Sony 1 Microsoft 0

Well it seems that the much publicised Microsoft Graffiti was little more than an attempt to rejuvenate the tablet PC market.

One of the important things that I think that they appear to have failed to realise is that people rarely write by hand these days. Most of what I do is on a keyboard or a keypad of some sort. When I have to write by hand something barely recogniseable appears on paper and it's frustrating as I feel I can touch type quicker and more accurately. Perhaps most important it's pretty obvious when you have to make a correction to something handwritten. I have a Tungsten T3 PDA which I use a lot, although the handwriting recognition is acceptable, I invariably have to use the virtual keyboard to enter anything other than alphanumerics. On a keyboard I can find most of the odd keys I need such as exclamation marks, questions marks, comma's etc.

Although I understand that the Graffiti format is smaller and therefore more portable than a Tablet, it still doesn't fit into a pocket. This is where I think Sony wins with it's PSP. There have been rumours for over a year now that it is going to include office type software and email. It has a great screen and an (just about) acceptable method of text entry. If the text entry method could be improved to allow speedier entry I think that this machine could become unbeatable. The main limitation would be storage, although you can get 1Gb memory sticks quite cheaply and the capacity is rising I don't think this is the answer. Surely the answer is Web 2 applications. Your average road warrior then has real time access to whatever they need. 10 minutes to spare? Then fire up your enterprise Writely and finish the document you started when last at your office. When you've done that you can take a look at the latest sales figures from your Enterprise spreadsheet. There are plenty of such applications out there.

The NHS would be another good market for this sort of information. The NHS National Programme for IT would do well to look at the PSP as a potential device for use on the wards. The PSP could be wirelessly connected to all the information available for any given patient.

The size and quality of the PSP screen makes this a worthwhile consideration. If Sony would allow applications to be written to support it. UMD or Memory Sticks could be used to provide video assistance and tutorials.