During one of the many discussions had among MVPs at the MVP Global Summit a couple of weeks ago I made a throw away comment that I late thought was actually a really good idea.
One of the other MVPs commented about how some people who have been given a convertible tablet at work have never rotated the screen around into slate mode. This is something I have encountered as well and I have even met people who did not know that you could rotate the screen around!
The comment I made was that OEMs who ship convertibles should ship them in slate mode. This got a good laugh at the time, but the more I think about it the more I think it is a good idea.
The OEM could stick one of those transparent overlays on the screen with illustrated instructions explaining how to convert from slate to tablet and back.
What this would do for the Out of Box Experience would be profound. A user's first experience with their new tablet PC would be in slate mode. They would instantly receive a nudge to get them thinking about ways they could use their new computer other than the traditional clamshell notebook experience. In addition to this the user would be educated at the outset on how to convert their machine. All this with minimal additional cost to the OEMs.
Naturally - if anyone is involved in deploying tablet PCs in their organization then this is something you could act upon without waiting for the OEM. Once you have deployed your organization's standard image onto the machine, put the unit is slate mode before putting it back into the box to deploy to the user.