Do You Look Down at Technology? Try a Tablet PC.

  When Emma Thompson, as the angel in HBO's Angels in America, visits her unsuspecting guest, she's frustrated when his eyes land everywhere but on her.  "LOOK UP," she commands. I can relate. 

During my last presentation, several people were banging my every word into their laptops, their eyes glued to their screens. While I should have been flattered, it didn't feel very good. I felt disconnected with my public and yearned to ask, "Won't you please look up?"

When we are fused to our laptops during a presentation, team meeting or client conversation, we put distance between ourselves and other people. It's no wonder people feel diminished when they are upstaged by a laptop computer.

However, taking notes on paper during a conversation isn't as offensive. Pen and paper are not as distracting during note taking, because more often that not, we are free to occasionally "look up."  Pens don't seem to take on the 'human appendage' quality that PC keyboards do.

Tablet PCs just might be making a small contribution to the unintentional rude behavior we take on when we use our personal technology gagdets. Tablet PCs lend themselves to more socially acceptable behavior. Taking notes into a tablet PC is not as impolite as a PC notebook, because we're not partially hiding behind a screen. And, if you do as many interviews as I do, you'll love this quality of the tablet PC.

However, tablet PCs do not come without their personality quirks.

• You, being only human, vary your pressure when you write. Pen and paper don't care, but your tablet PC uses a "force-feedback" mechanism to interpret your writing for the screen.  Sometimes it doesn't get it quite right -- and misinterprets your intent. If you've ever used graffti on your palm pilot, you've endured this frustration.

• On a tablet PC, your hand often obscures your line of sight, breaking your train of thought. You focus more on the act of physical writing than what you are thinking.

• Positioning a pen on the screen is not as precise as a mouse. This is due to the various angles (and pressures) your pen creates as you write. Not a big deal most times, but can be annoying when you're editing graphics.

"Tablet PCs lend themselves to more socially acceptable behavior. Taking notes into a tablet PC is not as impolite as its notebook cousin, because we're not partially hiding behind a screen."

As with any emerging techology, engineers are working to fix the known problems. Handwriting recognition has indeed improved. Even with bad handwriting, the latest technolgy is good at recognizing words correctly at first glance. For me, a recent test worked about 70 percent of the time.

If you need computer access in customer-facing situations, the notebook PC might be worth checking out.