If on the fly handwriting recognition is so distracting why don’t users just turn it off and process the ink into text afterwards?

That’s what I do with meeting notes on a Newton MP2100. By not activating the recognition engine and storing your notes as ink for susequent processing the distraction is totally avoided.

Handwriting is still a really useful way to get one’s thoughts down on paper. Sometimes a keyboard is a little too quick, handwriting forces one to think carefully about what you want to say before committing it to the screen. Many a half-baked thought got successfully intercepted before causing future embarrassment that way.

That article is spot-on! Pen input is great for short posts, articles and IM’s, etc., it is not applicable for longer work. When using the pen I often have to stop and backtrack to correct a mis-understood word. Also often, I’ll write a sentence and half-way through the tablet will change the words that i’ve already written, causing me to backtrack again. It really wastes more time than it saves.

That article is spot-on! Pen input is great for short posts, articles and IM’s, etc., it is not applicable for longer work. When using the pen I often have to stop and backtrack to correct a mis-understood word. Also often, I’ll write a sentence and half-way through the tablet will change the words that i’ve already written, causing me to backtrack again. It really wastes more time than it saves.

Handwriting recognition has never been a major issue for me (although it seems to be for everyone I’ve shown the tablet to.) As with you, James, being able to ink notes in class trumps handwriting->text every time, and as Doug Carmichael mentions, finding stuff in handwritten text is useful beyond reason. (Although I’ll also mention that I rarely use it, because my notes tend to be topic-logical if the teacher is, and so things are relatively easy to find again.)

So while I was attracted to the idea of HR, I’ve never actually used it for more than a few words at a time, mostly when in Sunday School and inputting a search for the Logos Software while mostly paying attention to the teacher. Even here, HR is a burden rather than a helpful tool, because it gets in the way of finding Habakkuk 3:16 or 1 James 1:5. These are not things that vista’s HR learning system seems to ever learn to parse.

On the other hand, I ink as fast as I type, and without recognition I can take copious notes in Sunday School or Differential Equations as fast in ink as I might on the keyboard (about 115wpm before mistakes, 90wpm after corrections) but can include chemistry symbols (get HR to deal with _that!_) and short spurts of music notation without resorting to any other applications.

That’s what’s important to me.

Yet another reason why Techcrunch isn’t worth reading these days.

Tabloid Tech.

Another former Newton User here and long time HWR advocate. I have used HWR across a range of platforms from the Newton (of course!), XP Tablet edition, Sharp Zaurus, and every iteration of the Pocket PC/Windows Mobile platform.

HWR on the XP Tablet edition was pretty good and it sounds like Vista is even better. On the Windows Mobile Platform the latest generation of Transcriber does a very good job IMHO. But, as pointed out by John J D’Alessandro above, none of them can match the Newton for the total integration of the HWR into how the OS worked. The Newton was all about HWR and, indeed the Newton HWR is still just about the best I have ever used.

It is the lack of integration that makes HWR so much less usable in pretty much every other OS I have tried it with – again IMHO.

I tend to agree with you but I would make a few other points.

First, for document creation (i.e. creating a file with more than a page of text) typing is still the best mode of text input (although I haven’t tried speech recognition for several years). However, once the document is created, ink notes and ink comments are far more usable and easier to input; either during meetings or while reviewing documents.

As has been pointed out, inking during meetings to take notes is better, in most respects, than typing. What also needs to be stressed is that it is far less obtrusive to the meeting than typing.

With presentations, ink presents a mechanism that just does not exist with typing. Not only can one use ink to stress points on a slide but one can use it to capture comments and distribute them after a presentation.

Lastly, ink seems ideally suited to the small form factor. While there are those who can thumb with ease and even those who can use T9 pads at an incredible speed (esp if u rite 4 meaning nt 4 spell chk) for me, inking on my OQO is far more usable (and natural) than pulling out the keyboard.

All in all, ink has its place and it would be a shame if it was lost in the drive towards touch.

Dave

Dictionnary powertoy available here :

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/tabletpc.mspx

6) You can add Miniscroller

http://jkontherun.blogs.com/jkontherun/2006/10/freeware_of_the.html

1) Use a biggest pen for UMPC like Samsung Q1 (a criterium with wacom pin)not the native needle !

2)Use a virtual desktop (Virtual Dimension is the best with a light edge setting like TIP and i work with 4 desktops).

3) Use CLCL (nakka.com) to have a copy-paste with multiplefiles (texts & visible photo or multiples files tomove… and Templates)

4) Use Dictionnary to increase special or technical word with a text file backup.

5) Use Strokeit for mouse gestures…

James

I agree that the handwriting recognition is good, but could be improved. I find that for data entry, the HWR works great but for long strings of text, it’s not perfect. Part of the problem is that the tablet PC’s dictionary does not accomodate all the words in one’s vocabulary. There are certain streets, surnames, acronyms, abreviations and special terms that aren’t included and thus difficult for the HWR to get right.