I got to play with a Genius G-Note 7100 which is a hand held "tablet". It uses ordinary paper which you write on using special pens and the writing and drawings are saved in the 32mb of battery backed ram. When you connect it up to your PC, it transfers the pages to your PC, where handwriting can be "recognised" using the eval software that comes with it. The data files are saved in a vector format, and there is at least one open source program that converts the data to SVG. Using the application provided you can save to jpg or pdf. The aim is to somehow write on a printed PDF, and to transfer that to the PC easily. There's no clip on the 7100 so registration could be an issue. I'm not sure how easy it would be to capture the data into fields ... ie. it looks to be hard at present.
Well, the G-Note certainly beats a laptop for use outside in the summer sun ... lighter and actually visible. Now if only my handwriting were legible.
