After talking with Robert Scoble - and some other TPC owners - last week, I finally decided to join the ranks of Star Trek officials and bought the Compaq TC1000. It's a convertible tablet with the additional benefit that the keyboard can be completely detached - leaving you with a perfect slate-style table. Sorry Robert, but the NEC one isn't sold in Austria as this one came pretty close ;)

Generally, it's a nice device - and especially the "Windows Journal" application absolutely rocks. One can clearly see the future when working with this device.

However, we're not there yet.

I'll spare you a listing of all the great features of the tablet - just look at any of the usual pages. I second most of the great stuff you'll hear there.

But for today, I'll talk a little bit about the drawbacks or areas of improvement I see:

* Boot-up speed. This device is positioned to replace your paper based notebook. But even though it starts pretty fast (taking from 10 to 15 seconds from hibernation), my sheet of paper and my pen boot in about 0.1 seconds. I already had two different meetings where I had to ask the other person to pause a little so that I can start the engines. Very embarrassing indeed.

* Size & weight. It's still too heavy and too thick. My paper notebooks weights about a tenth of the Tablet PC.

* Applications. My paper-based time planner comes with dozens of forms and it allows me to scribble, edit and paint on all "one-sheet-a-day" planning pages. Outlook doesn't and even Franklin's tablet planner forces me to constrain myself to "Add->New Appointment->...". I want to just write on the pages of my time planner - wherever and whenever I like!

* Resolution. Even though digital magazine delivery rocks, I still can't read a full magazine page on the screen without scrolling. I think that we need about 1600x1200 (better even 2000 pixels) resolution on the screens so that they look and feel more like paper.

* Hardware Buttons. I'd like to see at least eight programmable hardware buttons which should be operated by simply pressing them, not by pointing with the special pen. I want to use the tablet for reading and don't want to search for the pen whenever I want to turn the virtual pages.

* Hardware support. The built in wireless LAN adapter doesn't work with Ethereal. That's really bad. At the dot.net conference two weeks ago, the WLAN has been completely jammed by Slammer. Ethereal easily allowed me to trace down the offending machine. I can't do this with my tablet. (Well yes, I can ... I'll just carry an additional WLAN PCMCIA card. But that's not exactly the point of a built-in card, right?)

That said ... don't get me wrong: I really like this device. It's neat-o-factor is close to 100%. It's geeky-gadget-factor is even way higher. The things mentioned above are just a reality-check from a user's perspective: take them as an encouragement or as suggestions when talking with your program manager - especially if you're working in the Office group and thinking about the next version of Outlook ;)