"New" Tablet?!

[Pilot]

A bit of a rant here -- did anyone else see Bill Gates touting the "new" Tablet PC on the Today show this morning? It's a "new" notebook PC device that allows you to spin the screen around, fold it flat like a paper notepad, and write on the screen with a stylus. You can then have it save the written information as graphics or have it converted to text. Sound familiar?

You know, it's no wonder the Handheld PC (clamshell) market has all but died -- not once did Mr. Bill mention that this technology has existed in the WindowsCE platform for almost a decade! I've used handwriting recognition on my handheld PCs since I first purchased a CE 1.0 device. If I didn't know better, I would say that Bill Gates has absolutely no knowledge that Microsoft ever produced WindowsCE. Ridiculous!

[exscentric]

Yes, I caught his appearance, you gunna buy me one of those rigs????? Huh Huh, :-)

It crossed my mind that he was making it sound like recognition was something special - maybe his new stuff works :-)

I have three rigs with recognition, but just have never gotten into using it - really need to give it a whirl one of these days.

[Pilot]

I've been using Caligrapher pretty much since my first handheld PC (CE 1.0), and it's always worked great -- even when writing in cursive! That's why I was so surprised that they were touting this as a new thing. I guess that just goes to show how very little the handheld PC was marketed by Microsoft that they feel they can't even build off of its marketing -- like, "This new Tablet PC offers all the incredible versatility of our handheld PC line that was so popular in the 90's, but it runs a full version of the latest Windows operating system, too." Instead, you have the head of a company saying (seriously -- he said something like this), "Yeah, I always used to bring a paper tablet with me to all my meetings until my CEO said something about it." Uh...why the HECK wasn't Bill Gates using a PocketPC or at least a Windows powered notebook for his meeting notes?!

[jmkeuning]

Do you folks know how many people out there have no idea that there is handwriting recognition software and that you can use it on a PDA? Maybe he was hoping that some of these customers would perk up their ears and be interested, then go buy one.

[DanC]

WinCE isn't the only existing Microsoft product Bill is ignoring. What about the long-ago release of Windows 3.1 with Pen, much less Windows 95 with Pen (the "Pen-enabling" s/w also works just fine with Win98). These were his company's earlier excursions into the pen-tablet and handwriting recognition market, which he seems to think no one will remember as the failures they were. The Win3.1 version was actually pretty good. It was extremely trainable to the user's handwriting, and beyond that, used a variety of unique, predefined pen strokes as "command accelerators" (for example, certain pen strokes next to a word performed a "cut" or a "paste" function). Pen for Windows 95/98 was a bit weaker, especially in having a less complete on-screen pop-up virtual keyboard than the earlier version had. The main issue (besides the difficulty in the early 1990's of having enough CPU power in a laptop to do anything using Pen-enabled Windows faster than just typing it out) was that as good as the product was, it just wasn't ready for a business environment in terms of the typical "road warrior" using it easily and intuitively. It was just too much of a gimmick.
The newer iteration builds mainly on the obvious - that using a touch-screen and pen is easier in the field than using a laptop with a traditional pointing device. Beyond that, it's not much of an improvement over my old Intel 80486/25mHz/16MB DRAM-carded GRiD Corp. Model 2270 "Convertible" running Win98 and Pen. Mine is one of several early 1990's versions of Bill's latest "new" tablet/laptop.
But let's don't forget, Bill Gates doesn't need to operate by the same rules as the rest of us. He personally owned and routinely used an early Compaq version of a '486 pen-enabled laptop/tablet tconvertible that came out not long after GRiD was bought by Tandy, then Tandy by Compaq. Not because it was the "perfect" unit for his needs, but because he liked using it. He simply has a personal interest in seeing the pen technology work, and no particular need to use or follow the usual R&D and marketing models of the industry. If he wants to build something, he has the money to do it. He doesn't need to lose sleep night after night wondering if it will succeed in the market or not. He'll be just fine if it's a total loss yet again, and he knows it. It's just something he wants to do. Some people play in a bigger playground than others. He got there by all of us buying some of his toys. It makes sense we might not like all of them he wants to share, but I don't think he really cares about that.
My 2 cents worth.