Early success for the Tablet PC will depend on the availability of
effective software, and more than 20 independent software vendors,
including SAP and Adobe, are set to announce applications for the
latest device.
Some applications will be available immediately and some will be
free, but all will show off features that Microsoft hopes will
reshape the landscape of mobile computers.
Arif Maskatia, chief technology officer at Acer, which has built
one of the first Tablet PCs that will be available to consumers,
said 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
software companies to make sure software is enabled," he said.
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 handwritten notes into typed text with variable success.
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 and
Autodesk said it would do the same with its 3D 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", but it will, initially, only be built
in to some applications.
SAP is to release a version of its MySAP Customer Relationship
Management (CRM) 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 recognised and translated into typed text, then be sent to
a back-end CRM database.
Microsoft's Internet Explorer - a prime candidate for inline input
- will not, initially, feature the technology. This means users
will have to use either an attached keyboard to type a Web address
into the navigation bar, or use the touch-screen keyboard or
writing pad.
Microsoft claimed the devices would be ideal for reading because of
a technology built into the operating system called ClearType,
which smoothes the edges of text and graphics to make them easier
to read.
The Microsoft Reader software for reading electronic books will be
released in an updated 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, which offers a similar service for reading magazines
and periodicals, will also make available a beefed-up reading
application called Zinio ReaderT. The company said that application
would ship on devices from Hewlett-Packard and Toshiba, and will be
available on the Web.
Software development company Leszynski, the mastermind behind
Tablet Pool, has developed a number of other applications that will
be available as free downloads for Tablet PC users, and preloaded
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, 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.
Corel is one of many software vendors targeting the early adopter
enterprise market. It will release Grafigo, a collaboration and
design application that will later be released in several editions
geared toward vertical markets.
It features 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, which will allow users to write on
whiteboards simultaneously, and Groove Networks, which plans to
release peer-to-peer collaboration software.
Specialised applications for vertical industries as diverse as
banking, medicine and manufacturing, are also an early focus for
Microsoft and its software partners. "We see a lot of interest from
verticals," Microsoft's Berschauer said.
Stentor, a US-based medical imaging hardware and software company,
is releasing a version of its iSite software for Tablet PC.
Hospitals will be able to take images from an MRI scanner and store
and deliver those images electronically to a Tablet PC. Doctors can
then view the images and markup files with a stylus, replacing
earlier methods that required a lighted board and X-ray film.
Weil Gotshal & Manges, a global law firm, has been testing the
Tablet PC since June, and developed an internal application using
Microsoft's software development kit (SDK) 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. The firm can take handwritten notes
during a deposition on their Tablet PC while recording the
interview through a microphone attached to the device.
The handwritten text is synchronised 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 spoken.
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 platform.
Microsoft will make available free software downloads as well as
links to third-party applications at
www.microsoft.com/tabletpc.