ABSTRACT
I recently bought a new laptop computer and, being heavily influenced by advertisements, acquired an example of what has become known as a Tablet PC. This is different from normal laptops in two main ways: its screen can flip over onto the top of its keyboard, making it a little like a chunky A4 writing pad but with a surface of screen rather than paper; and it comes supplied with a special pen with which I can write on the screen, which then either treats my handwriting as a picture or converts it to computer text. As a machine, it is liberating. I can use it to handwrite notes in meetings, which are then automatically converted to typed text. I have a large collection of electronic books, any of which I can read easily on the tablet screen, so on long train or plane journeys it is like carrying 100 books with me to select my reading from. (The only problem with this is that the battery life is only about three hours, but in some modern trains you can actually plug the laptop into a mains socket.)
