the first tablet like device I remember with HWR was released at the 1993 Comdex Las Vegas, same year as the public release of Linux (they had a small table in a side building off the main convention center and were SWAMPED, ran out of CD's on day one!!) but the device was designed around the already familiar legal sized "yellow pad". It was actually not expensive either. But it never seemed to catch on and over the years I lost track of what happened to the thing.
I have to admit I've almost bought the Livescribe setup several times. But keep holding off because I just don't want more paper to keep track of and really I WANT the digital equivalent of an Etch-a-Sketch with HWR. Color would be awesome of course.
Combine it with voice control and dictation and I am done needs wise for a computer. I would be safe knowing no matter how bad my hands get I will still be able to work if I can dictate as well as use a pen to draw or write.
Having used the very basic version of the newest generation of Dragon's NaturallySpeaking (maybe it's not called Dragon anymore but crap it's changed hands so many times over the years I forget the newest name...
) But I used it on the iPod Touch 4 and was extremely impressed with it's accuracy and speed. And that is a crippled version of NaturallySpeaking that not only has a pretty limited feature set (it actually is FINE for just taking and transcribing notes on the fly) but it NEEDS that pesky web connection or it simply refuses to work. The reason for that seems to be it offloads the transcribing to the cloud rather than on the device. Not a fan of that but given the paltry RAM on these iOS devices it makes sense, I suppose.
So give me dictation/voice control as well as HWR as my final two needs and that gets me the computer I've wanted since PC's came to exist.