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by James Robertson.
Original Post: Tablet PC's again
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OK, but now email that pad of paper to me, OK? Oh, and call me up on NetMeeting and let's work collaboratively on screen? Oh, and when you have 200 filled notebooks, I want you to search through all of them to find all the documents you've handwritten that mention me, OK? (Did you know that the Tablet PC automatically lets you search your handwritten documents?)
As to emailing, let me introduce Scoble to scanner technology. Cheap, easy to use, creates a nice document I can push anywhere I want. It allows me to use the best tool for the job (paper), and then send it along if I needd to. As to searching, maybe that's something he needs for these type of things - in my experience, such diagrams are mostly one-off exercises, rarely something I need to save. Certainly not enough to justify a Tablet. He goes on:
Oh, and, I want you to take a picture of Hillary Clinton, print it out, glue it on your paper notebook, and then get her to sign it, all before she leaves the building. That's precisely what I did. Why do you think she reacted so well to it? When I showed her my Tablet, it had her picture on it (one that I had taken just minutes before). She signed her own digital picture.
Had I really wanted a signature of Hillary's to save, I would have brought her book along and had her sign that. Far less ephemeral, and possibly even worth something someday. Five years on, the digitized signature will be lost, a victim of some system upgrade and filing in a directory you decided not to transfer. The book signature, on the other hand, would still be around. There are electronic documents and formats from 5 to 10 years ago that we can't really read easily - for instance, just try to get information (quickly) from a 5 1/4" floppy. On the other hand, I have books that I bought 30 years ago, and they are all still quite legible. If I want something like a signature to last, a PC is the very last place I would put it - because it's a very impermenent way to store things
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