I had two great excuses to go into Bristol this morning which meant I called up my fellow programmer and friend Jean for a quick “bakery date” as well. While we sipped our coffee and nibbled on our treats (that’s a lie – I’m not quite that dainty!), I noticed the man sitting at the table next to me typing on his laptop with one hand. During the course of the time there, I wanted SO badly to ask him if he had ever seen a tabletpc. So when he got up to leave and it was very clear that he did not have use of his left arm, I finally chose helpful over polite and did ask him.

He explained that he had had a stroke 3 years ago and uses his laptop with ViaVoice and has tried Dragon. In an open space like the bakery, it is too hard to use the speech technologies because of the background noise. We chatted about the tablets for a while and he had heard of them but wasn’t very familiar. Oh, I wish I had had mine with me. But I confirmed that he could use it for email and for everything, that the speech was also built in and that the pricing is really comparable these days to a good laptop. Also that he can get something as small and lightweight as my Acer.

He was so very happy that I had asked and then explained to him about the tablets. I have sent him to www.tabletpctalk.com and a few other sites to learn more about the different models available, pricing, configurations and to talk further with other people like Chris de Herrera. Talking with someone who can REALLY benefit from a tablet pc is such a pleasure after being in a position of having to explain the benefits to people who don’t have such an obvious need for this technology.

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