Now I have a tablet for my skritter practice I've been trying to configure Office 2003 so I can write characters directly into Word. I've managed to get the handwriting options, but the only ones available for Chinese characters on the language bar is the drawing pad. Is handwriting recognition supported for Chinese? The articles on the Microsoft website seem to suggest it is but I can only get recognition working for English. My main aim is to enter texts from my classes so I can use them for study on the computer.

My understanding, at least with Win 7's Tablet input, is that you need a Chinese language-capable version of the OS (i.e. Chinese version or Ultimate) to get Chinese handwriting recognition. The only option I can think of for you right now is Bamboo Scribe, though that's not direct input, so it's not optimal.

If you have the home edition, it's still possible, although a bit of a hack. Personally, I never found it to work that well, and didn't take pauses in writing kindly. It'll probably be less hassle to stick to pinyin for PC entry.

The hack: http://tiny.cc/rak8j

Unfortunately I'm still on XP. I might try and install Chinese as the display language and see if that enables the Chinese handwriting options.

Hmm, have you browsed all of the hanzi IME's that XP allows you to install? If I recall correctly, there were some pen input ones, though they might have all been limited to a pad rather than direct input...

I've been using Chinese pen input with Vista for a while. It's OK but not nearly as fast as pinyin input (I only use it when my laptop is in tablet mode with the screen folded over the keyboard). With XP you needed to get the tablet PC edition and I'm not sure about Windows 7.

Thanks Doug - I agree pin yin is quicker - I need it for entering character I don't know yet. I've found an acceptable enough solution in using Plecodict's text editor on my iphone.