When I went to the social software symposium that Microsoft sponsored in March, I found myself sitting at a table with Todd Needham, the head of the MS Research’s University Relations/Research Programs group (though I didn’t at the time know who he was). He was taking notes on a Tablet PC, while most of the people sitting around him, including me and Clay, were using Apple Powerbooks.
As I watched him using the tablet, it occurred to me how useful the pen-based features would be in grading the kinds of documents students hand in to me—there are often diagrams and page mock-ups that I want to write on, and I end up having to either make do with Word’s commenting features or printing the documents out and writing on the paper version. Todd and others there had also mentioned how convenient the tablets were when traveling, since they didn’t require unfolding and using the keyboard in a cramped seat—instead, you could work with it much like a notepad or book.
Since I had spent a lot of time on airplanes this year, and was in the process of grading a stack of design documents while I was in Seattle, I finally said to Todd, jokingly, that I was experiencing tablet envy. He asked me if I was serious (which I was), and then made me an offer that was hard to refuse. “What if I sent you a TabletPC to try out for six months? Put it through its paces, see what you think, and at the end of that time if you’re willing to switch, you can keep it.”
It was a no-risk offer, and I was genuinely intrigued by the tablet’s features, so I agreed. And less than two weeks after I arrived back in Rochester, a Toshiba Portégé showed up in my office.
Here are my first impressions, after a few weeks of playing around with the new system.
The tablet-specific features of the operating environment are really very slick. I particularly like the Zinio magazine reading software, which lets me read a variety of magazines (purchased one copy at a time, or via subscription) on the screen, and allows me to annotate the pages as I go. Very nice implementation, and ideal for reading on the go.
Microsoft OneNote, the notepad-like environment for taking ink-based notes, shows promise, but it still feels clunky to me. Making sense of folders, sections, pages, etc is less than transparent, and I’m having trouble finding things I’ve created.
The handwriting recognition, as promised, is remarkably good—even with my chicken-scrach handwriting. However, at least in OneNote, it’s not very good at grouping lines of text together, so when I convert my handwriting to text I end up with a bunch of fragments that are then difficult for me to “glue” back together. While I suspect that I could be taught how to do this, it’s definitely not self-evident in the interface.
I’m less than impressed with this particular TabletPC…it’s much too small for me to work with effectively. It’s not so much the screen real estate, since I’ve worked with no problem on a 12” iBook. It’s the cramped keyboard, the almost unreadable screen resolution (I’m getting old, but not that old!), and the oddly placed trackpad and mouse buttons, which are constantly forcing my hands into uncomfortable positions. (I should be able to reach the left mouse button with my right thumb, for example, without taking my fingers off “home” position on the keyboard.) The system has no external drives—most egregiously, no CD or DVD drives—which makes it nearly impossible to get software onto it. I’ve been able to borrow an external CD-ROM from our techs in order to install software, but not being able to read or write discs on the road (or at home) is extremely problematic. From what I can tell, however, other vendors (Dell, Gateway, HP, etc) have much better Tablet hardware implementations.
From an OS standpoint, all the reasons that I’m glad my primary machine were reinforced in the first few days. I opened up the computer, and tested the network connection by going to a few web sites (including the RIT computer registration site, so I could get on the local network). Then, being the responsible citizen that I am, I downloaded all availalble Windows updates (that took about an hour to download and install), VirusScan software (another half hour), and AdAware. On its first run—only two hours after I set up the machine—VirusScan found three different worms on my system. AdAware found seven pieces of suspect software/spyware. Argh!
To add insult to injury, two days after I’d gone through this process, Microsoft released a series of new critical Windows security updates, and RIT barred me from their network until I’d downloaded and installed them. But the Microsoft site was so overwhelmed that it took me half the day to get the stupid updates.
But enough of the kvetching. On to the positive stuff.
I was indeed able to grade design documents in the way that I had hoped, though my understanding is that students without tablets won’t see the ink in the native Word doc—I’ve still got to test that. However, I believe I can dump the Word docs into either Windows Journal or PDF format and still deliver electronic versions of the graded documents to students.
I’m also finding that while I hate the built-in trackpad, I love the stylus. It’s wonderful for selecting text on the screen, navigating interfaces, and even playing games. Again, there are vendor-specific issues—the button on the Toshiba pen is placed in such a way that I’m constantly clicking it by accident and changing modes unexpectedly.
I’ve started using the Tablet for coding data for my grant project—we’re using PC-based software called NVivo, which I had been running under Virtual PC on my Mac, with somewhat sluggish results. It runs beautifully on the tablet, and again, using the stylus to select text for coding is very intuitive and easy.
So overall, first impressions are mixed. With a better screen, keyboard, and stylus, I’d probably be more impressed. But the potential is definitely there, and I’m going to continue to play around with features and functions over the summer when I have a little more time to explore.
Thanks, Tood, for giving me an opportunity to try the system out. It’s been an interesting process thus far, and it’s definitely made me more enthusiastic about Tablets in general and some of the applications running in this environment specifically.
It’s worth registering on the Washington Post’s web site to read A Wretched New Picture Of America, an extraordinary, powerful essay by Philip Kennicott. I didn’t think US newspapers still published pieces like this. I’m grateful that the Post did.
Every American should have to read it, and think about it.
Here’s an excerpt:
But these photos are us. Yes, they are the acts of individuals (though the scandal widens, as scandals almost inevitably do, and the military’s own internal report calls the abuse “systemic”). But armies are made of individuals. Nations are made up of individuals. Great national crimes begin with the acts of misguided individuals; and no matter how many people are held directly accountable for these crimes, we are, collectively, responsible for what these individuals have done. We live in a democracy. Every errant smart bomb, every dead civilian, every sodomized prisoner, is ours.
Read it. Read the whole thing. Think about it. And then think hard about what responsibility you and I have for changing the direction of this country and bringing us back from this moral abyss.
(Update: Via David Weinberger, I found (and signed) this MoveOn.org petition calling for a full, impartial investigation.)
www.flickr.com
|
