The Tablet Reconsidered

More than four years ago Bill Gates introduced the Tablet PC as a “revolution” in computing. The digitizer stylus, combined with strong handwriting recognition, could replace the keyboard in many situations, we were told.

Well, years later the keyboard remains alive and unchallenged as the input device of choice, and Tablet PC sales have been generally underwhelming until very recently. Which is no to say that users looking for a new laptop shouldn’t consider the Tablet PC (or “convertible”) option that manufacturers like HP, IBM, Toshiba and Gateway offer in their portable lines. The original “slate” design had no keyboard at all, but the newer convertibles are just standard laptops with a Tablet option. In this integrated form, the Tablet is a nice add-on worth considering on a number of grounds.

Tablets are excellent for Web browsing. Now that the Web is a primary reason people turn on their computer, the pen is actually a more efficient and precise way to navigate pages than a touchpad, and many convertibles have scrolling wheels that make page navigation even easier. With the automated form fillers already built into many browsers and toolbars, there is even less of a need for typing text.

For watching or listening to multimedia on a portable device, it beats having a keyboard hands down. When in Tablet mode, a convertible is all screen and only screen. You only need to hit play, pause and volume on a media player, anyway, so why not sit back and let a movie fill your lap?

It’s a digitizer, stupid. Lost in the rush to ridicule handwriting recognition on Tablet is the fact that photo editors and graphic artists have an advanced graphical digitizer for painting and touch up work. Ever try drawing with a mouse?

The Tablet OS is much improved. Now integrated into most versions of Vista, the Tablet Input Panel (TIP) is much more accurate in translating, learning, and editing your handwriting than it once was. I have used every iteration of the Tablet OS and many third party solutions over the years and I am amazed at how much the recognition engine gets right now. The TIP now is available wherever you need it on screen, and filling out forms with it can be extremely accurate because now the OS detects the kind of information the field wants (i.e. zip code, state, etc).

Sight and sound. Many convertible PCs are equipped with LCDs that are designed for angled viewing and with microphones that are much more sensitive than typical hardware. The Tablet can be a very good recording device for meetings and interviews.

Many of the original uses envisioned for the Tablet never really caught on. Using it to mark up documents and share them with others in a more natural way was pretty much a non-starter. A ton of brainstorming solutions and outliners came out years ago, presuming that people were more likely to use a digital pen to think and play with ideas on a Tablet. The long suffering OneNote application from Microsoft was supposed to be a kind of virtual, multimedia notebook that contained all manner of text, images and audio that users could tie together.

Instead of changing the world, the Tablet PC found its own little niche in the computing world we already constructed for ourselves around keyboards and mice. It is a handy alternative mode of input that is making more sense as our computer habits themselves more beyond text.

If you are looking into a new laptop anyway, you may find that a convertible model with Tablet functionality will give you more flexibility. It is not a revolution in computing, but in some ways our ways in which we are using a computer are starting to catch up with the Tablet.

If you are in the market, take a look at any of the Toshiba Portege models since Tosh has been consistently among the best convertible designs I have seen. The newest ThinkPad X60 is pricey but exceptionally well built and with the best keyboard you can get in portables. Finally, if you are looking for really midget-sized PCs consider some of Fujitsu’s LifeBook offerings. Fujitsu has been making extremely compact convertibles that are getting better and better.