As far as our senses go we take them for granted in everyday life.  Touch is something that tells us an amazing amount of information – and generally we take it for granted when we consider heat, texture, shape and relating those to “simple tasks”.

I've had a tablet for a number of yeas and have found it great for presentations/ webcasts / diagrams / mind mapping / note taking. Recently I upgrading a tablet (x61) to Windows 7.  I have been mightily impressed with the improvements for tablet uses. Pen recognition is much better (even with my scrawl) and Office 2010 pen features are also much improved.

what I am really looking forward to is the adoption of touch based technology (and more impotantly software for touch screen technologies). Take the use case away from just mobile workers and industrial control situations and place it into the home/office.

Is it there yet?  Well not quite.   Up to the end of the last paragraph I had used only a pen with handwriting recognition in windows 7 doing the rest.  Amazingly quick, probably 70% of the speed I’m managing with the keyboard which is pretty good.  Gesture and touch will be important and a whole new user experience construct may be required (flicking documents to colleagues or team rooms with angle of flick defining where it goes).

Recently making the news at CES – suppose you’d call it a re-launch.  Looking forward to seeing where it goes and hoping it doesn’t remain a niche.  Hopefully the tablet PC blog at MS will see new impetus.  We will see!  I’m hoping smart phone advances driven by the iPhone will really help here!