Thursday, March 13, 2003 2:37 AM
I saw a demonstration today of Microsoft's new Tablet PC. It has been a while since I last explored handwriting recognition, and in the past I have never been very impressed.
However, past impressions were certainly changed today; I saw real potential and, more importantly, value for the legal vertical. I have been working in technology long enough to realize there is often a significant difference between a canned demonstration and real-world applications. However, that being said, what I saw of the Tablet PC really hit home for a number of key reasons.
One, the Tablet PC is just your laptop with the screen reversed. Two, you can take notes directly on a screen that looks like a legal pad, with a regular-sized pen, no less. Three, once you finish your note-taking, you can save your notes as is (think photograph), or convert them to typewritten text (not perfect, but not bad) and save for editing in Word (where was this when I was filling yellow pads in law school?). Four, you can directly send your handwritten notes in an email (much like the feature in Word) or convert it and post it as a web page (how about posting to your blawg?). Five, the Tablet PC is not set up to "learn" your handwriting (which many lawyers don't have the patience for anyway); instead it relies on a huge sampling of writing styles. Finally, the threshold for learning how to use the note-taking functions seems incredibly low. Which, for many technophobic or training-starved lawyers, is critical.
Tablet PC is still early into the game. Some of the features beyond note-taking are not really aimed at the legal vertical. However, rest assured the third party developers for the law marketplace are already mapping out integration plans for the Tablet PC concept into existing legal-specific software. Ultimately, looking at Tablet PC as simply a starting point, I really think we could see some very useful new tech features and functions swiftly inserted into the daily routines of practicing law.