Thinking Laptop? Take a Tablet and Call Me in the Morning

Sometimes, technology is simply ahead of its time. If a computer vendor is fortunate, or if another vendor has better timing, the technology might get a second chance. That's what happened with the personal digital assistant. Remember that Apple's Newton never garnered much attention, but Palm hit the jackpot with its Palm Pilot.

Tablet PCs fall into this "better luck second-time-around" category as well. The intellectual origin of today's Tablet PCs is the Pen PC introduced almost a decade-and-a half ago by now long-forgotten vendors. The first generation tablets se used a variant of the Windows 3.1 operating system called Windows for Pen Computing, or PenWindows. Needless to say, this operating system and the hardware on which it ran, did not take the tax and accounting world by storm. It did, however, introduce several important technologies that form the core of today's tablet renaissance, handwriting recognition, and a strong forms orientation.

Tablets, Take Two...

Today's Tablet PCs are actually pretty similar, at least in form, to several of those introduced almost 15 years ago. You can purchase a straight tablet, with the screen in a fixed facing-outward position. These models are often called "Slate" PCs, and many of these models completely eschew a keyboard, taking all of their input from a pen used to write on the LCD display screen.

Most of the Tablet PCs sold today are "convertibles", with a standard laptop form factor and a screen which can be pivoted to face a person sitting opposite the user, or to lay flat against the laptop facing outward. This form-factor gives you the best of both worlds, and provides additional protection to the fragile LCD panel when the lid is closed.

It's not only the hardware that's improved over the years. Handwriting recognition has come to the point where it actually works most of the time. The current crop of tablets are powered by a special version of the Windows XP operating system designed to work with a pen and pressure-sensitive screen.

More and more accounting and finance professionals are selecting "convertible" tablets over a standard laptop, despite the price premium a tablet carries. The reason is simple-they get the best of both worlds.

Tablet PCs are great for any task that requires that a form be filled in. Some examples include audit checklists and lead sheets, time and expense slips, a client tax organizer, client sales tax returns, and the like.

It's not difficult to create a form to use on a tablet. Some applications which have input forms will accept written input when run on a tablet PC. The version of Windows recognizes the handwritten input as being the same as if it was typed on a keyboard.

You can also use one of the many available forms software packages on the market. These packages take a Word or PDF file, and create a fill-in-the-blanks file. Again, you can either type in the data, or write it in by hand.

Annotation is another great tablet PC capability. You can easily add your comments to any document, including emails, or even financial reports or tax forms "printed" to PDF format, simply by using the stylus to "write" directly on the form. When printed out, the form will contain your written comments and emphases.

So if you are, or soon will be, in the market for a new laptop, give serious thought to making it a "convertible" tablet PC model.