ASB lifts Tablets for testing

By RICHARD WOOD

ASB Bank will be the first company in New Zealand to trial Microsoft's new Tablet PC.

The 10-week field trial - involving four Tablets - begins this week and involves the bank's mobile sales force.

The bank's general manager technology operations and property, Clayton Wakefield, said the combination of technologies offered by the Tablet - pressure sensitive pen input with handwriting recognition, "wireless broadband" and speech recognition - had huge potential.

Also, the screen could be turned to show the customer and, under recent legislation, [The Electronic Transactions Act] signatures were acceptable signed directly on the screen, he said.

"The mobility is the big thing.

"It's very usable and very manageable and a size that people will actually port around," he said.

Microsoft has set manufacturing specifications for the slim notebook style of device which uses a handwriting stylus for input. Several manufacturers - including Acer, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard, Toshiba and Viewsonic - released a range of models this week.

Some models did not have keyboards; in other models the keyboards could be swivelled out of the way or detached.

ASB Bank has experimented with a pre-release Tablet and has developed investment adviser software during the past four weeks.

The software uses ActiveDocs document automation technology from Auckland software exporter Keylogix. A mortgage manager application is also planned.