Saturday, November 23, 2002
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Comdex's latest gadget offers users PC on the go

From left, Mark Lamberti, representing Hewlett-Packard, and Brad Covey with Franklin-Covey on Wednesday demonstrate a Tablet PC at the HP booth at Comdex. Photo by John Gurzinski.

Think ink. Electronic ink, that is. It's the defining feature inside the Tablet PC, the "it" gadget at this year's Comdex exhibit.

The tablets, which began shipping this month from giants including Hewlett-Packard, Fujitsu and Toshiba, look like Etch-a-Sketches on steroids. They're built for ultimate portability and flexibility.

Like regular laptops, they offer the PC to go. Take the new Compaq TC1000, developed by Hewlett-Packard. Its screen size nearly matches a notebook sheet at 10.8 inches-by-8.5 inches. It packs a 256-megabyte memory expandable to 768 MB. It snaps easily into a keyboard base for typing. At 3 pounds, it's light and easy to carry.

Flip open a side panel, and you'll find ports for plugging in a keyboard and mouse, CD-ROM and digital video disk drives. Connecting it to a docking station adds the ability to connect to a desktop monitor and peripherals.

But then, there's the ink. Like traditional paper notebooks, tablet PCs allow users, equipped with an electromagnetic pen, to write notes longhand or draw diagrams for easy storage and retrieval.

"Before, script images were bitmaps or other image files that had to exported," said Len McGough, a regional systems engineering manager for Fujitsu. "But now ink can get captured as ink and text is more like text than before."

Tablet PCs have been in discussion and development for years. But McGough, who was showing the Fujitsu Stylistic ST4110, said the release of Microsoft Corp.'s new Windows XP Tablet PC edition operating system helped bring the devices finally to market.

McGough said the tablet's time has arrived because the device lets both road warriors (traveling business people) and corridor warriors (the office bound) collect and use information when and where they need it.

"If in a meeting, say on a conference call, I can start taking notes," said Brad Baldwin, product marketing manager for Agilix, a Provo, Utah, company developing software for HP's tablet. "I never run out of pages. And if my hands get tired, I can plug in the keyboard and type."

Julius Sinkevicius, a Microsoft product manager, showed how well the tablet could reproduce the real-ink experience. By tapping a tool atop his screen and scribbling on his virtual pad, he could change black ink to red. Another tool tap let him highlight words in yellow.

Script recognition technology, 12 years in development, meant his tablet would recognize his writing, Sinkevicius said. Therefore, if he wanted to find a word he'd written in the document he was working in, or any other document he'd accumulated, he could tap a tool, pull down a command menu, and find it.

With a free downloadable snipping program, Sinkevicius showed how he could electronically lasso portions of documents, including doodled-on Web pages, and with a click, e-mail them across cyberspace. If the receiver didn't have Windows XP Tablet PC edition, the document would appear as a hypertext markup language document for anyone using a Web browser.

Mark Baerenstecher, worldwide product manager for HP, said tablet PCs save space. Instead of having notes tucked away on bookshelves or in massive volumes, they're always with him. They save time, too, he said. Data gets saved and sent in its original form, so others can see it with immediacy. Nothing gets lost or altered by transcription.

"It's all about smooth transition from one environment to another," he said.

The machines seem priced now mostly for business customers. HP's Compaq TC1000 goes for $1,699. The Fujitsu ST4110, available new through online orders, retails for $2,199. Toshiba's Portégé 3500 (named "Best of Comdex," PC category by PC magazine) sells for $2,299. Docking stations are extra.

The timing is right for tablets, Sinkevicius said. With nine vendors and 30 software partners, Microsoft has the muscle behind its market. Sales have been brisk, he said; stores have sold out.

Carl Pinto, an Irvine, Calif.-based product marketing and worldwide product planning director for the computer systems group of Toshiba, said the machinery is ready to adapt to industrial markets. Operating within a wireless network with the right software, for example, a doctor could use a tablet during an exam, loading data as he went to more easily devise diagnoses at the end. As engineers develop industry-specific programming, he said, business sales will grow.

Acceptance by the business market may get the gadgets mainstreamed for ordinary users, Pinto said. With popularity will come lower prices.

"The tablet is the future," Pinto said. "The next generation."