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.

I was an avid Newton 2000 user. The big hindrance of the Windows Vista Toshiba Portege M400 I am using to type this to you is the interface.

HWR was integrated into the Newton, not slapped on. If I wrote “5″ in a cell in a spreadsheet, a computer-print-perfect “5″ appeared in that cell. In Windows Vista, I have to click in cell, pop out the TIP, write “5″, (possibly click “Insert).

Writing on a Newton was like writing on a pad, with the problem of errors but the benefits of digital electronic manipulation. Writing on Windows Vista is like using a special keyboard that only works on the screen in some places some times in some ways. It is powerful, still, but much more clumsy.

I miss that dang Newton.

James,
Great points.

The truth is that the entire “tabletpc interface” pretty much sucks. It offers few winning usability arguments for the common user, although it could. And should.

I’m a geek and it took me months of ardent struggles with the form factor to get my first tabpc to bend to my will. Hell, 4.5 years and 4 tabpcs later I’m still battling. I stick with it because as an artist (see ArchiMark’s sage post above), the tabpc is a dream come true.

But for a lay-newbie there aren’t many of the “aha”-gasms one gets using an Apple product. We need a smoother integration of hardware and software. Instead we get the usual Microsoft practice of taking the OS up to a point, then dropping the follow-thru onto the 3rd party apps and OEMs. While that model (sort of) works with the broad market, it’s simply a dysfunctional fantasy for MS to think that’s the way to sell tablets.

The TabOS feels like a lumpy, bumpy layer awkwardly lying atop Windows (famously lumpy itself). A tabpc needs an OS shell that is deep and thorough…that works on the detail-level.

One teeth-grinding example: the “Penabled” thing. There are in my Control Panel at least 5 different little driver-apps that influence how I move around my screen…

1) Tablet and Pen Settings
2) Pen Tablet Properties (wacom’s add-on for pressure in PhotoShop, etc)
3) Touch Panel
…and the usual…
4) Keyboard
5) Mouse

Confusing enough for the poor dude who has just dropped 2 grand. But add it to the fact that the pen-based drivers are often quirky and some of the apps don’t easily believe in the other apps without counseling (Touch is easily traumatized by Pen Tablet), and you’ve created built-in user agony. This halfway thinking is crippling a potentially elegant and industry-changing form factor.

Considering all the hype and Gate’s ardor for tabletpcs (not to mention the price bump for tab features), the clunky niche state of the tabtech is bewildering…and shameful.
T

I also agree on the actual usability of inking. Another aspect that I have noticed is how using a tablet pc for inking or a laptop for note taking can also be a hinderance to the flow of a meeting or conversation. That is why I have had a hard time justifying the expense of buying a tablet pc for myself. In my last job I was able to get a tablet pc as my work computer, but found that I used it more as a normal computer rather than an inkable pc.

If the new line of smartpens gets a handwriting recogntion feature, I might be more inclined to invest and use one of those.

Ah, the search continues.

Great commentary, James. You’re exactly right: handwriting is just plain slow compared to typing, so it’s usually painful to use handwriting recognition for more than one or two sentences, especially when you factor in the time it takes to correct even one error. (I’d never thought about one excellent point you make: typing errors will usually be flagged by your spellchecker, handwriting recognition errors will always be “real” words, hence harder to spot.)

In theory, what handwriting recognition is best for on a tablet is quick bits of input: a note, a to-do item, a phone number, or a URL. Unfortunately, these usually contain things that aren’t generic words (think about a URL, or proper name), where handwriting recognition is at its least effective.

What *is* faster than typing, though, is speech recognition. With a little bit of training (very little, with the latest versions of Dragon NaturallySpeaking) and a little bit of practice in articulating clearly, I can dictate much faster than my 55 WPM typing. Which is why it’s particularly frustrating that Microsoft and the tablet PC manufacturers have put so little effort into OS software and built-in microphones that just work.

Yes, speech recognition does generate the occasional error (although I’ve dictated this entire comment without any mistakes so far, at least as far as I know). But what nobody seems to have noticed is that the combination of pen input and speech recognition works remarkably well: you dictate at a pretty fast clip, and when there is a mistake you select it with the pen and either re-dictate it, write the word, or correct the letters with the TIP keyboard.

I’ve been looking for years for a tablet that has really good built-in array microphones that cancel background noise, focusing on you while you’re talking…even in a somewhat noisy environment. Instead I get microphones that *generate* a lot of noise. And an operating system that seems to constantly choose the wrong microphones for input, reset the volume levels according to its own whims, etc., etc.

Oh, well.

Hmmm, interesting post James. The more I use my tablets the most I think that HWR is indeed a secondary feature of Tablets. On the other hand, I find inking impossible to resist. After much time with devices used pretty much 100% in tablet mode, I am seriously considering going over to a full-size convertible (Fuji T4220, T2010 or HP 2710p).

Equally undeniable is that, once you have tasted the flexibility of being able to ink whenever you want, using a regular laptop is like going for batting practice with one arm tied behind your back !

Good points all and I should reiterate that I’m not talking here about the usefulness of inking in general. I ink notes for hours every day and wouldn’t trade that for the world. No, I’m talking about handwriting recognition which by definition is the conversion of ink to digital text.

Inking notes works so well for me because I NEVER convert them to text because the searching is so good. There’s just no need to convert ink to text most of the time.