Transmeta (Semiconductor) (TMTA)

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Another MS Tablet PC Article. This one is interesting in reporting on the heat buildup of the ACER convertible laptop/tablet distributed at CEO Summit.

http://www.eastsidejournal.com/sited/story/html/93314

'Soft Talk: Tablet PC scheduled for October launch
2002-05-23
by Cydney Gillis
Journal Business Reporter

I love my Tablet PC.

That was the sentiment yesterday at Microsoft Corp.'s annual CEO Summit, where more than 100 executives got to use -- and jot notes on -- the pad-like mobile computers, which Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates revealed are set to launch this October.

Gates dropped the news during his opening talk to the top brass, who gather each year at Microsoft's Redmond campus for two days of some of the world's finest business schmoozing.

That includes trying out the latest Microsoft technology. Last year, the software maker gave each executive a hand-held Pocket PC. But because the Tablet PC model passed out from Acer Inc. this year is a pre-production prototype, the CEOs will have to pass it back at day's end today.

Acer is one of 11 manufacturers that will release different models of the Windows-based tablet, which Microsoft is touting for its ability to take, save and search through handwritten notes -- that is, if it can read your writing.

To imitate the flow of ink, the devices, which Microsoft product manager Kelly Berschauer said will cost between $1,600 and $2,200, use a radio frequency ``pen' and a behind-the-screen digitizer.

The Acer model, in particular, looks like a normal notebook computer, but its 10.5-inch screen flips around and folds down to create a carry-along writing surface, which Berschauer had mixed results demonstrating to reporters.

Cradled in one arm, the device was light (less than 3 pounds) and very warm.

It was, however, a silky dream to write on with the pen, which doubles as a mouse for clicking on applications -- or conducting a search of your own handwritten notes.

And therein lies a little hurdle that the Tablet PC can't always jump. With the pen, you can circle a handwritten word you want to search for, but the first thing the program, called Windows Journal, has to do is convert it to text.

After giving up on cursive somewhere in junior high school, I happen to print my letters, so the Tablet PC's text converter --which can convert and save notes as a Word file -- had no trouble recognizing a few lines of text I wrote on the screen.

Where I crossed out a line, Berschauer turned the pen over and showed me how to make it disappear, just like using an eraser.
When another reporter tried it in his own admittedly horrible scrawl, the text he wrote -- something about Bill Gates being a leader in technology -- got converted into a garbled paragraph that included ``adulterer bees' and ``pedagogue.'

Berschauer said the company had sampled more than 1 million people's handwriting to create the program, including paying close attention to the handwriting of ``lefties,' which, being one, Gates noted in his talk was extremely important for the Tablet PC.

But ``If you can't read your own handwriting,' Berschauer said with a laugh, ``the (Tablet PC) is not the magic machine to make your handwriting legible.'

Or, in some cases, even visible. Another function -- sending a handwritten e-mail over Microsoft's wireless network -- also failed. The written message, which gets sent as a graphic illustration attached to an e-mail, opened at another computer, but it was blank. Microsoft personnel said they'd look into it.

Regardless, in the next few years, Gates said, the industry will achieve the type of natural computer interfaces that have long been promised, such as handwriting, speech or even large screens such as the panoramic prototype that Gates also showed off during his talk.

Called the ``Dsharp,' the wide, curved screen allows a computer user to see and organize many software windows or pages of a document at once -- much like working with sheets of paper on a desk.