New Thinkpad To Combine Pen/Paper

Fervent writes: "You want handwriting recognition, but you want to have a real machine, not a PDA? You want as compact a machine as possible, maybe as small as a screen and some notebook paper? Check out the article on IBM's new Thinkpad which will be debuting Friday at the CES. The article is at ZDNet -- keyboard and mouse are optional."

Comments

Calculations?

[san]

The only thing i use pen and paper for still is for calculations; having a recognition program for that to mathml/latex/mathematica would be really useful..

Imagine writing down your integral and have it calculated by mathematica...

oh well.

Transition Vehicle

[Sebastopol]

This really isn't intended for the technophile, it is a transition vehicle that enables three different technologies: keyboard, pad and touchscreen, ultimately weaning luddites from their fear of PCs/PDAs. Perhaps this is the logical transition point between laptop and PDA (subnotebooks are a failure IMHO).

The pad is the key component because you can always drop back and scribble if your windows crashes, giving a sense of security. Plus, it's in a nifty package, so you don't have to fumble a laptop AND a pad of paper.

Plust the flexibility of using just the touch screen is what I've been longing for. I used PenWindows and a backlit Wacom pad back in 93 and fell in love with it, then it died a horrible costly death. Hopefully it will be reborn soon by devices like this.

For me, there isn't a program fast enough yet that I can use to go from mind to screen. Even visio isn't fast enough... Sometimes I even drop into notepad or paint, but they still can't compete with pen/paper for rapid thought.


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