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Top-Notch Tablet Computing: The End of the Desktop PC?

"Tablet PCs are going to revolutionize how students across all grade levels access information from the Internet, write papers, communicate with teachers, and complete homework assignments. Students will be able to use handwriting recognition, speech recognition, keyboard and camera input with ease." Cindy Agnew, July 2002.

Karl Barksdale © Speaking Solutions Inc., 2002

In just a few short years, handheld Palm Pilots® wiped these bulky paper planners from corporate boardrooms, student backpacks, and active soccer moms' purses. Over the five-year period that Palms, Handspring's ™, Pocket PCs, and other PDAs became vogue, a declining market for paper planners hurt the company. Over the same 5 years, Franklin/Covey's stock steadily declined from over $30.00 down to $2.35 (July 12, 2002).

Well, it's about to happen again to the desktop PC market. How do I know?

Through a special arrangement between Speaking Solutions and Acer America, I gained access to an Acer TravelMate 100 ®, the highly touted convertible tablet computer that will hit the market in October. Tablets run the new Microsoft Windows XP® Tablet Edition software, currently in beta. My task was to test Dragon NaturallySpeaking 6.0 and several Plantronics headsets with the Acer tablet hardware. DNS 6.0 and the Plantronics headsets performed extremely well on the Acer TravelMate 100.

It's been over two decades since I have been so excited about a computer. I've not been this thrilled since I tried my first Macintosh (which gave us the mouse and the graphical user interface in the '80s). The Acer Tablet is simply the finest computing experience I've ever had -- especially when using its digital pen in portrait mode on the "slate." (Slate is a new term describing the touch screen.)

The TravelMate 100 is a convertible -- meaning the screen twists around to cover the keyboard allowing users to work in portrait mode with their digital pens. Landscape mode is selected for typing. Naturally, speech recognition works in both landscape and portrait modes.

I'm not the only one that is excited about this latest twist in the technology. Cindy Agnew, Program Director for Washington State and the creator of the DigiTools concept stated, "Tablet PCs are going to revolutionize how students across all grade levels access information from the Internet, write papers, communicate with teachers, and complete homework assignments. Students will be able to use handwriting recognition, speech recognition, keyboard and camera input with ease."

Because of its convertibility, the TravelMate 100 is the most talked about of a growing number of ultralight Tablet PC computers. The TravelMate 100 is not a wimp, despite being more than a third smaller than a traditional portable/laptop computer and weighing only three pounds. It has a zippy Pentium III 800 MHz processor, 256 MB of RAM, and a 20 GB hard drive.

I tested the TravelMate 100 with Plantronics SR1, DSP-100 USB, and the .Audio 50 headsets. They all worked great and each scored repeatedly in the mid-20s on Dragon's testing scale. My preference was the DSP-100 USB and the new .Audio 50, because both have on-off switches, a feature I've become addicted to. However, the low cost SR1 scored 24 on the Dragon scale and did a nice job of dictating. The scores indicate that Acer is using a speech recognition friendly sound card.

Tablet computing is living up to everything Bill Gates has been hyping for the past two years. Microsoft has hit another home run. After using the Acer tablet and gauging the enthusiasm of about a half-dozen college students visiting on the Fourth of July, I now agree with Gates' prediction -- the Tablet PC WILL BE the most popular PC sold in America by mid decade.

Just like the Franklin paper planner faded into near nothingness, within a few years, the next casualty will be desktop PCs. Tablets could easily devastate the big beige box market dominated by Dell and Gateway. (What will the Dell dude do after the demise?) Many traditional portables will also fall victim to a new style of computer -- sleeker, smaller and emphasizing speech and handwriting recognition with pen input.

After the official release date of Microsoft Windows XP Tablet Edition on November, all anybody will be talking about for serious business and academic computing will be Tablet PC's and ultralight portables. The big beige box will become a nostalgic relic.

