TopShelf's Journal: Take two Tablets and call me in the morning...

Sometimes you need a little technology to drop into your lap before you really have a chance to appreciate how nicely things are advancing. A few weeks ago, I won an HP TC1100 Tablet PC as a result of winning a contest over at Innovation Futures, a great site run by MIT's Technology Review magazine. While I never would have bought one of these for myself (retails around $2300), and my initial thoughts were to turn around and sell this on eBay, I have to say that I'm really impressed with the Tablet PC platform and am definitely going to keep this puppy.

Just having the touch-sensitive screen and stylus makes a nice addition to using the PC in laptop-mode, with the monitor attached to the keyboard. While I've long admired the ingenuity behind that little nub-mouse nestled amongst the keys, it is a pain to use for any length of time, and carrying around a USB mouse defeats the whole portability advantage of the Tablet.

The real show starts, of course, when you undock the monitor from the keyboard, and use the stylus both as mouse pointer and writing tool. Handwriting recognition has come a long way in the last few years, and supposedly the upcoming Windows XP SP2 will bring further enhancements in that area. I used to use a Pocket PC, and not only is the recognition much better, but the larger screen size makes a huge difference in usability.

Wireless networking via Centrino works well - although I had trouble getting this set up at first, due to a firmware update I needed for my Netgear access point. I can hop into a Starbuck's or Panera Bread and hop right on the web, though, which makes for productive lunch hours spent perusing the job boards!

The only quibble I have is that since there is no optical drive included in the TC1100, am I going to be limited in the software I can run on the machine? Many programs require having the CD in the drive in order to run, and as I try installing various applications I have for my home PC, I wonder how many of those bumps I'm going to run into. By and large, however, I'd recommend this over a conventional laptop for a wide variety of users. At work I'm due for a laptop replacement sometime in the next year, and it's too bad that they're not looking at the Tablet PC as an option...