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I was just checking something else in Connect and stumbled on the Microsoft Phonetic Input Tool Beta. This is a cool tool if you are bilingual and use on of the Indic languages. 90% of the time you use English, but then sometime you need to write in a Indic language, but then it is too much trouble switching keyboard layouts or using the onscreen keyboard??

This tool allows you to type in English, but get the output in the equivalent in the respective Indic script. For example, I typed thamizh in english, but with the tools turned on I got ���������������. Very cool and easy way to type out Tamizh blog posts (I am not sure if I will start one, but then ��������������������� ���������������������������) :)

And the other thing I love about this tool is that it is so easy to use and integrates into the normal IME.

After you install the tool, just go to a Unicode aware application and click the language toolbar. You now have a list of all the Indic languages that the tool supports. So you work with it as if you are working with the default IME. Then select the language you want to work with and you are ready to use it. The tool now shows the language selected and you start working.

The major problem I have had till now is that it does not support editing the text easily as once the conversion happens, what is actually there in the text is the unicode equivalent in the target language.