Mobile PC (Tablet PC) - Thoughts and Ideas : Tablet PC

Windows 7 RC Build 7100 and Tablet PCs - Very happy so far

wnewquay — Wed, 13 May 2009 06:09:00 GMT

I've got Windows 7 RC running on most of my Tablet PCs and I am very happy with the results. This includes Tablet PCs that were originally shipped with Windows XP Tablet PC Edition. Except for some minor issues like getting screen rotation to work on a Motion M1400, things are working as well, if not better than they did XP. Certainly better than they did in Vista. I just got a new external hard drive so I could do complete backups of my last few production machines and then I'll load Windows 7 RC on those too. But overall things are looking great.

As far as I can tell:

If something (software) worked with Vista - it is working with Windows 7.
If something (hardware) worked with Vista - it is working as fast and probably faster in Windows 7.
If something worked in XP and Vista, it is still working in Windows 7.
I'm not noticing any decrease in battery life. I might actually be getting more run-time, but this has never been a huge issue for me.

Overall, I am very pleased and that's why I ran out today to get another external hard drive so I could do full computer backups on the remaining machines that are still running Vista.

I'll fill you in on the details when I get everything converted.

Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 and .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1

wnewquay — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 23:00:08 GMT

Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 and .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1

are available for download

There is also a download for Visual Studio 2008 Express Edition with Service Pack 1. You can read about all the changes in the overview.

Now just in case you are not a developer, there is an other treat.

Autoruns for Windows version 9.3

For people running Tablet PCs there seems to be a passion for understanding and controlling processes, especially those that start automatically. Autoruns is a great tool for finding and controlling all of those.

This utility, which has the most comprehensive knowledge of auto-starting locations of any startup monitor, shows you what programs are configured to run during system bootup or login, and shows you the entries in the order Windows processes them. These programs include ones in your startup folder, Run, RunOnce, and other Registry keys. You can configure Autoruns to show other locations, including Explorer shell extensions, toolbars, browser helper objects, Winlogon notifications, auto-start services, and much more. Autoruns goes way beyond the MSConfig utility bundled with Windows Me and XP.

LinkedIn and Tablet PCs

wnewquay — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 22:10:00 GMT

I tossed out a question on LinkedIn today.

Do you own a Tablet PC?

Do you use the Inking or Touch capabilities?
Always / Often / Rarely
More or less than you expected?
Would you get another one

That was seven hours ago - and in that time there have been 16 answers. That is a pretty enthusiastic response compared to similar questions asked over the past couple of years. Perhaps this is an indicator of heightened awareness, and perhaps even enthusiasm. Check out the answers. It's interesting to see what people are thinking.

People's Answers at LinkedIn

Background:

I was invited to LinkedIn awhile back and thanks go out to John Hill (http://tabletpcbuzz.com) for that. I hate to say how long it's been since he did that and I joined. I was busy at the time and I didn't give it much thought, then or since. Recently Gaelen O'Connell (http://mindjet.com) encouraged me to revisit LinkedIn.

Tablet Enhancements for Outlook is now Free!

wnewquay — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 10:30:09 GMT

This is great news from Josh Einstein.

From the Einstein Technologies site

Download TEO 3.0 for free... no strings attached!

Download Tablet Enhancements for Outlook and find out why so many Tablet PC users will never use Outlook on their tablets without it. There's no expiration date, no limits, etc. It's just free.

I have been using TEO for years and wouldn't use Outlook on a Tablet PC without it. If you don't have it yet, go get it now and find out why.

http://www.tabletoutlook.com/teo/Try.aspx

Thank you Josh!

21 Great Technologies That Failed

wnewquay — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 12:07:00 GMT

PC Mag still doesn't get it.

Imagine including the Tablet PC as one of the 21 Great Technologies That Failed

Tablet PCs (2002)
Rather than typing on a PC, why not write on it as though it were a pad of paper? And have the CPU interpret your chicken scratch, sort your notes, and generally work in a much smarter way? Based on sales, it seems the world still isn't ready for the Tablet PC. Nevertheless, Gates is convinced you'll eventually love this system.

I think the failure here, is that PC Mag doesn't comprehend that having the Tablet PC features mainstreamed into Vista is a great success.

The Buzz is back - a lot faster and looking good.

wnewquay — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 12:47:00 GMT

John Hill at TabletPCBuzz has completed the transition to the new forum software. He writes.

As of today, June 2nd, we have successfully migrated all the users and posts from our previous (Snitz) forum software to our new (vBulletin) forums.

