Getting hold of the write stuff

I'm wonting this longhand and boy dot )hiss the Leyland. Try again. I'm writing this longhand and boy do I miss the keyboard. The "pen" is a stylus and the "paper" is a plastic tablet the size of a mouse-mat, plugged in to my computer.

If Bill Gates is right, this is the future. For years now, whenever he's shown off Microsoft's technology, one of the items has been a "tablet computer" on which he writes to show how intuitive computers are about to become. At last, Gates's dream is a reality. Windows XP, the replacement for Windows 98 that launched last week (see right), has a builtin handwriting-recognition system - and it is only one of many hoping to cater to the keyboard phobic.

Handwriting recognition got off to a very bad start a decade ago when it was launched with huge hoopla as the big thing in the Apple Newton. Unfortunately, it was lousy and very slow. The Newton sank without trace.

With better software and more powerful computers (you will need at least a Pentium III to run this), hand-writing-recognition is now good enough for prime time.

As I slide the stylus over the tablet, an uneven scrawl appears in the Word document on the screen. Whenever I pause for longer than a second, the writing disappears and, as if by magic, typed words are added to the story. And, as I develop a clear, round hand instead of my usual meaningless scribble, more and more of the typed words are the same as the ones I wrote.

To try out the digital writing of Windows XP, I added a graphics tablet by Wacom. Installing it is a breeze: just plug in the USB cable and you're away. Put pen to tablet and a cursor appears on the same part of the screen. Either enter words in a separate window, which then appear in the document, or write anywhere on the tablet and the words appear at the cursor. This is more intuitive, but it is easy to move the cursor to the wrong place. And, while drawing with the pen is easy, writing takes a bit of getting used to because the pen slips across the surface.

But this is only the beginning. A wave of tablet-computers is on the way from the Far East, with large colour screens and no keyboard. The idea is that people will put them on their laps and use styluses to write, connecting to the internet by a wireless link. Windows XP handwriting will make them very much easier to use, but initial costs will be high.

In the US, Sony is already selling a desktop Vaio called the Slimtop Pen Tablet with a touch-sensitive screen that can be tilted down so you can write on it. But it costs around £2,000. Next year, Ericsson and mmO2 (formerly BT Wireless) are launching a pen that recognises its own handwriting, thanks to specially marked Anoto paper. Called the Chat-pen, it has an infra-red camera in the nib, so it records the line as you write it and transmits it via a Bluetooth wireless link to your mobile phone and then to the inter-net via the fast GPRS (general packet radio service) system.

Microsoft's other new operating system, PocketPC 2001, designed for palmtop computers and launched last month, also has handwriting recognition, albeit a more limited version suitable for the restricted computer power available on the likes of the Compaq Ipaq or the latest Toshiba Genio Pocket-PC. With Transcriber, you write each word in a box, pause for a moment and it appears in the document. It works astonishingly well, as long as you write clearly, although the pauses between words is a bit frustrating.

The Ericsson R380e, the latest version of the flip-open widescreen phone, recognises writing letter by letter. It is a bit laborious, but not nearly as bad as texting. The new feature is ink notes, for use when you need to note down a number or address, and there is no time for character recognition. It just records your writing, so you have to recognise it yourself.

More info:
Windows XP, microsoft.com/windowsxp
Sony Slimtop, ita.sel.sony.com/jump/slimtop
Chatpen, sonyericssonmobile.com/uk
Wacom Graphire2 tablet (£75), wacomeurope.com
Pocket PC, microsoft.com/mobile/pocketpc
Toshiba Genio, toshiba.co.uk
Ericsson R380e, sonyericssonmobile.com/uk