It’s not about the ink, it’s what you do with it
Daryl D of Blogcritics has tried a lot of Tablet PCs and didn’t find one he liked. His conclusion is that pen and paper is better than Tablet PCs because it works better. His article chronicles the experiences that led to this conclusion and while I’m the first to admit that Tablet PCs are not for everyone I do feel that Daryl has missed a huge point about Tablet PCs and ink. Daryl, it’s not about the ink, it’s what you can do with it. My colleagues that use paper and pen for note taking in meetings spend an inordinate amount of time and effort either filing their paper notes carefully for later retrieval or in finding pertinent information from meetings past. That’s a problem that I don’t have because I use a Tablet PC.
Here’s the thing about Tablet PC ink- I can search for a keyword or phrase and my Tablet PC will find it in my own handwriting in a matter of seconds. Notes are useless if you can’t locate the pertinent information you need, for that reason many people who take paper and pen notes are just going through the motion. If you don’t believe that try to find a piece of information you wrote down on paper from a meeting two years ago, or even six months ago. Good luck with that endeavor. I don’t use a Tablet PC because I want to carry all of my notes with me everywhere, that’s just a bonus the Tablet provides. No, for me the power and utility of the Tablet PC is in the ability to get my hands on any information I have inked on my Tablet within a few seconds. Information is power.
Daryl, your foray into the Tablet PC world had no chance to succeed as your statements below prove:
Tablet PC enthusiasts are living in a dream world. They may think theyare cool by writing on a computer screen with a digital pen; itcertainly garners them attention. They may think they are cool becausethey can use a computer without typing. They also think they are aheadof ordinary geeks because they can velcro their tablets to their cardashboards and use them as GPS machines, or even media players. Whatgood is this if the battery life on most tablets running advancedapplications lasts them about as long as Paris Hilton’s singing career?I understand their dream world as I was once a part of it. For now,just give me plain old paper and a nice pen!
As I said, Tablet PCs are not for everybody, and they are certainly not for those unable to understand their proper usage. You wrote that your article was going to put you on Tablet enthusiast’s hit lists. I wouldn’t go that far but to condemn all Tablet users as you did in your article is pretty silly.
James, could you go through the method of how you search for notes in your own handwriting please?
Chris, I use OneNote 2007 for taking all my notes. The search function in OneNote is very good at finding whatever search term I give it. It returns every inked instance of the search term, either within the page, the section, the notebook or across all of my notebooks. Returned search results are highlighted in yellow when it’s displayed. You can also select for OneNote to put all of the returned results in a long list and instantly go to the particular page where each term was found.
Chris, I should also point out that when I bring images like photos into OneNote then any text within that image becomes searchable too. So if I take a photo with my camera phone of a document, then have OneNote Mobile automatically sync it to my Tablet OneNote, all the text within that photo is then searchable. Very powerful stuff.
I don’t have OneNote at the moment, but I’m seriously impressed. Thanks for taking the time to reply James, I think I’ll take at the software.
Only good ideas get this kind of derision lately. Sigh.
I can easily imagine frustration driving Dayrl back to the pen. I have been using a treo running a self written (Handbase database) time tracking program as my point-of-sale system for about 4 years now and all the while I am looking for a tablet PC so I can convert to Access and to step up a notch.
I really would like some help finding the perfect fit and can see how Dayrl might have become turned off by a product that did not have a better match to his style of useage, especially if he made a leap bought something that was not a good fit and then returned it out of frustration.
Chris, since you don’t have OneNote (yet), you should also be aware that ink in Windows Journal documents is searchable via the search function in Windows Explorer, same as searching text in other documents. Not nearly as speedy as searching in OneNote, but it works.
I’m the one who wrote that article. You are right – I shouldn’t condemn all tablet pc users and visit this site very often. My writing tends to be very sarcastic. But seriously…I have not found a tablet I liked yet. The Fujitsu T4215 has come awfully close though.
I hate to cross-post, but I also respond poorly to criticism of my favored form factor (and its users), so here’s my take: whether words are written on paper or typed using a manual typewriter, the advantages (and disadvantages) of paper remain the same. Just swap some words and the whole piece turns into a slam against notebooks and praise for manual typewriters.
One major gripe I have with my tablet is that, after all this time, there’s still no recognizer pack for my native language (portuguese). This seriously impairs the tablet experience, although it is still a magnificent work tool.
Can you english-speaking guys imagine what it would be like to use your tablet with a reduced inking experience (e.g. no search for handwriting in OneNote, no TIP with ink – only tap-keyboard, etc.)?
Don’t you just hate it when those who extol the virtues of simple pen and paper as opposed to inking on a tablet, whip out a Waterman fountain pen and a Moleskine notebook to prove their point?
James makes an excellent point. Tablet PC is not for everyone.
I believe that Pen and paper can be as productive as tablet pc. Tablet pc is just can be effective also. Say, Warren Buffet never has a computer on his desk and use only a telephone for his lifetime, never a cellphone, not to say a Treo. Look at the Wallstreet people carrying the blackberry but never achieve Mr. Buffet lengendary status.
Now we look at Bill Gate and his pal Steve Ballmer and of course Steve Job. They are high tech users. Bill Gate uses tablet pc for his work and he certainly makes his office very cool and clean as opposed to Mr. Gore. Steve Ballmer loves to carrry a laptop to his conference meeting. They are the the frontier of technologies and they are the movers.
All these people are highly accomplished beings in financial sense. Yet, they use different tools and different methods. Forget which tool is effective and which tool is not. It only matters when you love using a tablet pc, you will eventually maximizes its use. When you use paper and pen, you can also maximize its uses. Personally, I love tablet pc and I will continue to use it not because it is more productive, effective or cheaper. I use it because I love tablet pc!