What Tablets Need To SucceedWhat Tablets Need To Succeed

HP's Compaq TC1000 starts at $1,699, compared with Motion Computing's M1200 at $2,099 and Toshiba's Portege 3500 at $2,299. They all run Windows XP Tablet PC Edition. These vendors and others plan to offer larger screen sizes, faster processors, better battery life, faster wireless connections, and integrated security features, says Andy Leach, HP's tablet PC product marketing manager.

The new tablet PCs offer advantages over earlier versions, says Advanced Technical Support's Engelhardt. His company, along with health-care software maker Supportive Oncology Services, jointly will roll out 600 Motion Computing M1200 tablet PCs at 20 health-care facilities this year.

At one of these, the West Clinic in Memphis, Tenn., patients have used tablet PCs for the past two years to assist with checking in for cancer treatment. They input registration information on electronic forms, and the data is sent wirelessly to the clinic's back-end data systems and network printers, where doctors can retrieve the patient information before an initial consultation. The information sharing works both ways--patients also use the handheld computers to read, view, and listen to medical information.

This month, Advanced Technical Support will move the clinic to a new generation of handheld computers, replacing older ViewSonic devices with 40 Motion Computing M1200 tablet PCs. Engelhardt says he chose Motion Computing's machines because of the M1200's support for Windows XP Tablet PC Edition and its 12.1-inch display size, which fits an entire 8.5-by-11-inch electronic form on a single screen. ViewSonic's display, like most in the market, is the standard 10.4 inches.

Earlier versions of the Windows operating system made operating, managing, and maintaining tablet PCs a daunting task. "We had to do somersaults on our apps to make them run," Engelhardt says. "The job Microsoft has done on Windows' handwriting-recognition capabilities alone will let us create more-sophisticated questionnaires and forms, including some that would even be able to accept digital signatures."

Still, tablet PCs are mostly experimental in business settings, says Naveen Bobba, a Bear, Stearns & Co. research analyst. "It's just too early in the life cycle to tell or to see much push from the vendors, such as Dell or IBM," he says.

Some believe that the key to widespread business adoption of tablet PCs will be the development of applications that make use of their newest asset: digital ink. "Imagine the fluidity of a collaborative writing surface where people write notes as if they're on yellow notebook paper," Engelhardt says. "When software makers can easily incorporate that into everyday electronic correspondence, that's when the technology will take off."

Until then, experts say, early buyers are likely to have certain types of jobs, such as managers, and work in specific industries, including health care, manufacturing, and insurance. "Tablet PCs are a little expensive, and they could be thinner and lighter," Engelhardt says. "The challenge is always going to be that you'll need a keyboard. That's where convertibles will fit in."

Bill Gates, however, sees a brighter future and predicts that tablet-type PCs soon will be the most popular form of computing. "As we move into the rest of this decade," he said at last year's Tablet PC launch, "the idea of ink as a standard data type will become as commonplace as the graphical user interface did with the popularity of Windows." By the end of the decade, he said, people will ask, "was there ever a time where computing didn't involve this kind of accessibility to information?"