Commercial Software

In addition to the companies that make free software, there are companies that actually want to get paid for their thousands of hours of work. This next list of software is what I've found to be helpful when using the Tablet PC.

Adobe Photoshop Elements

Target users:	Those dealing with digital photographs
Web site:	http://www.adobe.com
Price:	$99.00

Photoshop Elements is the scaled-down version of the popular, but expensive, Adobe Photoshop. Photoshop Elements is a great tool for quickly editing the thousands of digital photos you've no doubt collected. Figure 18.9 shows just one tool that Elements offers: the Liquify tool.

Figure 18.9. Photoshop Elements lets you do a lot of advanced photo manipulation, including stretching and morphing photos.

Elements doesn't have all the features of Photoshop, such as scripting, but using it can save a lot of time through streamlined tools and quick fixes.

Alias SketchBook Pro

Target users:	Graphic artists and illustrators
Web site:	http://www.alias.com
Price:	$179.00

SketchBook Pro is an easy-to-use graphics tool that resounds with simplicity. Alias is the maker of Maya, the tool used to create the feature film Monsters, Inc. Clearly, Alias has some talent with making production-quality tools, and it shows in SketchBook Pro. Figure 18.10 shows a quick sketch I made in SketchBook Pro, which made it easy to create the image.

Figure 18.10. SketchBook Pro's interface is wonderfully simple, staying out of your way when you want to create.

SketchBook Pro can be downloaded from Alias as a 15-day trial. After the 15-day period is finished, some features will be disabled. You have choices of 25 brushes and unlimited colors in the full version. The tools act like you would expect, with no real surprises other than the simplistic (but useful) interface.

Tip

For most people, Photoshop Elements is faster and easier to use than Photoshop. If you can live without scripting and some of the more advanced tools in Photoshop, Elements is a terrific photo-editing tool.

Colligo Workgroup Edition

Target users:	People who collaborate with others
Web site:	http://www.colligo.com
Price:	$69.99 per computer

There have been numerous times when I've been at a meeting and people needed to share files, but didn't have a blank floppy or CD, or access to a network hub. With more computers having Wi-Fi built in, creating ad-hoc networks of users is becoming more important. Especially with Tablet PCs that don't include CD and floppy media, it is more important to have ways to collaborate with others.

Tip

You can download a 15-day trial of SketchBook Pro. After the time expires, you will still be able to use it, but with limited functionality.

Colligo fills that void. Colligo Workgroup Edition enables ad-hoc workgroups to share files, printers, an Internet connection, Outlook calendars, and a digital whiteboard, and to chat. Figure 18.11 shows what Colligo considers its most important features.

Figure 18.11. Colligo has numerous features that make sense for Tablet PC users.

Colligo is an easy-to-use application that lets you securely connect to others. To protect you from wireless pirates, Colligo ships with a lot of security built in. Figure 18.12 shows the basic connectivity interface, although there are many more aspects of the program. If you ever need to collaborate at the drop of a hat, Colligo enables you to do it.

Figure 18.12. Colligo helps you connect with others, share files, and communicate.

Tip

If you have ad-hoc meetings where you need to share data, Colligo can help facilitate that.

Absolute Computrace

Target users:	Those concerned with data security
Web site:	http://www.computrace.com
Price:	$49.95 for one year of service

Computrace is part product, part service to help protect your Tablet PC from theft, and to help prevent data from getting into the wrong hands. Through various options, if your Tablet PC is stolen, Absolute Software can rid your hard drive of sensitive data and coordinate the retrieval of the stolen device.

Tip

Computrace is a program and service that helps protect your data. If you have sensitive data on your Tablet PC, consider using Computrace to protect it. Remember, too, to keep your machine backed up.

Corel Grafigo

Target users:	People who need to sketch basic drawings
Web site:	http://www.corel.com/grafigo
Price:	$99.00

Corel Grafigo is a tool that lets you use your pen to sketch ideas. You can draw and erase sketches with pressure sensitivity. Shape conversion recognizes shapes and automatically converts them to perfect objects, smoothing out hand-drawn graphics. The first version was free, but now Corel charges for the application.

One particularly nice feature of Grafigo is its onionskin layers. With onionskins (shown in Figure 18.13), you can layer sketch upon sketch, allowing you to quickly try new ideas without redrawing the sketch each time.

Figure 18.13. Corel Grafigo has onionskins that let you layer your sketches. Here, two reception layouts can be tried easily.

Even kids can use Grafigo as easily as paper. In Figure 18.14, my then-three-year-old son drew his big brother's favorite thing: T-Rex. Grafigo is just plain easy to use.

Figure 18.14. A drawing by a three-year-old in Grafigo.

Tip

Use onionskins to try out multiple design options in a drawing. It helps the creative process and makes it easy to try new ideas.

