Absolute Beginners Guide to Tablet PCs

The Consultant/Project Manager

The consultant works for a management consulting firm, and is on the road most days of the week. Because of the extreme traveling and the need to stay connected with the project team, The consultant is thrilled to have a Tablet PC.

Toolkit

• Convertible style Tablet PC This style of Tablet PC is ideal for high text demands.

• Noise-canceling headset Using this type of headset makes using the Tablet PC's speech-recognition features much easier.

• Bluetooth adapter This is necessary for data communication with other Bluetooth-enabled devices.

• Bluetooth mobile phone This can be connected to the Tablet PC to enable wireless Internet access.

• Microsoft Office 2003 The consultant/project manager uses this to prepare documents and email.

• Microsoft OneNote This program is great for creating free-form notes and for brainstorming.

• FranklinCovey TabletPlanner This program is used for time and task management.

• Adobe Acrobat This program is used for digital document creation.

• Microsoft eBook Reader This program can be used to read electronic periodicals and other documents on the Tablet PC.

• Microsoft Visio This program is ideal for creating diagrams and flowcharts.

• Microsoft Project This program aids in project management.

Value Proposition

The Tablet PC is more portable and useful while traveling than even a lightweight laptop computer. The ability to take notes and draw directly on the screen to capture thoughts makes it more powerful than other computers. Combined with TabletPlanner and other applications, the consultant can run every bit of his work life from the Tablet PC, including keeping up with periodicals and news.

Day in the Life

The consultant wakes up in his hotel room and turns on his Tablet PC, checking email and gathering his thoughts. He takes his Tablet PC with him to the hotel gym, having downloaded the latest edition of The Wall Street Journal and the local paper. While he rides the stationery bicycle, he can read his periodicals and prepare his mind for a day full of meetings and action.

After his workout and preparation for the day, he drives to the client's office and sits down at his desk. On the way into his office, the wireless network connection on the Tablet PC connects him to his home office and downloads recent information from a knowledge management Web site, storing the information for off-line retrieval. His files are also synchronized at the same time, so that if he loses or damage his Tablet PC, he will have backup files at the home office.

After checking his email and synchronizing TabletPlanner to Outlook, he heads off for his 9:00 meeting with the CEO of the client company. When he arrives, he connects his Tablet PC into the conference room projector and opens his PowerPoint presentation. About five minutes into his presentation to the CEO and her staff, the consultant wants to make a point, and uses his pen to annotate a PowerPoint slide without stopping the presentation.

The consultant is thanked for his insight and is given approval to continue with the project to the next milestone. The CEO is complimentary about how the consultant kept up with everything on such a tight timeline project.

When the consultant returns to his office, he opens Windows Journal and makes some quick notes and sketches, outlining the key points in the next phase of the project. He then uses Visio to turn the rough ideas into professional graphics. He connects to his company's knowledge portal and starts a chat session with two of his colleagues in other parts of the world. They discuss best practices for the next phase of his project, and he comes away with a new viewpoint that saves him several weeks on the project. One of his colleagues sends him a link to a document she recently had published on the company intranet, allowing the consultant to get moving on the project even faster.

Summary of Benefits