• Illustration: Tablet PC Hardware
• Illustration: In-Place Text Input

[See correction to this article issued October 18, 2004]

Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005 improves pen input and text recognition, and offers wider language support. The edition is a superset of Windows XP Professional for Tablet PCs, lightweight notebooks with displays that support pen input. So far Tablets have gained traction for some mobile workers, but haven't taken off with general business users. The new platform and better application support will help, but Tablet sales could increase if pen input and their other distinctive capabilities become standard features of Windows.

A Foothold in Custom Solutions

At their Nov. 2002 introduction, Tablet PCs were aimed at "corridor warriors," office workers who spend a significant part of their day moving from meeting to meeting, and at highly mobile workers such as nurses and insurance claims adjusters. Workers use the Tablet PC's "digital ink" feature to handwrite notes on the display, and they can also detach the display for one-handed use. (See the illustration "Tablet PC Hardware".) After entry, digital ink can be converted to text via handwriting recognition software included in the Tablet PC platform. However, applications on the Tablet must support digital ink and recognition for the capabilities to be useful.

To date, Tablet PCs make up only a tiny fraction of the notebook market, an estimated 1% to 3% of sales. Tablet PCs have succeeded in providing custom applications for mobile workers, such as patient data entry by medical staff. Mobile applications like these used to require expensive custom hardware and OSs. But with the Tablet PC, these applications can now be developed with standard Windows tools and run on standardized hardware, reducing development and hardware costs.

However, success with "corridor warriors" has eluded Tablet PCs. They remain expensive compared to other lightweight notebooks, and most commercial applications didn't support pen input until recently. Application support has improved: the OneNote 2003 note-taking application and most components of the Office 2003 suite supported Tablet features at launch, and the InfoPath 2003 forms data entry application (part of the Office suite) got Tablet support in Office 2003 Service Pack 1.

Better Input, Recognition Lead New Features

Windows XP Tablet Edition 2005 includes several improvements for both users and application developers. Key new features include the following:

In-place text input. Users can enter text directly into fields in an application window, rather than in a separate "text input panel" window at the bottom of the screen. (See the illustration "In-Place Text Input".) This reduces pen movement and helps users keep track of where their input is going. In-place input was possible on earlier versions of the Tablet PC platform, but required specific support from the application developer. Now, it is available to all applications.

Real-time handwriting recognition and correction. The new platform can now convert ink to text during data entry. Users get a correction dialog box (similar to a spell-check dialog box) to correct handwriting recognition errors. Real-time recognition makes handwritten input more useful, and also simplifies the job of application developers by enabling their applications to deal more with actual text and less with digital ink.

Application-specific recognition dictionaries. Developers can attach text-recognition dictionaries to application input fields to improve the accuracy of handwriting recognition. For example, an e-mail address field might restrict input to letters, numbers, and legal punctuation characters, reducing the number of possibilities the handwriting recognizer must consider. For many applications, developers do not have to change code to add dictionaries. Instead, the developer supplies a configuration file, which lists the application's existing text input fields and specifies the dictionary to use with each field.

Multilanguage support. The Tablet PC 2005 platform incorporates additional handwriting and speech recognizers that were released as separate add-ons in Sept. 2003. As a result, it supports handwriting recognition in Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), English (both U.K. and U.S.), French, German, Japanese, Korean, and Spanish (Iberian). Speech recognizers support Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), English, and Japanese. A multilanguage user interface (MUI) pack, available separately, includes Tablet PC user interface elements (e.g., menus for text recognition) and help in 33 languages. This enables organizations to create a single Tablet OS image that users can switch among languages, which simplifies Tablet support in global organizations. Note that the MUI pack does not add speech and handwriting capabilities for all of its languages, only user interface and help text.

Platforms Merging Ahead?

While the new features in the latest Tablet PC platform could help adoption, it's not clear that they will lead to mass market success. Two future developments could change that picture.

First, Microsoft expects the cost of tablet-specific hardware components (such as the digitizer component of displays) to continue to fall relative to the cost of notebooks. That will reduce the cost difference between Tablet PCs and other kinds of lightweight notebooks and encourage manufacturers to add Tablets to their product lines. Indeed, rumors persist that IBM and Dell will introduce Tablets in 2005, although neither company announced products at the Tablet PC 2005 launch.

Second, Microsoft is considering adding the distinctive features of Windows XP Tablet Edition to the main Windows OS. In particular, the Avalon graphics and user interface system might include both pen and speech input support, according to plans discussed at the 2004 Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC). That would bring speech and pen input to both Windows XP and its successor (code-named Longhorn) under the company's current release plans. (See "Longhorn Components on Windows Roadmap" in the Oct. 2004 issue of Update.)

If Microsoft merges the Tablet platform into Windows, it would eliminate two problems that have slowed adoption. First, a merger could eliminate the additional fees manufacturers must pay for the Tablet platform, which has driven up prices, according to manufacturers. Second, merging the Tablet platform into Windows would simplify OS deployment for both corporate customers and manufacturers by enabling them to use a single OS image to support both Tablets and other types of notebooks. A smaller price gap and lower deployment costs seem to be the best levers Microsoft could pull to bring Tablets into the mainstream.

Resources

The Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005 package and other information are available at www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/tabletpc.

Developer information for the Tablet PC platform, including a link to the latest SDK, is at msdn.microsoft.com/nhp/Default.asp?contentid=28001295&frame=true.

The Hewlett-Packard tc11000 Tablet PC and case studies are described at h18000.www1.hp.com/products/tabletpc/.