Corel Painter

Target users:	Graphic artists, digital artists, illustrators
Web site:	http://www.corel.com
Price:	$299.00

If you're into digital art or graphic arts, Painter is an incredible application. Coupled with a Tablet PC, it enables you to use fluid tools to paint, draw, sketch, and more. The effects can range from simple to complex. Figure 18.15 shows a painting done in Painter.

Figure 18.15. Corel Painter is simply the best graphic arts application for the Tablet PC.

In Corel Painter, You'll find a bevy of tools, including realistic watercolor and pastel media and numerous brush styles. The flexibility that Painter offers is almost unavailable even in traditional physical paint media and that's saying a lot.

Caution

You must have your Tablet PC set for 32-bit color in order to use Corel Painter, or you will have some very strange results in the palette.

You can design your own brushes using various shapes, colors, and pressure-sensitivity settings. With Corel Painter, you can paint without worrying about your clothes!

FranklinCovey TabletPlanner

Target users:	People interested in managing their time and lives
Web site:	http://www.franklincovey.com/tabletplanner.
Price:	$199.95

Next to OneNote, FranklinCovey TabletPlanner is my second-favorite application for the Tablet PC. If you need to get a handle on life, and would like to use your Tablet PC to do it, TabletPlanner is a great tool.

Not only does TabletPlanner keep track of appointments and notes, it helps in some ways to make your life more, well, meaningful. TabletPlanner features tools to help you explore mission building, role assessment, and goal setting.

Figure 18.16 shows what TabletPlanner looks like in landscape mode.

Figure 18.16. TabletPlanner looks like a paper planner in landscape mode.

Note

If your pen is not pressure sensitive, using Corel Painter will not be as good an experience for you as it will be for those with pressure-sensitive tablets. With pressure-sensitive pens, Painter duplicates most of the media that a two-dimensional artist will use and then some.

When you switch your Tablet PC into portrait/slate mode, TabletPlanner changes to reveal a different viewpoint, as shown in Figure 18.17.

Figure 18.17. TabletPlanner in portrait mode displays the Daily Task List with either the Appointment Schedule or the Daily Notes, but not both.

In addition to the basic planner features you'd find in paper organizers, TabletPlanner lets you print documents to the FranklinCovey TabletPlanner print device, which creates an image of the document that it stores in its Notes tab, as shown in Figure 18.18.

Figure 18.18. I "printed" to the Tablet-Planner printer to store the KnowledgeDog Web site in the Notes section of TabletPlanner.

As mentioned previously, the TabletPlanner features sections designed to get you thinking about your mission, roles, and goals. You can store the results of this process in TabletPlanner's Values/Mission tab.

But wait, there's more! What good would TabletPlanner be if it didn't synchronize with Outlook? It does so with ease. The synchronization feature works great with Outlook 2000, XP, and 2003. You can synchronize appointments, tasks, and notes with Outlook, so it doesn't matter which application you enter the information into. You can also convert your handwritten notes into text for pasting into other applications, or for clarity.

All in all, TabletPlanner is a fantastic tool that helps you keep the various aspects of your life in order, letting you concentrate on doing rather than remembering.

Groove Workspace

Target users:	Collaborative teams
Web site:	http://www.groove.net
Price:	$69 to $795, depending on version and number of licensees

Groove provides a collaboration platform that lets people work in shared "spaces" to keep up with project-related information. Groove features numerous tools for sharing files, hosting discussions and chats, and much more. Figure 18.19 shows the file-sharing portion of Groove.

Figure 18.19. Groove is made for collaboration. With various communication features and a knowledge repository, Groove can help your workgroup stay in touch and on the same page.

Groove works easily with Outlook and Office applications, and the Professional version even provides integration with Sharepoint Team Services. You can also extend the functionality of Groove by adding tools, such as a collaborative Chess application. Figure 18.20 shows Sharepoint Team Services integration.

Figure 18.20. Groove integrates with Sharepoint Team Services.

Keylogix ActiveDocs

Target users:	Keyboard slaves (people who want to use handwriting only in forms and documents)
Web site:	http://www.activedocs.com/product/activedocsfortabletpc
Price:	$650.00

ActiveDocs streamlines the document-creation process by allowing you to automate document creation through wizards, as well as by allowing a totally pen-based input model. This means you can create forms with fields that can be filled in with handwritten notes.

Mi-Co Mi-Forms

Target users:	Forms-centric organizations
Web site:	http://www.mi-corporation.com
Price:	Unspecified, as it is usually part of a larger solution

Mi-Forms is one of the best-designed forms applications for the Tablet PC. It not only handles handwritten forms, it also has serious back-end data-integration capabilities, enabling a true enterprise-wide solution for forms design, capture, synchronization, and storage into enterprise databases. Figure 18.21 shows the architecture of the Mi-Forms solution.

Figure 18.21. Mi-Co thought through all the issues related to remote forms capture. Here is the architecture for the product.

Mi-Forms has several components, including Forms Designer, Data Collector, Mi-Forms Server, and Data Manager. All together, this system provides for rich pen-based form completion, routing, and storage. Figure 18.22 shows a sample Mi-Forms form.

