The other day someone made a quick remark that a really good Tablet PC would be all display, thin and light. Is this person an idealist or someone who has really only noticed the selection of notebook PCs that are equipped with integrated digitizer and pen? As it turns out, it was the latter.

Convertibles certainly have been easier for people to use for a broad set of tasks. After all, with a convertible Tablet PC you have all the features of a regular notebook and gain usability.

However, slate form factors are growing in numbers too - from mobile phones to full PCs.  Perhaps they just blend into our lives better today than they did a decade ago, so slip under the radar. The display is certainly the dominant feature of slates and unless ruggedized unit, slates are ultra slim.

As you know, software supporting extremely well defined uses for these visually dominant machines is critical. What are your favorite state features? How do you hope to see them evolve?

Want more than one pen for your Tablet PC? You can get pen replacements from your OEM. If your Tablet PC uses a Wacom digitizer, then you have additional choices too. Wacom's store offers the Cross Penenabled Executive Pen, slim pens, and several others: http://direct.wacom.com/stores/5/Tablet_PCs_C72.cfm

When you were in school, did you draw on your desk? When Microsoft launched Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, Loren and I talked about how great it would be if our eldest brother could finally draw on his desk again. Yes, mark all over it.

You see, he's an architect. Even though more recently his drafting table is primarily used for reviewing and his PC is used for drafting or redlining, with pen and multi-touch technology he could have a multi-touch table. Architecture firms could also use entire walls to literally walk a customer through a virtual building to proof the drawing.

With Windows SDK offering ink and shape & handwriting recognition at a platform level, Google TouchLib, Microsoft Surface, Microsoft TouchWall, and other similar efforts we're nearing an opportunity to converge developer platforms in order to expand and deliver a greater variety to users. I don't think it'll happen in one fell swoop, but consider the possibilities.

What major advancements do you want to see with PC operating systems? "Ease of use," may be a vague catch-all phrase, but it is a continual quest. "How can PCs be easier?" "How can more people benefit?" Consider how most people primarily interact with PCs today: keyboard and touchpad. Speech, touch, and pen have been wonderful emerging methods, even offered in some products, but we're really beginning to delve into natural interaction.

For example, an adult male talking in his native language to his PC will get impressive speech recognition results. Whereas, an 8 year old girl, who has high pitched voice and speaking in a foreign language, may not get great results -- let alone conditions that impact everyone at one time or another, like someone who has a cold and cough. As useable as today's speech technology is today, there is still a tremendous way to go to build out the possibilities. Wouldn't it be great for a PC to be able to identify and recognize multiple voices singing in a choir or those in a conversation? Or shifting to touch, what about multiple people interacting with objects on a surface at the same time and the PC is smart enough to know the angles they're reaching from or perhaps who is touching it? What about vision sensing in robots for not only location but also facial recognition?

Are you ready to let your fingers dance across your computer monitor, display, or interactive whiteboard? When Microsoft announced that it is including multi-touch support in Windows 7, there was plenty of groaning about dirty fingers.

"...I really don't want users pinching and dragging their dirty mits around the new LCD monitors," writes Slashdot user binaryspiral.

"I know I'm not the most tolerant person in the world, but when someone comes to my desk, points at something on the screen and leaves a big smeary finger print, violent thoughts flash through my mind," comments TheTruthIsOutThere on ZDnet.

Channel9 user, YearOfTheLinuxDesktop, expresses, "look: I can fill my display with dirty fingerprints!"

Do you agree with these folks? Is touching something bad? Or is it a fear you can get over?

Perhaps you are hyper-clean. Nothing wrong with that. If that's the case, when you scrub your desk and keyboard each day - before and after you snack - just take a quick wipe of the display too.

Perhaps you are a free spirit who rarely cleans and are slightly worried that this is one more place that people will notice you haven't cleaned. Trust me, they know it already. If salt from potato chips scratching your display worries you, then there are great inventions like hand-towels and napkins to help you out.

Mark Wagner has obviously worked hard on the content for the El Morro Intro to Tablet PC Workshop. Just pop over to the wiki to read the list of topics covered. I'd love to see even more on using Tablet PCs for classroom management, as well as annotating and grading papers. Tablets are great tools for these types of tasks.

Recently, I've received questions about what application teachers can use on a Tablet PC that would be like a transparency or overhead.

Check out WriteOn, a project out of Virginia Tech. Teachers can annotate and "play back" to reveal information. This would be particularly useful for complex formulas, equations, and staging labels.

LectureScribe is a whiteboarding application that you can use with a Tablet PC or interactive whiteboard. The app has a great ink playback features, which is particularly useful for revealing complex proofs, concepts, or other information.

In a Clemson University newsletter, Brian Dean, who wrote the app, described how he uses this Flash application:

Over the past few years, I have used LectureScribe for a variety of purposes: sending multimedia notes to students and colleagues in response to questions over email, posting supplemental material in my courses, making research notes for myself to view in the future, and finally in the development of a multimedia textbook where difficult material is explained using short animated mini-lectures.

The Association of Small Computer Users in Education (ASCUE) Conference 2008 will have a workshop on building video tutorials that includes LectureScribe tips for Tablet PC users.

Conference Dates: June 15, 2008 - June 19, 2008
Location: Myrtle Beach, SC
Conference website: http://www.ascue.org/ 
Presenter: Steve Anderson, U. South Carolina - Sumter
Workshop Date: Sunday, June 15, 2008
Time: 9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.

Now that the workplace tool of preferred choice are mobile PCs over stationary PCs, IT support needs are shifting too. Global Knowledge is running a Windows Vista training course and certification test preparation that includes configuring and networking of mobile PCs, including instructions and labs on pen settings.

Course Outline

10. Configuring Mobile Computers

• Configuring Mobile Computer Settings
• Configuring Mobile Devices
• Configuring Power Options

11. Configuring Tablet PC Settings

• Configuring Pen and Input Devices

12. Networking Mobile Computers

• Networking Without Wires
• Connecting to a Wireless Network
• Working with Offline Files

Purdue University is hosting this year's Workshop on the Impact of Pen-based Technology on Education (WIPTE). Submissions for papers, videos and posters are now being accepted.

Conference Dates: October 15 - 16, 2008
Conference Schedule future location

Here are some of the details for the Call for Papers:

Submissions Due: June 16, 2008.

Objectives: A wide variety of disciplines are embracing Tablet PC's and similar pen-based devices as tools for the radical enhancement of teaching and learning. Deployments of Tablet PCs have spanned the K-12, undergraduate, and graduate levels and have dealt with an amazingly diverse range of subject areas including nursing, veterinary science, geology, ethno-musicology, anthropology, landscape architecture, writing, mathematics, computer science, Japanese language, physics, engineering, art, economics, as well as others. Despite the diversity of content areas, many deployments have been similar in terms of the passion they have generated among students and teachers. The Third Workshop on the Impact of Pen-based Technology on Education (WIPTE) is intended to leverage this shared passion and to identify best practices in the educational use of pen-based computing so that all educators may benefit from this next generation of technology.