Hi everyone! I currently make heavy use of a laptop at work. I design and manage databases for many information management needs at my office. Although I have a desktop connected to our LAN at work (they don't like us to connect laptops for security reasons), I regularly attend lots of meetings with my laptop in tow so that I can search my data on the fly for answers to any questions that arise and also take minutes. A lot of times, I find myself at my desk with both laptop and desktop booted up, going back forth between the two. Due to my current laptop's space limitations (<20 GB hard drive), my company is planning to replace my laptop with a bigger, badder model. I was thinking that a tablet PC might be the way to go. When traveling and during meetings, it seems like it might give me a lot more flexibility, if I want to scribble some notes by hand (although normally my typing is pretty fast!). However, I've got a couple of concerns. My office uses MS Office 2000 and all my databases are developed in MS Access 2000. I do not know when they will upgrade to another version of Office, but I will need to continue to have compatible software on any laptop/tablet that I purchase, so that I can transfer documents/databases back and forth. Does the tablet PC functionality work with Office 2000? I've only seen discussion of using tablet features with Office XP and Office 2002. This could be a deal breaker for me! And can anyone tell me how the tablet functionality generally works in Office applications? Do you write directly in the app (e.g. MS Word or Excel) with the stylus and it translates? Or do you write in some type of separate interface and somehow place the text in the appropriace place in the document or spreadsheet? Has anyone tried this with MS Access? Can you "write" information directlly into database forms in Access? I tried to go to a major computer/electronic store today for a demo, but their salespeople knew less than I did (took them 10 minutes just to figure out the password to get into the floor model!) and ended up leaving without much useful information! I VERY interested in hearing about anyone's experiences using the tablet PC functionality in Office applications, particularly Office 2000 (if they even work with 2000!).

Also-- does anyone know anything about the Gateway M275 convertible? I like the larger screen (I know it make it heavier and bulkier, but with db applications- I appreciate a larger screen.), but am wondering if there might other better options...

Sorry for the lengthy post, but I am trying to figure out if a Tablet PC will work for me. Since my company IT department may not support tablets, I may end up buying one myself, if a tablet seems like the best option for my situation. But before I take the plunge-- I want to make sure that a tablet PC will meet my needs!

Thanks!

Welcome to Tablet PC Questions,

I've been asked on many occasions about MS Access. I have service Pack 2 release candidate 2 on my machine and can easily enter data in an Access 2000 file format database. In fact, any software that runs of Windows XP Pro will be fine.

Remember that a Tablet PC convertible is a pen enabled notebook. You will always be able to key in data, additionally you will get "access" to some fantastic Software that takes advantage of the digital ink. Check out Tablet PC Post for the growing list of available pen-enabled software.

P.S. This Complete post was done in the TIP of SP2? Now vbulletin isn't designed for inking but it can be done. That is pentastic !

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