I heard yesterday that Bill is writing his memoirs. No, not that Bill, the other one–Bill Clinton. Interestingly, he’s writing it all long hand. Sounds like he needs a Tablet PC. Hmm.
I don’t know why he’s writing his book on paper rather than using a computer, but I know for myself there are some things that are better done away from the rigidity of the keyboard–and for him, this may be one. I often find it easier to think through problems when I can scribble, scratch, and sketch. And this is where the Tablet PC and applications like OneNote come into play. I wonder if this combo would match the way Clinton writes?
However, there’s a good possibility that Clinton may not be familiar with computers. And this may be a tougher hurdle. The simple truth is that Windows isn’t that intuitive out of the box for many people. The Tablet PC would be a perfect candidate for addressing some of the difficulties that first-time users have.
In many respects, the Tablet PC is already helping out. For instance, give any first-time user OneNote and I bet they’ll find that the way it automatically saves files matches the way they think. OneNote just does it. You don’t have to think about saving files before turning off the power. (Although OneNote could benefit from a stronger restore or revert feature.) And of course, handwriting support is also a good tool for first time users because they don’t have to struggle figuring out such things as how Word indents a paragraph–they just write things out the way they want it.
What the Tablet PC is lacking is a simpler way of navigating Windows–something Pocket PC-like would be great. The taskbar is fine, but it seems like exploiting the full desktop makes a lot of sense for the Tablet. I’d like to see a list of actions that I can take, such as launching OneNote or editing a previously opened document with big, easy-to-read buttons. Can a desktop like this be created with ActiveDesktop? Anyone tried?