, Journal only recognizes Outlook as its partner for sending handwritten notes. Other email applications like Lotus Notes are ignored. Thus, Notes users can use Journal's Send function only after the extra step of saving them first. A demo program for Journal files, which also runs in Windows 2000/ XP, is now available for download here.

Another obstacle is that the operating system does not automatically show the on-screen keyboard when it is absolutely necessary - for example, when a "Save as" dialog or the Windows file search is waiting for a file name to be entered. Although handwriting input via the tablet PC's input area works with any Windows application, the user must call up the box manually in every instance. The text already in the dialog cannot just be re-used and changed - it has to be completely overwritten. This is a nuisance, especially when file names are long.