Slashdot Mirror
Bricklin on Tablet PCs
t482 writes "Dan Bricklin gives his first impressions of the Tablet PC.
'The most important thing to know about the Tablet PC, as far as I'm concerned so far, is that Microsoft did a great job...of naming it.' and then goes on to give a fascinating history of pen computing."
Anybody who takes notes in meetings, anybody who needs to use a computer without a counter to put it down on. I know I'm seriously in lust.
Actually, the list of Microsoft trademarks at http://www.microsoft.com/trademarks/docs/mstmark.r tf does NOT list Tablet.
Guess we all didn't know the answer to that one but were just making assumptions with no basis.
Actually, they've been optimizing for battery life on these for a while and they're pretty low power. Granted you won't get 12 hours of heavy use but if you're not using them to play DVDs all day, they should get you closer to 6 hours rather than the two you talk about.
The LCD's on TabletPC's are all covered with tempered glass. So you're not pressing down on the LCD Matrix at all. The Pen's are EMR Pens, like a Wacom Tablet, and the act of pressing down on the glass causes the stylus tip to press up into the pen itself. As for fingerprints, of course that's an issue. The Acer came with a nice microfibre, lint free cloth to wipe the screen with, and to be honest, it doesn't really get that bad.
I've tested a couple of these for the office. With "extended" batteries most of them can run 8 hours. Not bad at all. Just put it in standby when walking around and you should be good to go all day.
Mod me down if you will, but...
/. it's amazing how many of the good Linux applications (that are touted here on /.) look just like their M$ counterparts.
The Tablet PC's handwriting recognition is quite good and can recognize both my print and my cursive). What's better is you can leave your notes in digital ink format and the program converts and indexes the text in the background. Then when you need to find something, you do a search, and it will bring up the page(s) of your handwritten notes that match your search criteria. That is one of the powerful things about the Tablet. If I'm not mistaken, there is no Linux application that can do that. For now, at least.
For all the M$ bashing that goes on here at
Jim Harry
I wish I had somewhere safe (/. effect resistant) to post a few images. I just wrote out your entire post on my Acer C102T, and my handwriting is certainly nothing to write home about.
100% success rate recognizing. There are a few words it's not sure about, but every single one of them, it has chosen the correct word, as the first possible choice.
The recognizer works on patterns and context, as much as it does on pure stroke recognition. I find that most people who think the recognition sucks are either block typing (which makes it difficult for the recognizer to seperate words), or are simply writing a few words to test the recognizer. Write full sentences, hell, write entire paragraphs. The more you have it recognize at once, the better it does, as it is able to use the context of everything you've written to help it recognize your writing.
Gabe talks about using a Tablet PC to produce his comics.
For an example of a sketch made on it, go here
>The Tablet PC's handwriting recognition is quite good and can recognize both my print and my cursive
Everyone on "The ScreenSavers" would disagree with you on that... Including the marketing guy trying to show the tablets off. It screwed up even on his writing. His excuse was something to the tune of "It's hard to write on in the air". Well, duh, I thought the point of a tablet PC was to use it in the air.
Oh well.