handwriting and tablets

[Larry Sica]

On Friday, May 9, 2003, at 12:18 PM, Brad Knowles wrote:

> At 1:14 PM +0100 2003/05/09, Paul Robinson wrote:
>
>>  Microsoft are less than two months from winning this one. Their 
>> concept of
>>  liquid ink and their handwriting recognition has now got so good, 
>> it's got
>>  to the point where it's almost better than paper for some tasks... I 
>> think
>>  this is one for a whole new development effort in itself, and 
>> unfortunately
>>  I suepct X will suck at it. This might be the door through which MS 
>> enters
>>  the top level corporate sector and slams it shut in everybody else's 
>> face.
>
> 	Speaking as someone that has used a Newton 130 and a Newton 2100, and 
> seen my wife struggling with Windows XP on her new tablet PC, I can 
> safely say that I don't think Microsoft will ever get to the point 
> where handwriting recognition is useable on these machines.
>

That is a shame.  The newtons were great, very ahead of their time in 
many respects.  I wonder if apple would ever pursue this again... an 
iPad?

heh

> 	They stripped out so much from the hardware and replaced them with 
> things like winmodems, software NICs, etc... and now they've way 
> underpowered the machine to make it sufficiently portable that it no 
> longer has the ability to do much of anything useful, even when you're 
> just trying to use the keyboard.
>

Is it really that bad?  What are the specs on these machines anyway?   
I saw one in an airport it looked oogly
--Larry