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Tracy Hooten has posted version 2.0 of her OneNote Planner Plug-in. Looks like a good template to include in your OneNote system. She has also posted a good video on how to use it.

If you are interested in helping Microsoft affect the future of mobile computing, you might be interested in joining the Microsoft Mobile PC Advisory Council. I’ve pasted the letter below that I received from Microsoft.

Your knowledge and feedback are vital to our success! Microsoft’s Mobile PC User Research team is building a panel of customers who use mobile computers such as Tablet PCs in order to better understand what is important to you. This is a unique opportunity to give feedback that will affect the future of mobile computing.

If you’re interested in participating in this panel, please click on the link below to see if you qualify and join today! If you are accepted into the Mobile PC Advisory Council, you will receive a $10 gift certificate that can be used at Amazon.com. The survey should take approximately 5 minutes to complete.

http://deploy.ztelligence.com/start/index.jsp?PIN=13869Q29VVQQK

Typically, we will send you six to twelve surveys per year. In appreciation of your time, at the completion of each survey, you’ll be entered in a sweepstakes to win cash awards.

Join our elite group and have a direct impact on the development of some of the world’s most popular software.

Sincerely,
the Microsoft Mobile PC User Research team

I want to chime in on what Marc Orchant is talking about on his blog regarding Outlook missing from the Home and Student Editions of Office 2007. Marc makes a very good case on how this is good move on the part of Microsoft, especially when you consider Vista’s much improved Windows Mail client.

Here is where I think Microsoft has messed up: part of the Out of Box experience with buying a tablet pc is inking an email and sending it to a friend. Outlook does a fairly good job with that and it raises the “wow” factor tremendously. Think about students as well – sending an email to a fellow student in ink – word gets around “ I gotta be able to do that”. Most folks who go buy to Best Buy and CompUSA to buy a Tablet PC will usually pick up the cheapest version of Office they can get by with: the Home / Student Edition. It will be the edition I buy for my clients who get home PCs and tablet PCs.

Considering that Microsoft is trying to increase the “lifestyle” usefulness of ultra mobile and tablet PCs, don’t you think that ink-enabling Windows Mail for Vista would have been a priority? Getting ink across basic OS apps is a must to increase the transparency and out of box experience for new tablet pc users. Instead, the user is faced with using the TIP to ink an email, or worse, the keyboard. The new tablet pc enthusiast immediately begins to think: inking just isn’t an integral part of using a computer yet. I can’t even ink an email. The wall immediately begins to go up.

I believe that Microsoft is making a huge mistake by relying too much on TIP input for basic OOB expeience: search, windows mail, etc. They also send a message to the ISVs – relying on the TIP is fine. Follow our lead. Relying on TIP input for your apps is wrong. Transparent computing begins with allowing ink to be an defacto input and handlng the recognition automatically without needing a separate interface or need to press another button.

If Microsoft isn’t going to include Outlook in their Home / Student Editions, they MUST ink enable Windows Mail. While Vista is a huge step forward in terms of personalization and tablet pc functionality, the most glaring miss here is Windows Mail, which will be the defacto means of communications with ones peers, especially for those who buy the Home / Student Edition of Office 2007. Including ink as part of that standard experience would do nothing but increase tablet pc awareness in huge ways.

Chris Pratley discusses the new drawing features for One Note 2007, especially good news for non – tablet pc users. Thanks, Bill the intern.

As we pondered drawing tools, we had to decide whether they would be typical Office drawing tools or something more natural for OneNote. One thing that is different for OneNote is that we support ink already (on all PC types, not just Tablets). The Office drawing tools which you see in Word, Excel, etc. have a lot of functionality but also live in a different “layer” which OneNote wouldn’t get to interact with much. That would mean for example that ink you draw on a page would not be able to interact with the drawing objects. Ink tools such as the eraser and lasso would not affect the drawing tools. Also these objects would not have awareness of other things on a OneNote page such as text that you might want to type on them. It’s hard to explain the subtleties of the issues here but suffice it to say in the end we decided that having native drawing tools would be a better experience for our users.

I spec’d out an M400 Tablet PC for a customer – 2.0ghz, Core Duo, 100gb 7200 rpm harddrive, Dual layer CD / DVD, extended battery. $2744. I purposefully wanted as much tablet pc as I could get. Why get a 5400rpm harddrive when I could get a 7200rpm.

WOW! That is a lot of money for tablet pc. Granted I could have spec’d it lower, but the price differentials just didn’t seem worth it.

