OnTheRun with Tablet PCs #17

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Marc Orchant and James Kendrick take a different tack with this show and address some very thoughtful questions from listener Rob Halligan.  Rob wants to know how to keep his desktop, smartphone, and soon to be purchased Tablet PC or UMPC all synchronized so his PIM data and files will be with him everywhere he goes.  His questions get the two of us into a discussion of Office 2007, how to keep files and information better organized, and Marc drops the bomb about the Outlook 2007 book he is writing for Wiley.  Wow, what a show!  We even presented the first Golden Slate award for best special effects (or something to that effect) in a Tablet PC related video demo.

Rob's thoughtful questions got him a copy of the More Space book from Marc so you never know what might happen.  Get those questions and/or ideas for future shows to Marc and I.  Rob did.

Links of note from the show:

• 4smartphone.com
• EverNote
• FolderShare
• OneNote
• Chris Pratley
• Jensen Harris
• MindManager InkShow- GottaBeMobile
• Virtual UMPC demo- Hugo Ortega
• Vista on a Toshiba M205- Kevin Tofel
• Vista on a Toshiba M400- Craig Pringle
• Vista and Office 2007- Frank Gocinski
• 220 great tips for Tablet PC users (and others)- Tracy Hooten

Enjoy the show and let us know what you think.

Special thanks to Tiedye Keith for the great song "Vulnerable" with vocals by Tony Lindsay of Santana.

Comments

[Tablet PC User]

Great show guys!

Marc, the show you were thinking about is "Down Periscope"

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116130/

[Mark Polino]

Ok guys, twice you've made the comment that UMPC's are not designed to be a main PC. I have a simple question. Why couldn't it be your main PC?

Here's my situation, I'm a Controller, as in CPA. I spend most of my day at a desk. But sometimes I need to wander through the warehouse or the office to check on processes. I have a lot of meetings and I take a lot of work home.

A UMPC with an external monitor and keyboard at my desk and house seems perfect to me. (I assume the video out resolution is better than 800x600). I can imagine carrying it in to work, plugging it up to a KB and big monitor in the morning, unplugging to take notes at a meeting and check on a warehouse process and connecting back up for some heavy duty spreadsheet work. Then I unplug to go home. If I have big budget spreadsheets to look at, I work at a desk at home with a monitor and keyboard. Otherwise, I sprawl in the chair with the UMPC to browse the web and control my Media Center PC.

I don't currently have a tablet PC but I do a lot of managing of my wife's tablet for her. Right now, I use a thin/light laptop to do most of this but the UMPC seems like an even better form factor.

So what am I missing? Why couldn't a UMPC be my main PC?

(I've only found one negative, lack of a PCMCIA card for EVDO connection. When I'm on the road, I don't want to look for connectivity. I just want it to be there and currently, PC Cards are the only option.)

[jk]

Mark, what I have said is that the UMPC is not intended to be someone's main PC. That certainly doesn't mean it couldn't. I have used an ultra-portable for months and they can be a very good main computer but it wouldn't be so for everyone. It does appear that the intent behind the release is to provide a secondary device for most, at least according to some of the statements from MS in the video interviews.

[Marc Orchant]

Mark - I have essentially the same comment as James but let me expand a bit. The biggest issues I see with UMPCs as a primary PC are the processor and hard disk (speed and capacity). The processors being specc'ed in the first generation devices are OK for occasional use but simply are not fast enough for the work I do. To get the best battery life, the emphasis is on low power consumption, not processing speed. Same thng goes for the hard drives in these units. I can't wait to get one and I'm confident that a uMPC will become a valuable option for mobile computing but I don't see abandoning my more powerful Tablet anytime soon.

[Andrew Oliner]

Great show, as usual. One comment/complaint, a few questions.

Can you guys do something about the levels when you record your shows? In the early part of this show, James is inaudible unless I turn the volume way up, in which case Marc is blasting. I had to keep adjusting the volume everytime you guys changed who was speaking, and when there was a dialogue, I missed part of what James was saying. This problem has also occurred when you've had guests.

Question: Marc, I'm glad that you expanded on your use of GTD in this show. I started with the Tablet not knowing anyting about GTD, and started learning about it because of the Tablet influence.

That said, I am finding it very difficult to implement. David Allen's books get very vague about a few points. I recognize that this is at least in part due to the very flexible nature of the system.

My question is about your filing system, mostly physical. You alphabetize things, which is standard GTD methodology. But how? That's what I can't figure out. By Author? By Subject? By Category? By Company name? By Day of the Week? Much of my stuff which is unfiled is unfiled because I can't figure out where I would put it.

Also, you discussed your computer filing system. You mentioned how you separate things into folders. I'm wondering about how you did this with OneNote, which seems to demand to have everything in the same directory.