I have done a significant amount of research on tablet PC's (10 to 12
hours), but have been unable to figure out how MS Excel can be used in
a Tablet PC environment.  Can I edit individual cells in Excel?  Or am
I limited strictly to "annotations" with "ink" which will later (on a
desktop) show up as "pictures."  Also, I would like someone's clear
assessment on which Tablet PC, regardless of cost, has achieved
near-universal recognition as "The BEST Tablet" and why.  I believe I
have exhausted the easily-found resources online (pc mags, user
forums), so am willing to pay a bit more to find better and accurate
information.

---

Clarification of Question by pape-ga on 16 Feb 2005 09:16 PST

Hello siliconsamurai.  I am happy to pay and tip for some solid
answers to my questions, so have at it.  I am in sales and take
copious notes on a notepad all day, then come home and enter many of
them into Excel.  Would be happy to buy a Tablet if I could accomplish
all this quickly, at once, in my client's office.

I don't have time to answer this just now, if no one has taken it I
will try later but I have tested and reviewed several Tablet PCs.

I own the Gateway (Motion) tablet which is large enough to display a
full standard typed page.

Any Tablet PC you are likely to want uses the same operating system
and works the same.

Yes, you use Word and Excel just the same way you do on any PC. Either
give spoken commands or click on the cell, then use the handwriting
input system, OR use the keyboard which comes with most TabletPCs and
all convertible Tablets

Microsoft OneNote will probably be your program of choice since it can
retain your original handwritings plus the ability to search through
them.

Here's a picture showing OneNote searching through my engineering
notes for the word: "incident"

  http://qster.com/images/misc/OneNoteSearch.jpg

note the highlighted pages on the right, that means they contain the
word "incident", too.