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For a long time I thought that if I were better able to quickly construct illuminating diagrams to make a point or communicate a concept then I’d be a much more effective communicator. Effective communication is a boon to software development, so improving my ability to rapidly pump out neat diagrams was a noble goal worthy of investment.

I thought that if I had a tablet I’d be able to pick up any drawing package and quickly render those few boxes, circles, arrows, classes, use-cases and swimlanes with a pen in double-quick time. Surely a pen is the natural way to draw, and therefore faster and easier.

I had my eye on a Wacom tablet for a while. I had used a few casually and found them awkward. Designer friends told me that it takes some getting used to and a rigour about the way you set up and use applications. I had also worked with a UK-based engineer who used one for illustrating and annotating shared applications, presentations and documents during design collaboration conference calls. I was convinced my first impressions were wrong.

“Cool” I thought. “Let the tablet-led communication-effectiveness and R&D begin!”

After I saw that Julian had a tablet, I abandoned rational thought and cool-headed evaluation while toy envy took over. I dropped about AU$100 on a cheap Wacom-like tablet to figure out if it was a worthwhile addition to my professional and home-tinkering life.

After getting used to looking at the screen and not the tablet, and making the mental switch from mouse-relative pointing to tablet-absolute positioning seem relatively natural I worked on using a few applications.

In a week or so of trial use I came to the following conclusions:

• EverNote is way cool for doing shape-drawing, but I was still about half as fast at constructing diagrams with the tablet as using a mouse and keyboard. I also made lots of mistakes with the tablet that were kind of painful to correct. I wish more applications had EverNote’s (and the Apple Newton’s) shape recognition/fixup mode.
• Visio is kind of awkward with a mouse, and even more awkward with a pen.
• Few applications have big enough icons that can also be positioned conveniently enough for tablet use.
• Unsurprisingly, the best applications are painting programs like Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro. Primarily it’s because with a tablet the curve you render on the tablet is the curve you see on the screen. With a mouse, you have to convince your body to implement a kind of feedback and control system to modify your physical action to produce the curve you want to render.
• Tablets are cruel and frustrating.

I gave up on the Wacom-style tablet, though I’m not sure that I gave it a fighting chance. I got to a point where my frustration was greater than the residual value of my AU$100 investment and abandoned it.

Time passed… and the opportunity to get a tablet PC at less than extortionate prices presented itself. Quite apart from the X61 being a tablet PC, it’s far more portable and usable than any laptop I’ve owned since my Mac PowerBook 170.

In summary, in the contest between tablets and tablet PCs, tablet PCs win.

Direct manipulation of screen pixels is much more approachable than separate tablet hardware. They’re more portable, convenient for more applications and they don’t get your colleagues confused about whether you’re a graphic designer or a developer.

That’s not to say tablet PCs are the perfect tool for diagramming.

Bear with me while I offer some completely un-benchmarked productivity estimates.

When it comes to drawing diagrams with perfect boxes and lines in an application like Illustrator or Visio, I’m about 20% faster with a mouse. If the requirement is for nicely typed text, then the mouse and keyboard wins by about 50% over the tablet PC.

But there’s a diagramming mode where the tablet PC shines: freehand diagrams.

If the boxes, lines and arrows don’t need to be perfect, and if the text is handwritten, and if the diagram won’t need to be maintained, then drawing freehand using OneNote or EverNote on the tablet PC is probably 50% faster than using a keyboard and mouse.

After recognising this my primary use of the pen mode on my X61 Tablet has settled into these tasks:

• Quick and dirty diagrams to capture notes or communicate information, often projected on a meeting room display or web conference, and sometimes to be later transcribed into a “proper” UML tool or Visio.
• Annotation of documents, spreadsheets and presentations with Office 2007’s pen reviews.
• Note-taking & annotation of typed notes.
• Painting.

For me personally, the dream of being able to use any illustration package more effectively with some kind of tablet is gone, yet note-taking with freehand illustrations is something I now find indispensable.