Intel Developer Forum Fall 2002 - Day 1: May the show begin

Microsoft Steals the Show

Jim Allchin, Group VP of Microsoft’s Platforms division breathed life into the presentation with his demonstration of Windows XP Tablet PC Edition. The first Tablet PC devices will be available over the next several months and Allchin was able to demonstrate some of the compelling features of the OS.

As we’ve mentioned in our review of PaceBook’s PaceBlade tablet, one of the hardware requirements for Tablet PC is that the screen should be electromagnetic and thus provides much more flexibility. An example is the ability to apply varying amounts of pressure to the screen in order to get different line thicknesses:

Handwriting recognition seemed to work very well during Allchin’s demonstration as he added text to an existing Word document as well as in a Visual Basic program. The level of integration of Microsoft’s handwriting recognition will definitely secure its success at the expense of other companies in the handwriting recognition field of course.

A very cool feature of the OS is the Snippet tool; if you’ve ever wanted to send someone a part of a web page or circle something like you would a magazine for a friend to read, Snippet is exactly what you’ve been waiting for.

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Allchin demonstrated the usefulness of Snippet (bundled free with XP Tablet PC Edition) by going to MSN.com and circling a part of the front page that he wanted to send to a friend.

Clicking on the Snippet button captures a picture of the circled area and allows you to paste it into an email in Outlook as you can see below:

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All of this was accomplished in three clicks of the pen, not too shabby at all.

Another cool feature of these Tablet PCs is that if you use the other side of the stylus the OS will go into erase mode and you’ll be able to erase things you’ve written – much like a regular pencil.