When is a Tablet PC Not a Tablet PC?

Doctor_6This morning I spent five hours at the doctor’s office having some routine tests, and it gave me the opportunity to observe how the practice is run. My doctor is a very tech-savvy guy, and he uses a Fujitsu Lifebook convertible notebook in the office. I observed him going all over his office with the Lifebook in hand, and it was common to see him standing with the Lifebook sitting on a counter in front of him typing away. The problem with that picture is the Fujitsu is a fine Tablet PC, yet he uses it as a notebook all the time.

I spoke to him about it, as he is familiar with my work here; in fact, he pointed out to me that my from-the-heart chronicle in which he is mentioned is in the top 10 results he gets when he googles his own name. I asked him why he doesn’t use the Fujitsu as a Tablet PC, and he actually got sad when he responded. He likes the Tablet PC and enjoys using one with the pen, which makes a great deal of sense, given how he works on his feet and is constantly on the move. The problem he has doing that is the special software that runs his medical practice, while written for the Tablet PC, is not easily user modifiable. The software uses templates for all of the modules provided, and those templates do not fit the way his practice works for using the Tablet PC.

This really irks him, as he specifically chose a software package (I don’t know which one) for use with the Tablet PC. He told me that in the beginning he spent a lot of wasted time trying to use the software templates with the Tablet, and he eventually had to give up as it wasn’t practical. He gets annoyed every day that he is using the convertible strictly as a notebook due to these templates. He said that maybe someday he will spend big bucks to hire a programmer to modify the entire system, but if he does that, then he opens himself up to having to provide his own support for the modified software. I suspect this happens more than I realize, and it helps explain why the Tablet PC may not be used even in vertical markets that are a good fit for the technology.

loading

Comments have been disabled for this post