In yesterday's post I listed some practical experiences, looking back on using a tablet PC. Today I want to spend some time looking ahead, there is more to be done. The tablet has really won my heart. The “experience” of using a tablet is addicting. You walk around freed from your desk with a fully functional PC disguised as a pen and paper book. It's Windows coming to a device near you. My tablet is a convertible notebook with a swiveling screen. Sometimes I wish I had bought a slate model, in most cases the pen works good enough. The text recognition engine still has me baffled, writing an English text demonstrates how good it is. Or how bad, trying to write in a language not supported (yet), like Dutch, just does not work.

Developer resources for the tablet are rare but good. MS is really trying to push the tablet to the developer. Remember the “Does your code think in ink?” campaign on the last PDC ? It got snowed under by Longhorn/Whidbey but right at this moment it is there. There is a good SDK and a good platform (Windows XP tablet PC edition 2005) to target. So what are we waiting for ? On DevExpress there is a very nice article by Lary O'Brien with a good overview of tablet resources avalaible. And of course there is the MSDN tablet site.

Peter