After sitting on it for a day or so, I canceled the order. Just for grins, I spec’d out an M4 Tablet PC (see both specs below. Same specs all around except for the following:

• 100gb hard drive on the m400 is 7200 rpm, 5400 rpm on the m4
• 2.0 ghz Core Duo on the M400, 2.0 Pentium M on the M4
• Integrated Intel 950 on the M400, Dedicated GeForce 6600 on the m4
• 12” screen on m400, 14” screen on the m4
• 667mhz FSB on the m400, 533mhz FSX on the M4

M4 price: $2211. Price differential: $533

So for $533 more, I get the Core Duo, faster memory, smaller unit, faster harddrive, but integrated video instead of dedicated card.

What would you do?

Toshiba Tecra M4-S115TD Tablet PC Intel® Pentium® M Processor 760 (2.00GHz, 2MB L2 cache, 533MHz FSB), Microsoft® Windows® XP 2005 Tablet Edition, 1024MB (512MBx2) 533MHz PC4200 DDR2 SDRAM, 14.1″ Diagonal SXGA+ (1400 x 1050) display, NVIDIA® GeForce™ Go 6600 TE with 128MB DDR SDRAM, 100GB (Serial-ATA, 5400rpm), 8X DVD Super Multi-drive (Double Layer), WinDVD Creator software, Intel® PRO/Wireless 2915ABG (802.11a/b/g), Bluetooth® (Ver 2.0 + EDR), Li-Ion Battery (6 Cell, 4700mAh), 1-year Standard, Limited Warranty,

Toshiba Portege M400-ST9113 Tablet PC Intel® Core™ Duo Processor T2500 (2.00GHz, 2MB L2 Cache, 667MHz FSB), Microsoft® Windows® XP Tablet PC 2005, 1024MB PC5300 DDR2 667MHz SDRAM (512MBx2), 12.1″ Diagonal SXGA+ Wide View Angle Display (1400×1050), Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 950 with 8MB-128MB dynamically allocated shared graphics memory, 100GB HDD (7200rpm, Serial-ATA), Ultra SlimBay DVD SuperMulti (+/-R double layer) drive, Intel® PRO/Wireless 3945ABG (802.11a/b/g), Bluetooth® Version 2.0 +EDR, Li-Ion Battery (6-cell, 4700mAh),

Brrreeeport

Scoble has a fantastic post on the “flattening of the press world”. His post is a must read by PR firms representing OEMs and ISVs.

He picks up really well on what I posted earlier about my problems with OEMs and their PR firms. I’ve been experiencing this problem from day one with OEMs. If you represent PC Magazine, you are in, otherwise give up. The good news is that the PR firms are starting to recognize the changing landscape and we will begin to see changes.

Are we seeing the death of the exclusive? I hope so. That’s what I’m fighting for. The “Z list” should have access to info as soon as the “A list” does.

I just want NDA rules that apply the same to everyone. What do you think?

Frank Gocinski has posted an excellent example of the problems that still plague mobile users: how much time it takes to get connected to the stuff we need when mobile. I’d encourage you to check out his post. Sound familiar? He closes it with this plea to the mobile developers:

As the world goes mobile we as developers have to start considering how to build truly first class mobile pc applications. I realize this starts at the platform level and Windows Vista is the platform to empower us. If you haven’t contemplated the mobile aspects of your pc application, please check out what Windows Vista can do for you and your customers. Help me get my 55 minutes back http://msdn.microsoft.com/windowsvista

Chris Pratley has posted an entry on his blog announcing the new official name of the Office 12 packages. The best part is that OneNote is now included in some of the Office packages: Office Home and Student. That makes perfect sense considering how well OneNote is situated for students.

Unfortunately, it will not be included in the Standard, Professional, and Small Business versions; however, there is a business level of Office that includes all of the regular Office Apps + Groove + OneNote: Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007.

The upgrade price for current OneNote users: $99.

Pricing and other press items are found here

Nobody can deny that the healthcare vertical market has been one of the most successful for Tablet PC OEMs like Motion Computing and Fujitsu. If you follow the medical industry, you might want to check out this press release from Microsoft where they talk about their successes in the medical space and also highlight some of their partners:

The steadily growing number of Tablet PC solutions created by Microsoft partners and powered by Microsoft(R) technologies is having a positive impact on patient lives, medical worker efficiency and the balance sheets of healthcare organizations, Microsoft Corp. today announced during the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) 2006 Annual Conference & Exhibition in San Diego.

Source: Sys-Con Media

 Tracy has offered up her own Tablet PC demo of GoBinder, MindManager, and few other apps. Great job, Tracy!

Who knew the cascading effect I was going to create (  JK and Craig  have them posted as well) when I posted my ActiveWords / TEO demo. I have to tell you, I really like this new way of demoing apps much better than standard screenshots. I think prospective Tablet PC users will like them, too. I’ve also learned a great deal from watching these other folks do their demos. Nothing like seeing ink in action on the web.

Trust me – you are going to see much more of them very, very soon……