I hope you like the improvement. I am very appreciative of all your patience.

If you are an existing user, you will have to reset your password. It takes just a minute and is an automated process through email.

TO GET YOUR PASSWORD RESET, ENTER YOUR USERNAME AND THEN CLICK 'LOGIN' - THIS WILL TAKE YOU TO THE PASSWORD RESET PROCESS.

It will take 24-48 hours for the DNS to point the tabletpcbuzz.com domain to its new location.

If you have any questions or problems, please post here or email me at john@alltp.com

Thanks again for supporting the Buzz!

John referred to password reset process. Here it is in a little more detail I wrote for someone yesterday.

Go to the Buzz message board as usual
Click the Log In button. If you password has not been reset you will get the Invalid Password Screen
Then click the link as though you have forgotten your password.
Follow the prompts to have the system send you a new temporary password
Follow the prompts in the resulting email and
Set a new password
Two minutes round trip. Well at least that is all it took for me. Others have reported that it takes a little longer.

When you cruise around the updated forum, there will appear to be fewer topics. That is likely because the default filter is set to one month. You can change that at the bottom of the screen. From what I can see, pretty much all the history is there. There may have been a very few posts that got lost in the transition during the past few days. but other than that it looks okay to me.

So head on over to Tablet PC Buzz and check it out. It still maintains a character of its own, with the same respect, courtesy, and great information that you have come to expect.

OneNote and Education Blog

wnewquay — Thu, 22 May 2008 17:01:00 GMT

Mike Tholfsen - Test Manager of the OneNote Team has kicked off his blog, OneNote and Education.

I am interested in how OneNote can help enhance the learning environment and I believe OneNote will be a primary tool for 21st century education. We also plan to have other guest bloggers from the OneNote team and from other Microsoft teams post education-related entries here. John Guin is still writing the OneNote Testing blog so even though I'm the test manager, this blog will be about OneNote and education.

Because there are so many things happening right now with OneNote and education, we wanted to start this blog to have a dialog with the education community, as well as share ideas, resources, and gather feedback from teachers, students and faculty. We also hope to point to examples of great things that educators and students are doing today with OneNote and education. In addition to K-12 and Higher Education, you can also expect to see topics on eLearning, training and on-boarding with OneNote. Many companies, including Microsoft, are delivering eLearning solutions using OneNote...

Mike's blog entry continues

OneNote strikes me as the main application in the Microsoft Office suite that seems to have been designed to really use ink, but I am sure that I have missed some great opportunities to better utilize it in my Education related activities.

I am looking forward to Mike's ongoing thoughts.

Link: OneNote and Education.

Use Windows Meeting Space to Mirror Your Tablet PC to a Projector

wnewquay — Thu, 22 May 2008 00:17:00 GMT

I use my Tablet PC when I do public speaking. I like to use it to display and build MindMaps using MindManager or draw diagrams with SketchBook Pro. This should be very straightforward, but it gets interesting when I want to display my Tablet PC with a projector, and to walk around the room at the same time. (Try that with at conventional laptop machine).

I have been using MaxiVista for this application for years. (see: Wireless Presentations with a Tablet PC with MaxiVista)

MaxiVista has been great but there are some issues with Vista. You can work around them, but when I got an Toshiba M700, I thought it would be worthwhile to consider some Vista based alternatives.

Just a note: MaxiVista works well on XP or in an environment where one machine is running Vista, and the other is not. You have to been running an XDDM video driver on the Tablet PC if it is running Windows Vista.

Windows Meeting Space

If you are running Windows Vista on your Tablet PC and have Vista on a desktop PC attached to a projector then consider using Windows Meeting Space to connect the two machines and mirror your Tablet PC on the Desktop PC and from there, display it on the projector. It is very quick to set up, and in my testing it has been really stable.

The quick overview:

Start Windows Meeting Space on both PCs.
Create a meeting and "join" it.
On the Tablet PC - Share your desktop

I have set out more detailed notes for this in: Windows Meeting Space to Mirror Your Tablet PC on a Projector

Technorati Tags: Tablet PC,Presentations,Teaching,MaxiVista,Windows Vista,Windows Meeting Space,MindManager

LiveJournal Tags: Tablet PC,Presentations,Teaching,MaxiVista,Windows Vista,Windows Meeting Space,MindManager

PC Mag writes about Top Tablet PCs

wnewquay — Wed, 14 May 2008 22:01:00 GMT

PC Mag does a quick roundup of several of the heavy hitters in the current Tablet PC landscape. The introduction is pretty positive.

