This is my first and possibly only handwritten blog entry…

that’s because ‘an in a cramped airplane._ seat and the ride is d little bumpy. that, and everyone who can see what lam dough watching me avidly’ The XT2 uses windows7 pen extensions and as a long ten fan of the concept of pen computing I touchscreens and the business of handwriting instead of keyboarding.

the windows7 pen or touch keyboard relies heavily on dictionary prediction to figure out peoples scribbles and this brings some odd problems with it-such as entering passwords: whether it guesses right or not the handwriting paid will briefly display your password not just in plain text but clearly legible plain text at that

And now I’m sitting somewhere that isn’t moving at 450mph, I can finish this on the keyboard. The first thing that springs to mind is how the Dell Latitude XT2 compares with my ancient Fujitsu tablet PC: I was interested to see just how well a new device, powered by Windows 7, would cope in what is effectively a torture test. I admit it’s entirely unfair to expect any machine to recognise text perfectly in that situation, so all told I’d say it did pretty well.

Another obvious difference is that far less “training time” is needed to get good results: this may be because the touchscreen is much higher resolution and seems well adapted to the level of pressure and speed of movement I have developed as a 20-year fountain pen user. Also unlike my old Fujitsu, the Dell will use either the smart pen or your grubby digit: the finger works only on contact, the pen works a couple of centimetre off the surface.

The XT2 also makes a nicer regular laptop than my trusty Fujitsu 5020. This is mainly because the screen technology doesn’t add as much blur to the display as it did on the Fujitsu.

Windows 7 makes a number of subtle but smart differences to the experience, too. I find it much more natural to tap the bigger Windows 7 icons on the touchscreen than I did the various menus and controls in Windows XP, and that’s faster than noodling about with either the trackpad or the keyboard nipple.

Sadly, Dell can’t resist layering its bloatware “location manager” over the top of Windows 7’s wireless/wired network connection management; having used the default Windows 7 stack on a ThinkPad T60, I don’t really see the added benefit of most of these manufacturer-specific add-ons.

I like tablet PCs as a concept, because I like to handwrite and I need a compact device when I’m wriggling into tight corners behind server racks. I have seen one very serious application in an orthodontic surgery which relies on tablet PCs as a core part of what it does, and I have no doubt this will be a growing field.

But if I send in any more blogs spelled and punctuated like the first couple of paragraphs here, PC Pro’s online editor will stop talking to me altogether.