handwriting and tablets

[Brad Knowles]

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.

	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.


	The handwriting recognition stuff is way worse than the Newton 
ever was (which was laughed at throughout the industry, at least 
until Apple finally fixed the recognition algorithms), and it had a 
much lower powered processor.

-- 
Brad Knowles, <brad.knowles at skynet.be>

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
     -Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania.

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