Slate tablets and convertible tablets have the portability of a light laptop, with the added flexibility of a touch screen. Here are a few of our favorites.

by Tony Hoffman

Not all workers have the luxury of being able to sit down in order to use a laptop. If you have to input information or write notes while on your feet, a tablet PC may be the way to go. You have your choice between a slate tablet, which has no keyboard—you write or input data with a stylus or fingertip—and a convertible tablet, with an integrated keyboard and a screen that can be swiveled between laptop and tablet mode.

It is nice to see Vista get a positive acknowledgement here.

... All of the convertible tablets here run Windows Vista, which integrates tablet functions and provides particularly good handwriting recognition.

Read the whole article: Top Tablet PCs

Inker - vs - ActiveWords part II

wnewquay — Mon, 12 May 2008 14:18:00 GMT

Wow,

Pete at ActiveWords support spotted one of my postings about this conflict and wrote to me to suggest turning off the ActiveWords Buffer. Did you catch that? This was a proactive support response. I was going to wait for a response from the Inker developers before troubling the folks at ActiveWords. They were onto this before I asked.

Pete wrote:

To turn off the ActiveWord buffer -

From the ActiveWords MonitorBar Menu, select "Options...".

Select the tab "Operating Mode".

Press the "Advanced..." button.

Check "Disable ActiveWord buffer".

Close the "Options" dialog.

NOTE: When working with the ActiveWords Buffer turned off, you may need to pause your typing when executing a "Text Substitution" ActiveWord to avoid character overlapping.

In some limited testing this morning, this seems to be working.

Thanks to Pete at ActiveWords.

I should mention that the Tablet Input Panel (TIP) works fine with ActiveWords running (without the modification) I was going to wait to see what the people at Inker were going to do about this in their next build. See: Inker Users Discussion.

Inker - a replacement for the TIP (Tablet Input Panel)?

wnewquay — Mon, 05 May 2008 04:11:00 GMT

Inker - from ATOZED software

This looks very interesting. It is still in beta with plenty of issues being discussed on their Inker-Users discussion on Yahoo Groups.

Here is an excerpt from the website. It certainly bears watching.

What is Inker?

Inker is a replacement for the Windows pen input system. Inker is more efficient to use and more customizable than TIP.

Inker includes all of the functionality of TIP and more, however Inker and TIP can run side by side. Installing and using Inker does not disable or remove TIP, however we suggest you turn off the automatic pop up features of TIP.

Inker uses the same writing recognition engine as TIP does, however Inker focuses on reducing pen clicks for input and corrections through a streamlined user interface. Inker is written in C# and WPF.

Windows Vista - Tablet & Laptop Features

wnewquay — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 03:27:00 GMT

I'm not much of a fan of YouTube, but found to link to this at GottaBeMobile. It's probably worth the time to watch.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHSANWgrPYY&v2

Thanks to AntiMatter over at gottabemobile.com http://www.gottabemobile.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=3554

If the video does not play properly please see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHSANWgrPYY&v2

View Video
Format: ???
Duration: 5:39

MindManager® 7 - May 30, 2007

wnewquay — Mon, 28 May 2007 02:30:00 GMT

I have been using mind maps for decades. In 1999 I found MindManager. It became my personal productivity tool of choice. And as soon as there was a version for the Tablet PC - MindManager was the killer app that let me to get my first Tablet PC. And isn't that the definition of a 'killer app'? An application so compelling that you buy hardware to allow you to use it.

To this day, I use MindManager daily.

Generate new ideas
Planning for all but the most trivial documents and tasks
Taking notes
Presentations

Head on over to MindJet.com and find out about the soon to be released MindManager® 7.

I can't wait.

OneNote Calendar from Josh Einstein

wnewquay — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 06:10:00 GMT

Josh Einstein has been busy and has just created his OneNote Calendar.

Josh describes it this way.

It's an application that presents your OneNote pages in chronological order according to their last modified date on a calendar so that you can see your notes by when you wrote them, not where.
You can preview the note pages in the app or double click a calendar item to open it in OneNote.
Full screen mode will probably be pretty useful on origami devices.
If the resolution gets too constrained it turns off the preview pane by default.

And when I asked about the price, it's totally free.

I've installed this on the Asus R2H and the interface works really well for touch. The controls are intuitive. Things are working just as you hope they will.

Nice work Josh!

http://www.josheinstein.com/download/onenotecal/publish.htm

To V or not to V, that is the qVestion

wnewquay — Sun, 11 Mar 2007 19:24:00 GMT

I'm sold, period, flat out, no questions asked, no looking back, every machine around me that will run it, is running Vista.