Okay, you can tell that I'm excited about the tablet PC... but what if I'm wrong... what if the Tablet PC becomes Bill Gates' Edsel?

The Tablet PC will push into everyone's psyche the need to learn speech and handwriting recognition. Regardless of the marketplace outcome of the Tablet PC -- the need to change the way we teach young people will be forever altered on November 7, 2002, the official release date for Microsoft's Windows XP Tablet Edition.

It's easy to predict will happen next.

2003: The inevitable debate over the merits of Tablet PCs in schools will begin. Some cautious educators will worry about cost and equity issues and will push for more "cheaper" big beige box PCs -- Another group of early adopters will push forward, purchase a few Tablet PCs, and learn how to teach these new tools to students. Apple will be forced to develop new designs to keep pace.

2005: The current psychology of what a computer is will change. The debate will reach a crescendo because the Tablet PC has huge implications for changing the structure of our computer education, courses, and labs. Administrators and Boards will seriously consider funding each student with their own wireless Tablet PC, which by 2005 could be priced under $1000. Tablets are durable and can easily contain all of the textbooks and software students will need.

The Tablet PCs WILL introduce, popularize, and legitimize new ways of working with smaller more powerful computers using speech and digital pen input. It's up to us, once again, to teach those skills effectively.

To run a Tablet PC effectively students must be trained in speech and handwriting recognition... that's where we come in. Training is the most critical component of change. Albeit, using today's technologies to teach tomorrow's skills will require considerable budget conscious creativity on our part.

Teach handwriting recognition. Students must be taught to do their work on a "slate." Tablets use patented Wacom technology, the same technology you'll find in the Graphire3 , which allows a digital pen, similar to the one on your PalmPilot, to control everything in Windows. The Graphire3 is less than $100 and can retrofit any big beige box windows PC into a tablet training device. You'll need to install the Graphire3 software that comes with the unit so the artist tablet will act like a true tablet and not like a mouse. For pictures, visit www.SpeakingSolutions.com/handwriting.

Of course, you'll need Microsoft Office XP and you'll need to install the handwriting component. Get a copy of either the South-Western Educational Publishing (Lesson 11) or the Course Technology (Unit 4) speech and handwriting books for instructions on how to do this.

The new terminology may take some getting used to as well ... it's now:

Tap
Double Tap
Tap and Drag

Get a demonstration tablet. Try to get your hands on at least one demonstration Tablet PC so your students can visualize what it is they're doing and why they're doing it. This could become your personal computer; and probably should be, so you can model to your students what they will be doing in the future. Tablets will be available in October from Acer, Compaq/HP, Fujitsu, Sony, and many others.

There are two kinds; true tablets (without a keyboard), and convertibles (that still sport a keyboard). The cool thing about the TravelMate 100 is that while you do not need to use a keyboard or mouse -- ever -- you still can use them if you want to! To display the keyboard, simply twisted tablet around to expose the keyboard and switch from portrait landscape mode with a couple of taps. And while I find myself using the keyboard less and less, and the mouse/touchpad hardly at all, it's comforting to know that I can use these older technologies anytime I wish.

Within keyboard mode, you can use a touchpad, but these tablets are addictive and you'll find yourself using your pen more and more each day.

Teach speech recognition now! For the budget conscious, who've already gone to the expense of purchasing Microsoft Office XP, you can instruct students in the basics of speech recognition with the purchase of an inexpensive headset from Plantronics. Visit www.speakingsolutions.com/headsets/ to learn about the inexpensive SR 1 and the upgraded .Audio 50. For very little money you can use the SR 1 to teach Microsoft's version of speech recognition. Textbook information is available at www.SpeakingSolutions.com/books/.

However, don't expect the Microsoft's speech recognition to be a professional-level tool that students will want to use constantly. It's fine for an exploratory program, but for quality speech recognition instruction you'll need to invest in Dragon NaturallySpeaking or IBM ViaVoice. Not yet, anyway.