Tablet PCs and Their Impact on Electronic Writing

The Tablet PC will revolutionize electronic writing not only by taking over the laptop market but also by making it easier to post on blogs and other things such as media items. With the Tablet PC I believe that the volume of work published online will grow significantly and the speed that people respond to those things will hasten. However as people are able to post quicker, I believe that the quality and reliability of some electronic writing will go down.

Let’s start off with a little history of the tablet PC; from a timeline found on Wikipedia the first tablet pc was released in September of 1989 called the GRiDPad made by Grid Systems. It ran an early version of MS-DOS. Then there wasn't much in the line of tablets until 2001 when during a press conference "Gates unveiled prototypes of the tablet pc made by leading computer makers such as Acer Inc., Compaq Computer Corp., Fujitsu PC Corp. and Toshiba America Information Systems, and announced that these machines will go on sale in the second half of 2002." This statement came only two weeks after Microsoft released Windows XP. Now tablet PCs are predicted to be so big in the next few years that Microsoft bundles the tools required to run a tablet pc with their new software Windows Vista. I know this is stupid and a waste of space but hey it’s fun to poke around at.

One thing that I think many people are going to like about the tablet PC is the simplicity that it brings. It has been proven time and time again that people like things that are simple over things that are complicated. In an interview between PressPass and Tablet PC general manager Alexandra Loeb, Loeb stated: Our note-taking application literally comes up as a sheet of paper, and you just start writing. But what digital ink offers in addition is the ability to move, highlight, save, sort and search those handwritten notes. How many times have all of us had to go back to paper-based notes from a meeting and scribble in the margin, or draw arrows to show where we really wanted to insert something? The Tablet PC allows you to actually manipulate that text -- you don't need to rewrite all the notes around it -- and it gives you some very powerful new ways to share information and collaborate via email or the Internet. These applications are going to make it easier to write anything whether its notes for class or a blog or just editing your paper for class.

Imagine if you didn't have to open your laptop, you could just touch the screen and it worked. Everyone likes touching things, imagine if it was that simple. You could just open up your bag, or reach into your pocket - depending on what size tablet you had, and pull out your tablet. You could touch the screen and it’s already loaded up. Yes the laptop lets you do the same thing but the tablet is going to make it faster and easier. It would appear that future tablets will use solid-state hard drives. In fact a new tablet called the Lifebook by Fujitsu is using solid-state drives. Louis Ramirez who writes for a gadget blog called Gizmodo. In an article he explains that solid-state hard drives will help tablets "Because flash drives have no moving parts, they'll help speed up performance and save battery life" With a longer battery life you won’t have to worry about that cord which means people will be connected longer and more often when they are out, increasing the rate of that people will post things online.

As tablet PCs become more popular you will see a huge decline in print writing. In fact there has already been a decline in print writing with the invention of the computer. Some hospitals are switching to a form of Tablet PCs and going completely paperless. Lazlo says in his blog The Lazlo Letter that “It is more likely that over time we will see electronic publishing becoming the norm with "on demand" printing of entire books moving from the print shop to the book store or your personal computer.” I think that he couldn’t be more right. We will see a lot more things published online, in a few years we will be relying completely on our computers for information.

You might think that the tablet PC will not take over the laptop. However I think that belief is wrong. Although some people like the clicking feeling of their laptops keys, similar to the way people feel about the feel of books compared to the Amazon Kindle, the new Blackberry has a touch screen that clicks and feels very similar to clicking a button or clicking a key. People might also think that because they already have their laptops and are used to them they won’t need or want to change to the Tablet. However if you look at the Mac it was not until recently that a lot of people have been switching over to them. In 2002 CNET asked “Will buyers write off new tablet PCs?” an article by John Spooner and Ian Fried stated: Although the pen-based computing concept and Microsoft's latest attempt at it get good marks, information technology managers, analysts and others in the industry say machines running the software giant's Windows XP Tablet PC Edition OS need to improve in function and come down in cost before tablet devices achieve broad-based popularity. And yes the technology at that time did need to improve but I think that we have already begun to see this improvement in Windows Vista and with other third party developments of the tablet PC.

