The Microsoft explanation is rather simple. All the basic tablet
functionality is part of Windows, not Office. Hence OneNote needs a
Windows version that provides this tablet functionality. There are only
two versions of Windows that offer it: Windows XP TabletPC and Vista
Ultimate.
Microsoft is determined to have system-level type functionality in
Windows and not in Office. So tablet-like functionality is in Windows.
In Office 2007, they even took this a step further. Voice recognition
(first introduced in Office) has been stripped out of 2007 and moved to
Windows. The same thing happened with the scanning & camera feature that
used to be built into Office (curiously, OneNote 2007 actually received
that feature while Word, Excel and PPT lost it). For a lot of these
features that were moved to Windows, the MS answer is that Vista has
them. The story of their availability on XP is rather bleak though.
Voice recognition e.g. is built only into the XP TabletPC edition. I
know that there have been some attempts by users to try to get it
working on a normal XP system as well, but it hasn't been really
successful yet in terms of using it with Office (the experimenting is
still going on).
So yeah, Windows XP users that don't have a tabletpc edition seem to be
left in the rain quite a bit with Office 2007. Microsoft's default
answer is that Vista Ultimate will address all these issues.
If you want to use your Wacom tablet to the fullest, you'll need to
install Windows XP TabletPC edition or Vista Ultimate. These are
unfortunately your only two options.
Patrick Schmid
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http://pschmid.net
Post by John CorkeryPost by Ben M. Schorr - MVPOneNote has not been released for the Wacom Tablet. Should they also build
in ink support for the Intuos, the Adesso Personal Pen, the Logitech Pen,
the WOWPen...?
Come on, now. It's not like I'm expecting Linux support here. The Wacom
tablet is not a "platform" (i.e. an OS). It's the most widely used tablet in
the industry, by far. It is, quite literally, an industry standard and has
been for at least a decade. In fact, I would argue that Wacom's presence has
done a great deal to fuel the development of Tablet PCs. (And the Intuos is
one of Wacom's best tablets, BTW. The Wacom driver works with all of its
tablets.)
I have a few questions for you...
OneNote has been developed around this whole "notebook" metaphor, right?
That being the case, the ability to doodle, sketch and make handwritten
notes--just like anyone might do in a real notebook--is one of its major
features, right?
On the Tablet PC version of XP, this feature works beautifully. But OneNote
isn't exclusive to the TPC, it's also available for regular old desktop PCs,
correct? Therefore, anyone having a tablet connected to their PC (and, again,
Wacom is the giant in this market) might find this major feature quite
attractive, don't you think? Also, isn't it a very real possibility that
users who enjoy inking on their TPCs might be prompted to actually purchase a
tablet so they can do the same on their desktop PCs?
Maybe it's just my wild and crazy logic at play here but, to me, it seems
like a no-brainer to make sure that your applications perform consistently
across all platforms. If your app revolves around a notebook metaphor, make
sure the features that allow it behave like a notebook work properly under
every OS for which you're making it available. It makes absolutely no sense
that the "Tablet" component of the "Tablet PC" is such a big focus in OneNote
yet, for some reason, it's considered to be a trivial feature and mostly
discarded for PCs with tablets.
I'm getting a sense that, no matter what I say, you're going to disagree
with me, so I'm going to stop here. But, if there's one thing I can get you
Don't you think it might be a good idea to have the "pressure sensitive"
option grayed out when OneNote is installed on a desktop PC, or is this also
too much to ask for, given the development team's finite number of resources
and their all-consuming focus on the app's fabulous search capabilities?