The future lies in pen and ink, says Bill Gates, the co-founder and chairman of the world's biggest software company.
The Microsoft chief's vision is of people sending hand-written messages to one another. But rather than using scraps of paper and ball-point pens, they will use high-powered slate-like computers running a new version of the company's new XP operating system, Windows XP Tablet PC Edition.
Mr Gates introduced the concept of the Tablet PC at last year's Comdex computer trade show in Las Vegas. This year there were prototype systems on show. Compaq Computer, Taiwan's Acer and Tatung, plus Japan's Fujitsu, NEC and Toshiba are among the manufacturers developing tablet PCs, which are expected to go on sale around this time next year.
"I'm already using a tablet PC as my everyday computer," Mr Gates told delegates in the MGM Grand Garden Arena. "It's a PC that is virtually without limits - and within five years, I predict that it will be the most popular form of PC sold in America."
Most companies that have developed computers for handwritten input convert the user's handwriting into text. In Microsoft's design, the handwriting recognition is done in the background, while the handwritten text is left as it is.
The difference between real ink and "rich digital ink" is that the computer-based version can be edited, searched, sent as email, and generally manipulated the same way as word processed text.
The main advantages of the tablet PC are that it is portable, so it can be used almost anywhere, and that it can be used by large numbers of people who cannot type. This could broaden the market for personal computers.
However, what may be more important to the PC industry is that the tablet PC provides manufacturers with a new gadget to sell to existing users at a time when sales of desktop PCs are in decline.
As well as showing off tablet PCs to an enthusiastic audience of more than 10,000, Mr Gates helped with a demonstration of the Xbox games console, which is also based on some of the NT (new technology) Windows code used in XP.
According to Mr Gates, Microsoft has so far sold more than 7m copies of Windows XP, which is three times as many as Windows 95 in the same period.
Mr Gates said he was having a memorable week with the keynote speech, his guest appearance on the Frasier television series, the US launch of the Xbox on Thursday, and the release of the Harry Potter film on Friday. "I want to go on record," said Mr Gates, "that I was dressing that way before Harry Potter was born."
