Software will make or break Tablet PC

by Matt Berger

November 7, 2002 —

A free video game that will be available for Microsoft Corp.'s Windows XP Tablet PC Edition operating system Thursday, when hardware makers debut new portable computers based on the operating system at a splashy New York City event, highlights the pen-based features that more important business applications will take advantage of.

Characterized as a "productivity killer," according Kelly Berschauer, product manager with Microsoft's Tablet PC team, Tablet Pool embodies the opportunity that software vendors will have when building more productive products for the new hardware designs. When positioned flat on a desk, the Tablet PC becomes a pool table, and the stylus pen -- designed for writing hand-written notes on the device screen -- a pool stick.

Twenty-something hardware manufacturers and distributors are backing the Tablet PC initiative, and will release devices of various shapes and sizes as early as this week. Many of these hardware makers say that the success of the Tablet PC lies in the software that will be available to run on them.

Arif Maskatia, chief technology officer at Acer Inc., which has built one of the first Tablet PCs that will be available to consumers, said that Microsoft has done a fine job making sure that enough software is available to attract a diverse market.

"Microsoft has been working for the last two and a half years with ISVs (independent software vendors) to maker sure software is enabled," he said.

More than 20 ISVs, including SAP AG and Adobe Systems Inc., will announce applications Thursday designed specifically for the operating system that take advantage of its pen-based features. Some applications will be available immediately; some will be free; but all will show off new features that Microsoft is betting will reshape the landscape of mobile computers.

One of the operating system's core features that initial applications will take advantage of is Microsoft's digital inking technology, which allows users to sketch notes and diagrams on electronic documents. A companion feature is the handwriting recognition engine that translates hand-written notes into typed text, with variable success, according to many who have tested it.

Microsoft will post on its site a downloadable add-on that adds inking capabilities to the Office XP productivity software suite. For example, users will be able to write e-mails by hand or ink comments into an Excel spreadsheet. Adobe will add inking into a future version of Acrobat Reader, the company said, and Autodesk Inc. said it will do the same with its 3-D rendering software.

A more advanced capability that software makers could adopt allows users to write in text entry fields, such as online forms for performing keyword searches or for naming a file. Microsoft calls this feature "in-line input," and while it is a handy feature, it will only be built in to some applications at the start, Microsoft said.

One company that is honing the feature is SAP. It plans to release a new version of its MySAP CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software that allows users to use the stylus to enter text in various fields of a CRM document. For example, sales employees will be able to write names, addresses and other details into a customer profile by hand. That information can then recognized and translated into typed text, and sent to a back-end CRM database.

Internet Explorer -- a prime candidate for in-line input -- won't initially feature the technology, which means that users will have to either use an attached keyboard to type a Web address into the navigation bar, or use the touch-screen keyboard or writing pad.

Microsoft claims that the devices will be ideal for reading due to a technology built into the operating system called ClearType, which smooths the edges of text and graphics to make them easier to read. The Microsoft Reader software for reading electronic books will be released in a new version for the Tablet PC, taking advantage of the readability features of the mobile devices. With it, users can download books from an online library and read them on their tablet. They can also use the stylus to take notes directly on the digital pages or highlight sections of text.

Zinio Systems Inc., which offers a similar service for reading magazines and periodicals, will also make available a souped-up reading application called Zinio ReaderT. The company said that application will ship on devices from Hewlett-Packard Co. and Toshiba Corp., as well as be available on the Web.

Software development company Leszynski & Co., the mastermind behind Tablet Pool, has developed a number of other applications that will be available as free downloads for Tablet PC users, and in some cases pre-loaded on devices from certain manufacturers. One application, Snippit, allows a user to draw a circle around any data displayed on the screen, whether it is a portion of a Web page or a Word document, and capture that data as an image file. The snipped data can then be e-mailed or saved in the clipboard.

Alias/Wavefront, a division of Silicon Graphics Ltd., will release a drawing application called SketchBook, which shows off the sketching abilities that the Tablet PC offers. A low-end version of the sketch application will be available as a free download. A high-end version of the software will also be sold in time, the company said.

Corel Corp. is one of many software vendors targeting the early adopter enterprise market. It will release an application called Grafigo, a collaboration and design application that will later be released in several editions geared toward vertical markets. It features a shape-recognition technology, which automatically corrects and redraws crude sketches of a circle or rectangle. Similarly, it uses the wireless capabilities of the Tablet PC to allow multiple device owners to collaborate on a single document.

Wireless collaboration will also be the focus of software from WebEx Communications Inc., which will allow users to simultaneously write on whiteboards, as well as from Groove Networks Inc., which plans to release peer-to-peer collaboration software.

Specialized applications for vertical industries as diverse as banking, medicine and manufacturing, are also an early focus among Microsoft and its software partners. "We see a lot of interest from verticals," Microsoft's Berschauer said.

Stentor Inc., a medical imaging hardware and software company in South San Francisco, California, is releasing a version of its iSite software for Tablet PC. With it, hospitals can take images from an MRI scanner and store and deliver those images electronically to a Tablet PC. Doctors can then view the images and mark-up files with a stylus, replacing earlier methods that required a lighted board and X-ray film.

Weil Gotshal & Manges LLP , a global law firm based in New York, has been testing the Tablet PC since June, and developed an internal application using Microsoft's SDK (software development kit) freely available to software vendors and corporate developers.

The law firm's application blends Journal -- Microsoft's free writing application, that resembles a pad of lined paper -- and a voice recording application. With it, the firm can take hand-written notes during a deposition on their Tablet PC while recording the interview through a microphone attached to the device. The hand-written text is synchronized with the voice recording so that clicking on any word in the notes takes you to the exact moment in the recorded interview when that word was uttered.

Like Weil Gotshal & Manges, corporate developers are expected to be some of the first to design and build applications specifically for the Tablet PC. Microsoft said it has distributed nearly 3,000 copies of the SDK, and it hears from new companies every day that say they have tuned their internal applications to run on the new platform.

Microsoft will make available free software downloads as well as links to third party applications beginning Thursday at http://www.microsoft.com/tabletpc.

IDG News Service