Figure 18.22. Mi-Forms lets you define zones in your digital forms to capture various kinds of data.

Tip

If you're looking for enterprise-level forms design, capture, and routing, Mi-Forms has the best solution on the market for most people.

Microsoft Streets & Trips

Target users:	People on the go
Web site:	http://www.microsoft.com/streets
Price:	$39.95

Streets & Trips is perfect for those who travel a lot and don't always have access to an Internet-based mapping service. In addition to doing what Yahoo! Maps and Mapquest offer, Streets & Trips has an extensive database of hotels, restaurants, and other locations that help you plan a trip.

Tip

If you plan to take a long trip and want to use Streets & Trips, invest in an inverter so you can power your Tablet PC during the trip.

I used Streets & Trips on a 6,000 mile trip a couple months ago, and found it invaluable. While my wife took her shifts at the wheel, I could pull out my Tablet PC and plan/check/modify our trip. I could locate specific hotels or restaurants, and was even able to estimate costs for the trip. The mileage-, time-, and cost-tracking capabilities were right on. Figure 18.23 shows a portion of our trip into Wyoming, complete with stopping points. Streets & Trips also produces excellent maps if you still can't work without paper.

Figure 18.23. Streets & Trips helps you get from point A to point Z, with all the stops along the way.

Streets & Trips also works with GPS units to track your progress on a map. If you need more business-oriented tools, look at Microsoft MapPoint, which adds business geographic and demographic analysis tools (such as locating all of your customers on a map). MapPoint can help focus your marketing campaigns and catch demographic trends in your data. MapPoint does everything else that Streets & Trips does.

Microsoft Visio

Target users:	People who need to create quick designs, diagrams, and charts
Web site:	http://www.microsoft.com/visio
Price:	$179.95 for Standard, $449.95 for Professional

Visio has been one of my favorite drawing tools for years. Now, with the Tablet PC, it's even better. Visio has always provided one of the easiest ways to create professional-looking diagrams. Just drag-and-drop shapes and connect them. Now Visio 2003 adds Ink functionality so you can make notes on your Visio diagrams. Figure 18.24 shows Ink on top of one of the diagrams I created for this book.

Figure 18.24. Visio is an awesome drag-and-drop drawing tool that now incorporates Ink functionality.

Mindjet MindManager

Target users:	Idea generators and meeting coordinators
Web site:	http://www.mindjet.com
Price:	$189 for Business edition, $269 for Enterprise edition

If you do a lot of brainstorming and spend a lot of time fleshing out ideas, MindManager is invaluable. I have used it on complex projects for which I needed to show relationships between thoughts.

MindManager uses the mind-mapping approach to brainstorming, which is a visual approach to the thinking process originally developed by Tony Buzan. MindManager makes the process simple for keyboard users and Tablet PC users alike. MindManager now supports Ink, enabling even more fluid thought. Once you have created a mind map in Ink, you can easily convert handwriting to text. Figure 18.25 shows a mind map created in MindManager using Ink.

Figure 18.25. MindManager is an easy-to-use mind mapping tool that helps you think through ideas in a natural way.

Tip

Use a tool like MindManager to brainstorm if you don't like paper. The thinking that comes out of the natural relationships between ideas will flesh out your ideas better than just a word processor.

The Enterprise edition adds customizable templates and wizards. Both versions seamlessly integrate with Microsoft Office and Project applications, automatically creating PowerPoint presentations, Word outlines, and Project schedules based on the mind map. Future releases will include PDF export, Outlook integration, and team communication tools. This is a fantastic tool for knowledge workers.

ScanSoft Dragon Naturally Speaking

Target users:	People who want to use voice dictation and command
Web site:	http://www.scansoft.com
Price:	$199.99

Naturally Speaking is a natural extension for the Tablet PC. It takes speech recognition and control to the next level. Naturally Speaking works similarly to Input Panel's speech capabilities, but adds more commands and easier, more natural dictation capabilities. The speech engine is fully trainable and increases recognition accuracy over Input Panel.

Tip

Naturally Speaking improves dictation over Input Panel, but if you want your computer to read to you, ScanSoft also has RealSpeak, which has the most human-like voice of any text-to-speech engine.

ScanSoft has versions of Naturally Speaking for the legal, medical, and professional-services environments. It also has support for "talk and dock" functionality allowing you to dictate into your Pocket PC and have it automatically transcribe when you dock with your Tablet PC.

Sensiva Symbol Commander

Target users:	Everyone
Web site:	http://www.sensiva.com
Price:	$39.95

This is similar to the Leszynski inDirect software, in that it is used for gesture recognition and automation. Sensiva Symbol Commander enables you to use gestures to launch programs and perform operations instead of searching for links and double-clicking the icon. Symbol Commander Pro also has macro features for repeating repetitive tasks. Figure 18.26 shows Symbol Commander's gesture pad.

Figure 18.26. Symbol Commander uses gestures to speed up routine tasks.