Inspiring others to pick up a Tablet

Julia is surprised by the lackluster developer interest in the Tablet she took with her to a user meeting. She realizes: “I have a bit of Tablet PC Evangelism work ahead of me here.”

I’ve found that gadget lovers often enjoy checking out the Tablet, but other than this group I usually have to focus on a particular application that I think the person or group will be interested in. My standard demo list is changing, but here’s what I’ve been showing more recently:

One feature I find universally appealing is OneNote’s ability to record and synchronize audio with handwritten notes. I often turn the recorder on, hand the TPC to someone to scribble something in OneNote, and then show them how the audio can be played back by tapping within the notes.

Those that have Palm PDAs or have heard about the difficulties with handwriting recognition, usually want to put recognition to the test. Here, I’ve found great success in bringing up Word and the Lonestar (Service Pack 2) TIP. I usually don’t have to wait long before the jaws drop. (My prediction: This single feature is going to be responsible for about half of the new Tablet buyers this next year.)

If I make it this far and the interest is still there, I usually jump over to more “personal” apps, such as Grafigo, MathPractice, or a new favorite: Dots. (By the way, demo or free versions of all of the programs I’ve listed here can be downloaded at TabletPCPost.)

That being said, developers are an interesting bunch. Many of them see Tablets as being underpowered and therefore of not much use to them. The second generation Tablets challenge this stereotype, though. I usually tell them they’ve got to check out the Toshiba M200, for instance. It sports 1400×1050 resolution, which is quite adequate for Visual Studio and the 1.5+ GHz Centrino hums right along when compiling. At this point, I usually ask them when they last upgraded their desktop. Chances are they haven’t. If so, chances are there might be a Tablet that outperforms their current 30+ pound desktop system that more importantly eats up precious space in their home office.

Usually I still hear grumbling about price, battery life, or a myriad of other things at this point. In particular, developers are a savvy group and have read many concerns about Tablets. Hey, not everyone wants a Tablet, but for those that are interested I usually start showing them how I design apps, sketch out ideas, keep track of tasks, copy/paste screenshots and annotate them, and so forth. If they’re still with me, I then often show some small technology-preview apps that I’ve built which showcase ways that I’ve tried using ink in more interesting ways. Yeah, this is an appeal to their creative side–and may inspire them to start write their own Tablet apps.

So in general, I usually try to lead the conversation in terms of applications rather than hardware. Maybe next time, start up Dots and/or OneNote, and then pass the Tablet around.

If anyone else has ideas on how to better showcase Tablets let me know. Which programs do you think demo best?