Last year, political reporter Joshua Micah Marshall asked for advice on whether he should buy a Tablet PC or not. A lot of people (including me) e-mailed him with advice, encouragement, and specific recommendations. Based on that feedback, Josh bought a Motion Computing 1400. Yesterday, with a brief apology to his readers for the off-topic post, he reported on the results:
So how did it go?
Well, in so many words, the technology more than exceeded my expectations. And that’s probably both a comment on the particular hardware I bought and the state of the technology in general. Over the last four or fives months mine has become completely integrated into almost all the work I do. And I can’t imagine not using one.
Having used one for more almost half a year now, I’m actually quite surprised that the technology hasn’t been more widely adopted — a factor, I suspect, of computer economics which I’ll try to touch on in another post.
I don’t think I’d ever want to have a Tablet PC as my only computer. When I write at length I almost always use a keyboard. I’m writing on a desktop with a keyboard right now, for instance. The simple fact is that I can write a lot faster on a keyboard than I can with pen and paper. So when I’m writing a post or working on an article I usually use the keyboard. But for taking notes on a phone conversation or while I’m reading a book or an article or for editing my own writing, I now invariably use the Tablet.
One question I had before I got one is just how well it would be able to read my handwriting. If I had to stylize my handwriting in a particular way or write super-neatly, then that would defeat the purpose. In practice, though, the handwriting recognition is almost amazingly good. I don’t have the worst hand-writing in the world. But my script is certainly not neat. And it can accurately interpret pretty much everything I write — without my making any particular effort to write slowly or legibly.
And the key thing is the computer can quite easily search through your hand-written text for a particular word or combination of words. That for me was really the key, reams of handwritten notes that my computer can search through in a split second.
Here, for instance, is an example from the notes I took for the review I wrote of David McCullough’s new book 1776 in The New Yorker. This is probably neater than my normal note-taking handwriting. But stuff that’s far more of a scrawl the thing can easily get through.
The other thing I find the Tablet most useful for is editing my own posts or columns. In the past I would always have to print them out and then work over them with a pen. Now I just do it all on the Tablet.
“The technology more than exceeded my expectations.”
“I can’t imagine not using one.”
“The handwriting recognition is almost amazingly good.”
Those are the kinds of reactions people have when they actually get a chance to use a Tablet PC for any length of time, especially when their work involves lots of note-taking. I probably use the tablet features on my Tablet PC about 10% of the time. But when I do, those features are indispensable. Josh doesn’t mention what software he uses, but I suspect it’s Microsoft OneNote 2003. And if you haven’t tried it yet, Josh, then be prepared for another very pleasant experience. Using OneNote (with the Service Pack 1 Update, which fixed many bugs and performance glitches) is just a pleasure. It works pretty well on a conventional desktop computer, but it really shines on a Tablet PC.
Oh, and Josh’s new group blog, TPM Cafe, is filled with smart ideas and great writing. Highly recommended.
Ed Bott 
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