I am really impressed with the TabletPC and have been using a Toshiba Portege 3500 for almost a year. They are now recently rivaling the power and performance of a Notebook laptop all in a smaller package with a pen to write with. I use AutoCAD 2004 which is Windows XP TabletPC version logo compliant as well as other applications like the free Autodesk Express Viewer and Volo View 3. I also have enjoyed using the latest OneNote 2003 from Microsoft to be able to congregate data and notes as well as even audio and web page content easily. It is amazing to be able to later search all of your meeting notes instead of looking for which paper tablet you may have written your notes in the past on. The voice recognition is rather amazing and can even keep up with me in an Instant Messaging chat session. The text recognition with the pen stylus is even recognizing my handwriting that others on my team tell me they cannot read.
I may be presenting with Microsoft at Autodesk University this year in December. There are exciting futures for these devices and I am aware of a few that already use them in the field for design and reading their drawing sets as well as mark up of as-builts. There is even a sample ARX with AutoCAD 2004 that allows you to see the possibilities of text recognition, inking and AutoCAD 2004 by default supports the handedness abilities so your hand does not rest on the tablet screen over the menu pull downs and changes based on your hand settings.
If you have anything you would like to see discussed or answered in this blog, please feel free to email me at shaan@autodesk.com. Please be sure to include “blog feedback” in the email subject line.
Cheers,
-Shaan
