One of the core parts of the tablets's OS, Windows XP tablet PC edition, is the handwriting recognition. At this moment it takes any handwriting as is and translates this using a language specific recognizer pack. The number of languages supported is limited to English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Chines and Korean. The good news is that Microsoft is working on a Dutch recognizer. I don't hope the guy who said this didn't do that just to please me; being Dutch :) They are working on another one as well. I'm sorry which language slipped from my mind; I was to excited about the foresight to see my "hanepoten" turn into real text.
A structural improvement will be that the future versions of the recognizers can be personalized. You can teach it how you write your letters. Rumour has it that this is because the current recognizers don't understand the way Bill Gates scribbles a "4". My tablet doesn't understand the way I write an "l".
The future of Windows will be Longhorn. Shawn van Ness, who did some advanced presentations at Windows Anywhere just announced in his blog he's joining MS to work on integrating the tablet into Avalon and WinFx.