The Windows XP Tablet PC Edition Development Kit facilitates building ink-enabled applications for Tablet PC. The combination of software and hardware in a Tablet PC enables these methods of user interaction and allows for a rich, interactive, and productive computing experience for users.
Is anyone excited about tablet PC’s? I personally don’t see them being very useful. It looks like Microsoft is trying to generate interest in them by releasing this SDK.
The SDK is based on the new 2005 OS. It has nothing to do with “generating interest”, it is just the SDK aligning itself with the new OS. And interestingly enough, with an IP from “co.us.ibm.com”, you better modify your lack of interest as IBM itself is coming out with a ThinkPad Tablet in the mode of X40, which is due supposedly around Christmas. You personally don’t? Fine, but already a million others have, granted only the start, but the real test begins now. Cheaper models, great hardware, new OS, and corporate deployments and evaluations starting. IBM burnt itself with prior too expensive, narrow-focused Pen systems, but this is a full-fledged platform push with many apps. The Pen is just another input method, quite useful for many things, think Artists, Form-Filing, Note-Taking, Shape and Diagram Reco.
Actually tablets are enhanced notebooks (and I’m pretty sure tablets will replace notebooks). Are you excited about notebooks? So you will love tablets. You could read e-books with tablet, you could use it as drawing board (thanks to touchscreen), you could make navigation system with tablet pc… and finaly you could just use it as very compact pc