The Personal Integration Factor

With the development of products like Microsoft OneNote, as well as considering Moore’s law, I would fully expect the Notebook and Tablet markets to converge; surely within our lifetime, if not sooner. As a matter of fact I think it’s safe to say we are fairly close to that convergence at least in the portable computing side of things. However, there are some ergonomic challenges that portable computing environments bring to the consumer that manufacturers often underestimate especially with Tablet PC’s.

The evolution of tablet computing has had its technological challenges over the years (See The Evolution of Tablet Computing ). As advances in technologies such as enhances LCD and battery chemistry have helped to overcome some of these earlier challenges, the key to continued success and healthier adoption of tablet environments into mainstream computing lies in how manufacturer’s design products to help us to integrate the technology into our current life. I call this the “personal integration factor” which I explain in more detail lower in this post.

As I researched the options available in the tablet arena today, manufacturers still seem to present the tablet based computing as an “either / or” scenario. That is, either you’re going to use your tablet in hand writing mode –OR- you’re going to use it in keyboard mode. At first this seems to be a fairly brainless statement. I mean after all – isn’t that what you’re supposed to do with a tablet PC? Either you write on it or you use the keyboard… But wouldn’t it make better sense to embrace the fact that our mainstream human interface (i.e. the good old keyboard) is an integral part to our computing environment? I mean you can’t just put it away for awhile and still be productive – can you? The comfort and productivity level individuals have with the keyboard is just as important as the pen is to paper so limiting our interface to using just one or just the other with a fairly cumbersome way to switch between the two doesn’t seem to make much sense. Here’s a case and point.

If you haven’t followed the previous posts on this blog I had the opportunity to get closer to one of my long objectives of going completely paperless. I finally purchased a Tablet based computer. This in its self was quite an experience (See The Vistas of expansion in a Personal Computing Environment). After what I thought was a fair amount of diligence of combing over product specifications and user reviews I decided to go with a Toshiba Portégé M400. In my opinion, the M400 seemed to be the best mix of functionality versus cost that I could find on the market today (See Guidelines for selecting the right Tablet PC ).

On a side note, I was seriously eyeing up the Toshiba’s new LED version of their notebook (See Toshiba Portégé R500). I am a huge fan on LED technology and was excited to see Toshiba’s entry into the market with this product. You want to talk about something that is dramatically changing our computing environment let’s talk about LEDs! (I will add a draft hyperlink here for now since I really want to cover this topic later on - so I’ll save my further comments for another post).

In any case, I settled with the Portégé M400 and was fairly pleased with myself on the diligence I thought I performed while making my selection. However, there was one thing that I overlooked when choosing and relates back to the term I used earlier called the personal integration factor. What I mean by that is; how will you integrate a new technology into your day to day computing activities so that you become more productive? After all isn’t that why we buy all of these gadgets? Well maybe some of them we buy because they are just plain fun… However, when you’re making an investment on something you are going to live with for many years, you need to think through how you will use it. This should be just as important as how much memory and hard drive space your considering. In my case, I was certainly infatuated with the possibility of retiring my pen and yellow note pad (see Section 3 - Microsoft OneNote - Is it the death of the pen and yellow notepad?). Because of this I underestimated one of the most important accessories that should come with the new tablet PC, that is, the docking station. This may actually be a common oversight for people considering tablets. After all, what the heck do I care about docking for – I’m going to be writing everything digitally from now on! This is why the personal integration factor needs to be considered.

As I transitioned to the new tablet PC from my trusty (but very aged) ThinkPad configuration, I began to realize that I was thinking linearly (just like manufacturer’s were) on how to use it; either in tablet mode or keyboard mode. Perhaps their advertising banter caught the best of me. The reality is when working, the simultaneous use of the tablet along with the keyboard and external monitor is very important. By having the configuration setup in such a manner that you can be using the keyboard, pick up the digital pen and quickly jot some notes down on the tablet and then immediately swing back over to your keyboard is really the key of expanding ones productivity using a tablet PC. Using both human interfaces simultaneously expands on the way one leverages a computing environment while maintaining a comfortable and established process pen and paper as well as the keyboard. For example, typically while on a conference call, I will take hard copy notes on the conversations key points and actions required using pen and paper while using the PC to immediately research information pertaining to the topic at hand as well perhaps attending a Web based presentation. So I just assumed that upgrading to a tablet PC would provide similar functionality in the manner in which I am used to. Although it does to certain extent, here lies one of the limitations you need to consider when purchasing a tablet PC. Many of the docking stations on the market today do not accommodate one’s ability to achieve what was just outlined. They do what every good docking station does. That’s is, they link you quickly to your externally attached devices, but their orientation does not allow you use the pen and tablet without converting (flipping the monitor). What’s worse is the configurations of most docking station certainly do not make it practical to write on the tablet. That is unless you’re a teacher and you are proficient at writing freehand on a chalk board.

The interesting part here is that this is not a huge technology barrier to overcome for the manufacturers. Unfortunately, tablet PC’s aside for one minute, my experiences is that they (the manufacturers) have consistently done a poor job engineering the docking station often making them more complicated and less practical to use. This problem seems to be exaggerated in the tablet PC arena and is certainly true with my new Toshiba Portégé. In fact, some of posts I have read specifically regarding Toshiba claim that the M200 (Toshiba’s earlier tablet model) docking station design was great and actually addressed some concerns raised in this post. For some reason Toshiba redesigned the new dock and took out some of the features that made it work well for a tablet. Interesting progress… I guess the accountants won that battle over the engineers for sure.

As for the manufacturer’s, I would hope that we see some strong improvements in area of tablet computing especially in the docking systems. The personal integration factor would seem to be a major key on how people will adopt tablet computing into their existing environments.

As to the consumer considering a jump into the tablet market; take some advice from one who loves electronic gadgets. Although it may be easier said than done, try to curb your enthusiasm about getting into a new technology and really think about how you will use the product in your day to day computing activities. The lesson learned is that it is okay to be patient on emerging technology if it’s not going to help your productivity level. As chess players already know, thinking a few steps ahead can make all the difference. And if you have ironed out your personal integration factor, consider the importance of the docking station and finally, load up on processor power and memory (See Guidelines for selecting the right Tablet PC). You’ll be happy that you did.