Why?

Most of my machines are Tablet PCs and the improvements in the user interface for a Tablet PC user make it well worth the time it takes to adapt to Vista. See: Tablet PC Features in Vista

I had quite a debate with someone who kept trying to shoehorn Vista into a box called 'trivial eye-candy user-interface upgrades'. And that's okay, because to him Vista means a change that will trigger replacing a couple hundred machines that he's been tasked with maintaining since 2001. No wonder he's resisting the change.

Every time I

Click and KNOW that the machine 'got it',
Make multiple selections with check boxes,
See the Tablet Input Panel recognize a letter and offer to let autocomplete take over
Realize that handwriting recognition has learned something as bizarre as an email address (after one correction)
Marvel at how well the speech recognition works
Use Search from the Start Button
Use Search in a Windows Explorer window

I am glad I switched to Vista.

There are a few things that I found troublesome at first (like turning on file extensions so that I could more easily distinguish between five files with the same name), but the more I use Vista, the more I am convinced that it was better to switch than wait.

When I started installing betas and release candidates on older machines (going back some 18 months ago I guess) I was pleasantly surprised at how well things worked. I still am.

I have a Thinkpad A31p (circa 2002) that is as functional running Vista and Office 2007 as it ever was running Windows XP and Office 2000. I only mention this because that machine (that this month is probably five years old), did not require any upgrades (ok - I already had a gig of RAM in it). And as far as I can tell, I have not had to sacrifice anything for having made the change. I just mention this because at least for this venerable beast, Vista did not put it in it's grave, but renewed it's usefulness. When I gave this to a relative I had to transfer programs and data from an older machine. Using the new Vista utility to do this, the job was done in about an hour.

The interesting test was to watch as someone who 'just wants to use the computer to get things done' took to Vista very quickly. No support calls for me - thank goodness.

I think about the hesitation with which I have passed computers to older relatives. I know that I will have considerably less concern now as the next generation to move on will be loaded with Vista.

I made the switch and am delighted.

How about you?

Join me in the forums at MobilePCWorld and we'll talk.

TabletKiosk / Stolen Sahara Slates and UMPC eos

wnewquay — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 00:34:00 GMT

From Gail:

The Tablet PC and UMPC fan base is often referred to as a community. This is why I am reaching out to the online Tablet and UMPC fan base so that we can all respond in a unified front.

On Sunday, February 11, the TabletKiosk warehouse in Torrance, CA was robbed. The thieves stole a considerable number of Sahara Slate PCs, eo v7110s and eo v7210 units.

We are working with the police to catch the perpetrators and retrieve the stolen units and are exploring every possible avenue. This is why we are asking for assistance from the Tablet and UMPC community who often uncover significant information about Tablet PCs and UMPCs online.

The stolen units are both pre-configured and configured units as well as some customers’ personal machines.

If you find information about any eo UMPC or Sahara Slate PCs for sale which seem too good to be true, I would appreciate if you would send the information to my attention. A reward will be provided for the person who provides us with information leading to the culprit.

Gail Levy
TabletKiosk
gail@tabletkiosk.com

MaxiVista Version 3

wnewquay — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 16:01:00 GMT

Here is another one of my "use it every day" applications. Maxivista. If you have read any of my postings related to productivity enhancing tools you know that I use MaxiVista for remote mirroring when lecturing with my Tablet PCs. I am very excited about the new version. Gunnar Bartels must have been reading my mind when he added these new features and improvements.

Version 3 now supports Vista!

Enhanced clipboard synchronization
MaxiVista now also synchronizes formatted text, bitmaps and files (Windows XP/Vista only) between the computer's clipboards:
Improved Remote Control
The Viewer program can now operate as a Windows service which allows you to log onto a locked secondary PC:
New displaying options
MaxiVista supports latest widescreen resolutions and ultra high virtual resolutions (up to 4,800x2,400 pixels) with new zoom/shrink-to-fit auto-panning modes and a freely resizable viewer program in window mode:
More

Up to 50% performance boost
New Intel-optimized compression algorithms and the network parameter optimizer increase the performance of the extended screen playback up to 50%
MaxiVista now remembers the last used mode (extended screen vs. remote control vs. mirroring)
Deactivation of extended screen can now be configured when secondary PC is being locked
Screensaver synchronization between the computers
Detailed network parameters settings to tweak performance
Customizable hotkeys for all major options

Look for a review soon on http://TabletWiki.com

Link: Maxivista