PCWorld.com - Will Tablet PCs Replace Textbooks?

I am currently sitting in the Friday morning portion of the AHEAD E-Text Solutions workshop while Ron leads the group through Abbyy Fine Reader and basic scanning techniques. I will be posting notes and pics over the weekend. From the sidelines I am checking my RSS feeds and came across this interesting bit from PCWorld.

Tablets have yet to move into the mainstream, but Bill Gates still believes in the technology.
Martyn Williams, IDG News Service
Friday, April 21, 2006

TOKYO -- The uphill battle that tablet computing continues to face in winning favor with consumers hasn't dampened Bill Gates' enthusiasm for the technology. Microsoft's chairman and chief software architect said Friday that someday tablet PCs will replace textbooks for all students.

'We do see, over time, that the ink input for the tablet and speech input will become as important as the keyboard, not replacing it but equally important.' Gates said at a news conference here. 'In fact, we see a day where every student, instead of their textbooks, will simply have their tablet computer connected up to the wireless Internet,' he said. 'And so the teacher can customize the material, they can quiz the student. That student can have that tablet with them wherever they go and it's actually lighter than the textbooks and more flexible, richer in terms of what it can offer.'