Next Up For Tablet PC OS: IM, Collaboration

First up is a plan to integrate the digital ink capabilities of the Windows XP Tablet PC Edition with Microsoft's instant-messaging service, Windows Messenger, sometime in 2003, said Alexandra Loeb, corporate vice president of Microsoft's Tablet PC group.

In a brief meeting with CRN at the Tablet PC launch event here, Loeb, a longtime Microsoft executive who has steered Tablet PC development for the past four years, said the pen-enabled laptop is a natural form factor for corporate instant messaging and personal instant messaging.

Further out, in the next major release of the Tablet OS, Microsoft is expected to integrate enhanced collaborative functions beyond the e-mail capabilities offered today, including whiteboard support, Loeb said. Realtime whiteboard support enables multiple users to edit, annotate and mark up documents at the same time.

"In version 2.0, you'll see the synergies come around with .Net and collaboration and the mobile form factor," Loeb said.

The next version of Office, which will be ink-enabled, will be a major application push for the device, Loeb said. Also important is enhancing the mobile OS with instant-on capabilities to supplement the existing instant-resume feature, Loeb added.

The Office 11 upgrade, due in mid-2003, will offer native ink support across all applications including PowerPoint, she said. The Office XP Pack for Tablet PC, made available as a download Thursday, offers ink support for Word, Excel and Access only.

Visio, another Microsoft drawing and charting application used in conjunction with Office, also is slated to be natively ink-enabled in 2003, said Dan Albertson, lead program manager for U.S. Visio development. "Visio will also have support to allow users to easily mark up existing drawings [or charts from a pen," he said

Loeb also said Microsoft will continue to enhance the accuracy of the handwriting-to-text and voice-to-text capabilities of the Tablet PC OS, which she described as imperfect but "good enough" for most uses. Acknowledging one industry pundit's claim that the software's handwriting recognition works well for some but not for all, Loeb nevertheless espoused the value of note-taking and sending ink e-mails as powerful value for the $200 or so more one pays for the Tablet PC over a standard laptop.