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TabletPCBuzz.com
Weekly Newsletter
For the week of April 20th, 2003
We can finally
announce the first winner of a copy of my book, How to Do Everything with
Your Tablet PC. Our first winner was Todd K. Malan, MD. We're attempting
to contact the second winner now.
For this
week's article, we have Part 1 of a two-part tale. Thanks to their mobility
and usability, Tablet PCs are important new tools for gathering and managing
information. This week I want to tell you more about a powerful tool for
managing and organizing information. There was a discussion in the TabletPCBuzz
forum about this subject a few weeks ago.
Mind Mapping
and Tablet PC Users, Part 1 By Bill Mann
As a Tablet
PC user, you're almost surely some sort of knowledge worker. That is,
you make your money not from the sweat of your brow or the productivity
of your fields, but from applying your knowledge and manipulating information.
For people who work with information today, the biggest problem is often
organizing and managing the vast quantities of the stuff that are available.
Tablet PCs can help us deal with information by allowing us to carry it
with us. But there's still the problem of managing and organizing the
information. That's where mind mapping comes in. Mind mapping helps millions
of people organize masses of information in ways that make sense to them.
Mind mapping is also a powerful tool for note taking, where it engages
the visual side of your brain to help you remember.
A mind map
is a visual representation of chunks of information and the relationships
between those chunks. Starting with a central topic, idea, or theme, you
create a mind map by writing a phrase that identifies the central theme
in the center of a piece of paper. Next, you write words or phrases identifying
key topics on the page, arranging them around the central theme. Then
you draw lines between the topics and the central theme to show that they're
related. You can also connect topics directly to each other.
Branches
(topics and their connections to other topics) graphically indicate the
relationships between the information in the mind map. This representation
is one of the significant benefits of mind mapping, as such relationships
are seldom clear in more traditional means of note taking.
Once you've
created the first level of branches, you can add more detail to your mind
map by repeating the process. Treat each topic as if it were the central
theme, and create branches containing information related to that topic.
By continuing in this vein, you progressively add more and more detailed
information to your map, until you have a mind map containing all the
important information related to the central theme.
Some of the
benefits of creating a mind map include:
Because
it's a diagram, it engages the visual part of your brain in understanding
and organizing information.
The relationships
between chunks of information are explicitly stated.
By mapping
short phrases that represent larger chunks of information a simple mind
map allows easy recall of large amounts of information.
This wraps
up the "Mind Mapping" part of the story. Next time around, I'll address
the, "and Tablet PC Users" part.
Anxious
to get the most out of your Tablet PC? Check out, How
to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC.
Note
from Spencer
Welcome to
the third issue of the TabletPCBuzz newsletter, for the week of April
20th. We are bringing this newsletter to you a couple days late this week,
as we took sometime off to enjoy the Easter weekend with family. Hope
you all had a great weekend. Thanks for inviting us into your inbox, see
you on the site!
How
Do You Use Your Tablet PC?
Keith Holden
is Quality Assurance and Food Safety consultant. He says his Compaq TC1000
has changed his whole way of working in the three weeks since he got it.
His job involves a lot of audit work and note-taking. He also needs access
to client manuals, ISO 9000 standards and food safety standards. His TC1000
lets him do all this right on the spot. A perfect example of the power
of the Tablet.
And that's
this week's story. We're looking for more brave volunteers to share their
experiences with the TabletPCBuzz community. Please email me at bill@techforyou.com
and share your experiences.
"Ask
the Buzz"
Ask
the buzz is taking the week off for Easter.
Got a question
about the Tablet PC OS? A specific Tablet PC? Wondering how to do something
with your Tablet PC? Whatever your question, send it to Ask the Buzz at
spg@tabletpcbuzz.com. Thanks!
TabletPCBuzz
Gear Contest
For all
TabletPCBuzz members, we are holding a contest this week on the site.
We will be giving away a couple of TabletPCBuzz shirts from our logo store.
If you haven't already, you can check out our logo store at - http://www.cafeshops.com/tabletpc.
To enter the contest or for more details, see this forum post - http://www.tabletpcbuzz.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=3394
Tip
of the Week
Get Rid
Of The Tablet Input Panel (TIP) Button On The Taskbar
The TIP button on the taskbar takes up a good deal of space, which you
may want to free up. If you would like to remove the button, providing
access to the TIP via its gesture or hardware button, you can do so with
the following instructions. Go
to a command prompt and type:
Be sure
and keep the quotes as you will need them because there are spaces in
the file path name. This command will unregister the dll. After doing
this, reboot your machine. The TIP button should be gone. To undo your
changes and restore the TIP button permanently, go to a command prompt
and type:
Q:
What stage of the "Tablet PC Experience" are you currently in?
A:
Pondering
a purchase:
34%
Evaluating
a Tablet PC for use:
8%
Using
a Tablet PC as a secondary computer:
20%
Using
a Tablet PC as your main computer:
21%
Just
watching from afar:
14%
Using/Evaluating
multiple Tablet PCs:
2%
Total
Votes: 456
This
week's poll question:
Are you considering/waiting on the second generation Tablet PC devices?
Vote now at http://www.tabletpcbuzz.com!
Top
News Story of the Week
In-Stat/MDR: Tablet PCs and Smart Displays Pushing the PC Envelope
By Spencer Goad
Some interesting
statistical findings by In-Stat/MDR here -
"Tablet
PCs...are, according to Brian O'Rourke, a Senior Analyst with..(In-Stat/MDR)...
"A solid technology that is showing some early promise." Vendors claim
that initial sales of these products have exceeded expectations. "However,
decreased corporate IT spending is expected to lead to slow adoption by
thelarge enterprises that are expected to be the biggest purchasers of
Tablet PCs," says O'Rourke. Initial sales have been promising in some
vertical applications and overall growth will be solid in 2003 and 2004,
with more rapid growth expected in 2005.
In-Stat/MDR
has also found that:
-- In
2003 and 2004, Tablet PCs will make up 1% to 2% of notebook PC shipments,
but will break out in 2005, increasing to 3.5% of notebook PC sales. By
this point, it is expected that Tablet PCs will begin to put a serious
dent in the market for ultraportable notebook PCs, which are targeted
at the same market as Tablet PCs.
-- North
America, particularly the US, will dominate early Tablet PC shipments.
Europe will be second in the early years, with Japan third, due primarily
to a long recession that is depressing corporate spending levels. However,
over time, shipments in Japan and Asia will pick up. One significant reason
is the advantage of the pen-based Tablet PC in accommodating East Asian
character-based languages."
More information
is available in the press release, click the link below.
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=SVBIZINK5.story&STORY;=/www/story/04-14-2003/0001925338&EDATE;=MON+Apr+14+2003,+08:07+AM
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