Early look at Lonestar

Tabula PC has an early look at Lonestar, the coming update to Windows XP for Tablet PCs. Looks like most of the improvements are in recognition and the TIP. Unfortunately they didn't do the one thing I wanted, they didn't include a different layout for the on-screen keyboard. This just shows how little thought Microsoft actually gives to usability compared to simply not making things "too different" from what people are familiar with. The QWERTY layout is bad enough on real keyboards, but it's downright dreadful for single point input with a stylus. There's been a ton of research in this area, I really don't get why they don't take advantage of it. Especially given that handwriting recognition still completely sucks on the Tablet PC. Though it is supposedly improved in Lonestar, improved is not the same thing as usable. When the Tablet PC came out everyone was real impressed with how good it was. Anyone who's actually used it for more then a few minutes will know it actually still sucks pretty bad for real use. I don't even bother with it anymore, I just stick to ink and ignore the recognition. Yep that's right, my Tablet PC is basically a $2,000 piece of very fragile paper.

Posted by Kimbro Staken