PaceBook PaceBlade: The Tablet PC Arrives

Features - Software

The PaceBook ships with Windows XP Home, a good choice for the majority of laptop owners out there. Also included in the base install are the UPDD touch screen drivers, the PaceBook Menu program, and Pivot Software.

The UPDD touch screen drivers and the Pivot Software are fairly basic programs that allow for a small degree of customization. It is the PaceBook menu program that is special.

Launched by hitting the menu button on the side of the system, the Menu program provides quick access to a number of settings and programs. It is through this program that the touchpad is calibrated, the keyboard channel set, and the backlight level adjusted. The user can also add any number of applications to the quick run section of the program, where programs can be run just by clicking on them. Although we did find ourselves using the program a lot, especially to adjust the PaceBook' settings, we were rather frustrated when it came to exiting the program. Any program that is run internal to the PaceBook Menu program, for example the brightness control, the touchpad calibration, the keyboard configuration, ect, loads inside the PaceBook Menu program. Because of this, once the desired setting is adjusted, the PaceBook Menu remains on the screen. The only way to exit the program and return to the Windows desktop: by running a program. We were found hitting the calculator button and loading calc.exe more times than we care to count in an effort to escape from the PaceBook Menu program.

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Perhaps the biggest limitation with the PaceBook actually comes in the form of software. The PaceBook ships with no handwriting recognition software, making text input when in tablet PC mode excruciating. PaceBlade suggests you use Microsoft Office XP for handwriting and voice dictation support but chose not to include the software package by default. Although the Office XP handwriting support proved to work well, installing it will leave users out another couple hundred of dollars as well as an additional headache. Because the handwriting support is for Office XP, the screen can only be written on when in an Office XP application. This means that any typing you wish to do outside of an Office application must first be done within Office and then copied and pasted into the desired application. This left us either constantly switching applications in an attempt to type a web address into Internet Explorer or tapping away at the extremely hard to use on screen keyboard (an built in Windows accessibility function which even Microsoft claims "provides a minimum level of functionality... users will need a utility program with higher functionality for daily use").

PlaceBlade claims that they are working with a 3rd party software company to provide handwriting support out of the box. When PaceBooks will begin shipping with this software is still unknown but the lack of handwriting software is a major thorn in the PaceBook's side.