Markus has an editorial in Code Magazine with a lot of great points.

He addresses the “why do I want one“ question, starting off with “Tablet PCs have many uses, but it seems that only a few of them are obvious to developers. I think this may have to do with the fact that most developers have the luxury of sitting down at a desk when they work on their computer. At the very least we can set our notebooks on our lap. But this is not true for a wide range of professions!”

He then talks about some issues he sees as a developer. One caught my attention because I actually discussed it on Thursday with Arin Goldberg (Tablet PC SDK Architect) and some others on the team – an expandable input control. A big issue with a tablet data entry application is screen real estate. You want the input controls large enough for handwriting, yet that would make most forms never be able to fit on the screen. The new version of Lonestar (Tablet PC 2004) has a wonderful TIP that pops up where your data entry field is. Field by field. This is close to what Markus is asking for. But another idea – which is where I believe Markus and I were on the same track  – is to have the actual textbox itself expand when you get to it. Without even all of the bells and whistles of the TIP. Just the box which does the reco (oh, that’s how the cool kids say “recognition”).

The answer I got from Arin was that this has been accomplished in OneNote, which means it can be done. However it won’t be a control provided to us — it is up to us developers to create such a control.

I was actually thinking of email Robert to suggest getting some TabletPC Team folks onto Channel 9. What better way to SHOW people what you can do with a Tablet? Channel 9 video. But I just saved myself the postage, since he’s already planning to do it! That will be fun to see.

Reading Lora’s post on the TabletPC in the MASS marketplace, I realized that the answer to everyone’s “WHY TabletPC?” question is really “WHY NOT?!”.

Think about it. Lora points out that the TabletPC o/s is a superset of Windows XP. A tablet is a laptop with a LOT of other bells and whistles. Why can’t a tablet be the norm for “mobile pc” and eventually, the price gap between the two, already shrinking, may just close.

So like a true Vermonter before me once said in answer to the question “Why Fred Tuttle?” – I say – “Why Not?”

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.

Really I think if Rory got his hands on this animation editing powertoy for the TabletPC, we’d all be in big trouble!

I found it on www.TabletPCPost.com. Better not tell him about that site either.

There were 30 people at our user group meeting last night. I brought my little Acer C110 tablet and offered it up for people to play with. Maybe it was because of the pizza they were eating, but I was stunned that nobody jumped at the opportunity. Okay I did say “when you finish your greasy pizza…”. Finally one person said he’d like to play with it, but wouldn’t you know, the battery had just sucked it’s last drop of juice and I had left the spare AND my power cord at home. But ONE person out of THIRTY? I was hoping to do a special afternoon/evening of a tablet pc get together to let people play with them, but this seems almost hopeless.

I have a bit of Tablet PC Evangelism work ahead of me here, I see.

I told them, Tablet PC development is hardly different than Windows development. You don’t even NEED to know how to interact with the API if you don’t want to – just for writing a basic data entry type of application. I will be working on this…

well THAT was embarrassing. I have been parading around for months showing off Lonestar on my Tablet only to discover tonight that – egads – I had the OCTOBER 2003 bits! No wonder I kept having my wifi wig out and getting a BSOD. It was a known issue that has been fixed.

So what I have is XP with the 10/03 lonestar bits.

When I get home I have to UNINSTALL Lonestar (note – this is a must for updating those bits) and then just install the XPSP2 RC1 bits which, of course, include the latest greatest build of the tablet pc o/s.

My favorite thing to show off to people about Lonestar is opening up the TIP and hand scrawling the words “crappy handwriting” in my worst chicken scratch and Lonestar’s hand writing recognition is perfect at deciphering it. My favorite brag so far of the sdk is the ink enabled web-control. Apparently there are gobs of goodies in the Tablet SDK 1.7 and it’s darned well time I started playing with them. But not tonight.

I had a great time tonight hanging out with a bunch of tablet mvps (will name and link later) as well as Arin Goldberg from the tablet pc team.

I had an opportunity to go to MDC as a speaker (Tablet) and struggled with a decision because it was quickly followed by my upcoming trip to Seattle for the MVP Summit and a likely trip to TechEd. Three trips out west in such a short period would have just been too too much for me, so I unhappily said “no” to the wonderful offer. Now after reading so many posts about MDC, though I don’t regret my decision, I do feel like I really missed out on a great event. Oh well.

From my previous post: Microsoft and Tablet PC manufacturers have a hard road ahead of them. Who should they be targetting? Developers? (yes) Consumers? (iffy) Corporations? (yes yes yes).

IF IF they want the consumer market, that will be the rockiest road. I had a long talk with a friend who is a passionate tablet pc end-user – not a developer and not using custom apps. Just using it as her main computer. Her advice is this: target the 40+ crowd. Target the crowd that wrote all of their college theses by hand (before they sat down at a typewriter to make it legible). The crowd that does not type 100 words a minute on a computer. The crowd that travels and has to work on planes (in coach, with no room for a keyboard).

I’m sure she would be MORE than happy to talk to the marketers.

As for marketing to the developers, Lora says that Microsoft still missed a big opportunity at MDC : “Judging by the number of people in the hands-on labs and in the sessions I’d say that had the Tablet PC been given a more prominent spot in the conference the group could have accomplished even more.”

Thought I suggest reading her entire post , this part was the most interesting to me:

”I was very pleased to see that though many believed the myth that Tablet PCs are just a big PDA that by the time they used it and saw what was being done that they understood that the Tablet PC is really an extension of standard Windows XP in a highly portable design. Many asked if this is simply the future direction of all Windows clients.”

Microsoft and Tablet PC manufacturers have a hard road ahead of them. Who should they be targetting? Developers? (yes) Consumers? (iffy) Corporations? (yes yes yes).

More thoughts but they deserve their own post… watch for my next one. (who to market tablets to…)