As I have stated before work published online will increase with the tablet PC. Ronald M. Ayers a professor at the Socrates Technological University wrote an article titled The Tablet PC – The Future of Teaching and Learning, in it he states: with a Tablet PC I can walk into class and start writing my lecture notes on the surface of a Tablet PC, instead of on paper, a transparency, or on the board. I can easily draw graphs, which is impossible to quickly do using a mouse and a standard laptop or desktop PC. After class, I can go to my office and upload the file containing my class notes from the Tablet PC to WebCT. I can see similar ways that a business or other meeting might benefit from the tablet PC.

Let’s be honest nothing is going to be "cool" unless apple makes it cool. For instance, Apple Computer made mp3 players both better and "cool" how many mp3 players can you name that came out before the iPod? And the picture of an iPod is now universal picture for mp3 players. If you look at pod-casts, which were known only to the core of the Internet community 5 years ago, now are huge because of iTunes. There have been many rumors of a Mac tablet, which could really help shape the future for the tablet pc. In fact if implemented properly apple could have the iPhone sync up to the tablet so that it would be easier to know when you needed to post online after someone had commented or someone had sent you an email. This would make your posts faster and would make the Internet conversations go on longer. However I do believe that if you have the ability to post so quickly the overall quality of posts will go down.

Although Apple may not have released a Tablet Mac Axiotron has. At Macworld 2007 Axiotron released the “modbook” a modified version of a macbook pro that has been made into a Tablet. Prince McLean a writer for Appleinsider, a blog about apple computers, describes the event: At the Macworld Expo on Tuesday, the public unveiling of the ModBook drew a crowd of hundreds, completely encircling Other World Computing's display booth. It is believed to be the largest Macworld exhibitor draw for a non Apple, Inc. announcement, according to the reseller. On Thursday, the tablet device was awarded "Macworld Best of Show" honors. This proves that people out there are not only interested in tablets but want them. The creators also mad applications that are similar to those found in windows tablets.

The touch screen technology is going to make it much easier to write whenever you want. In the future I predict you are going to have 3 computers. One will be similar to the iPhone, which you could consider to be a tablet pc already, it will be small and it will probably also be your main "on the go" computer. Your second computer will take place of your laptop it will be your Tablet computer. This is the one that you would be doing most of your online posting away from home. It won’t just make blogging and other electronic writing easier but also make most computer tasks easier, such as viewing documents of any type. The third computer will be your desktop at home, everything will sync up to it, and it probably won’t have a touch screen. Your other two computers will sync up to this one.

In most cases whenever the quantity of anything goes up the quality of it will go down. Therefore if the tablet PC is going to let you post more often on things like blogs and forums then the quality of your post is probably going to drop. Lori MacVittie a writer for DevCentral writes “There is a belief, and it's wrong, that more is better - whether it's more posts or more hits ... In fact, the opposite is true: quality is more important - whether it's readers or posts - than quantity.” I personally agree I, and most others I assume, would like to see better quality posts that have true value then a lot of poorly written pointless posts.

Editing your work will also be easier with tablet PCs. Microsoft is currently working on handwriting recognition software that will make adding corrections to things you wrote or making notes to yourself all the more easier. Chris De Herrera a writer for Tablet PC Talk a website for tablet PCs wrote "I think that stroke recognition will be very important for users of the Tablet PC...Basic editing such as delete or backspace are also crucial to the effective control and use of handwriting recognition. Also, millions of Pocket PC users are used to this stroke support since it's been included in Transcriber in rom since Pocket PC 2000." Also Terri Stratton a writer from TechTrax states in one of her articles: With the release of Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005, Tablet PCs will include handwriting recognition that far surpasses what we see now. The new Tablet Input Panel is a huge improvement over the original. Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005 will be a free upgrade to all Tablet PC owners and will ship with Windows XP Service Pack 2 this summer. I think that if the PC can read your handwriting it may be able to feel more like a journal, something more personal. You might see a lot more blogs that feel like journals, similar to the Xanga and Myspace craze.

The tablet PC will affect social Networking sites such as Facebook and Myspace. Although I think Myspace, or whatever is “cool” in a few years, will feel more of the effect then Facebook because it is more of a journal then a networking tool. Perhaps as the computer feels more like a journal new sites that post everything you write online from you notes to random entry will become available. You would have the power to decide what was public or what was private. This would be an excellent way to share notes between people or let everyone in your world know how you feel.

Overall I believe that if and when the tablet PC hits it big we will see a giant growth in the amount posted on blogs and forums. The tablet PC can only help the growth of social networking and therefore people will stay connected to each other easier. However due to the haste that posts are made the quality and reliability of electronic writing will go down.