Chapter 10: Office XP, Meet Tablet PC

In This Chapter

• Downloading the Office XP Tablet PC add-in software

• Using voice commands in Word, Access, and Excel

• Entering content with the Input Panel

• Inserting Ink Drawing and Writing objects into documents

• Sending handwritten content in e-mails

• Adding Ink Comments

One of the keys to the Tablet PC's eventual success will be the software that's built to take advantage of its speech and ink capabilities. Of course, you can use any Windows software on Tablet PC, but to really take advantage of what makes Tablet PC what it is, you want to have access to some Tablet PC-specific software. Otherwise, it's like buying a sports car that can go from 0 to 60 miles per hour in 5 seconds but never driving it above 30 mph.

Because the operating system that is the brains of Tablet PC comes from Microsoft, the office suite that is the first to have Tablet PC functionality is - you guessed it - Microsoft Office.

This functionality is somewhat limited, but it does give you a taste of what you will be able to do with Office on your Tablet PC when the next version comes out with integrated handwriting and speech capabilities.

In this chapter, I focus on the ink and speech features you can use with Word, Access, and Excel on your Tablet PC. PowerPoint and Outlook are a bit unique, so they each get their own chapter (Chapters 11 and 12).