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- Warner Crocker
Gail Levy of TabletKiosk pens and interesting blog post on Mobility Matters about the use of Tablet PCs and UMPCs in the hospitality industry, especially as relates to Point of Sale (POS). This type of use for Tablet PCs and UMPCs not only makes sense for those in the restaurant or hospitality biz, but I think it could also be an excellent way to promote the form factors as well.
- Rob Bushway
And you thought our abuse of MobileDemand's xTablet T8700 was bad? Check this out! Here is run down by clip of what they do to the xTablet T8700 Tablet PC Insanity Short demonstration clips showing how much abuse the xTablet rugged Tablet PC can take. By clip number: 1. We actually use an xTablet while it is turned on as a hammer to hammer in a roofing nail to two pieces of 1 by 8 pieces of wood. 2. The xTablet is suspended in air, 36” inches high, as we run a PowerPoint demonstration denoting the number of drops. You can hear the audio clip “And when the machine breaks down, we break down.” It is a most appropriate phrase given how our customers use the tablets in mission critical processes. Our engineer presses a button and the tablet drops out of site. 3. A tablet hits the floor. 4. A tablet hits the floor again. 5. We are zoomed in to another clip of an online trailer of “Speed Racer,” and while the camera zooms out the tablet starts shaking. It’s mounted inside of a Red Devil paint shaker and being shaken to the extreme! We used the accelerometer on the Tablet PC and showed it was taking up to 15 – 17 Gs while being shaken in the paint shaker and still running! 6. We drop a 15 ounce can of corn from about 40 inches directly onto the display of an xTablet. This demonstrates our new screen protection technology we’ve implemented in a few pilot and beta test units – to be released sometime in June or July of 2008. 7. A close up of the same can of corn hitting the display after falling 40 inches. 8. The xTablet rugged Tablet PC is rated to the military standard for ruggedness called MIL STD 810F. This calls for an electronic device to withstand repeated drops from 36 inches high to 2 inches of plywood over concrete. It calls for a total of 26 drops – one each to all flat surfaces, edges, and corners. Our “Tablet PC Torture Chamber” provides a means for this test. You can see the number of drops and each orientation the tablet is placed into in the screen of the tablet. We run a PowerPoint presentation with each slide having the number of that particular drop orientation. You can see the yardstick that gives an indication of the height. We placed a slab of concrete (meant for air conditioners to be placed onto it) on the floor, then the two 1” rated plywood pieces screwed together (as you may know – making it actually 1.5” inches thick). 9. We show a close up of an xTablet on a turning table inside our “Tablet PC Torture Chamber” being drenched by water. 10. We show the tablet again getting drenched while we are connected to YouTube showing a clip of Gene Kelly singing “Singing in the Rain.” 11. The tablet continues to get drenched while it’s running a screen saver of an aquarium. The fish don’t mind so much getting wet. 12. A very close up clip of water running off the corner of the xTablet by the numeric keypad. 13. The xTablet is sitting face up and getting soaked while still operating. 14. The xTablet is face down now and we’ve heated it up so the CPU fan is running. We pour water directly into the CPU fan and heatsink well with no harmful results! 15. The Tablet PC is again used as a hammer to nail in three nails. Notice the accelerometer attached showing the real time G forces it experiences while hitting the nails. The second and third nails reach all the way through the boards and hit the concrete, so they can’t be nailed any further.
- Rob Bushway
 San Francisco news affiliate KTVU.com recently spent some time at OQO headquarters and took a look at the company behind the "pc that fits in your pocket".
In other OQO news, Fast Company also did a pretty cool write up. Check it out. There it sat, between my desktop PC, my laptop, and my iPhone, its role unclear. I stared at it. Not as handy for email as a smartphone, and more frustrating for word processing than a laptop. Where did the little guy fit? As it turns out, it's not worth trying to wedge the Model 02 between your existing suite of gadgets, because it really works better as a replacement for all of them. It took me a week to figure this out, detaching my monitor from its tower, putting the laptop away and using the docking station to make the OQO both my desktop and on-the-road PC. When on the road, the iPhone still handled quick internet excursions, but when it came time to book a hotel room on the train, or write a long-winded email to my sister in Europe, out came the Model 02. Back in its docking station, the Model 02 left little to be desired from my other PCs; only when it came time to do some work in Adobe CS did I retreat to my Core 2 Duo laptop.
- Rob Bushway
I'm working on an InkShow to highlight some of the new features of Bluebeam PDF Revu 6.0, so I found these latest tips from Bluebeam Insider to be quite beneficial. Is there a way to go back to the old look of Revu, prior to 6.0? While we don't have a time machine to go back to your old Revu interface, with version 6.2 you can now choose "classic mode". This will sync your Revu interface with the color settings you've selected for your Windows desktop. Here's how to change to "classic mode" Am I able to Search a PDF for particular key words? Yes, using the Search tool, you can search not only the current PDF document but you can also search all open documents or even entire folders. Then, check off individual search results to Highlight, Strikethrough or Redact, just to name a few. See the time saving features of Search
- Rob Bushway
 Jeffrey Kent, a loyal GBM reader, was having a heck of a time figuring out why inking was disabled within Office 2007 on his Fujitsu P1620. James Kendrick and I even spent some time helping him through the debugging process. Through many emails back and forth, support calls to Microsoft, and to Fujitsu, it turns out that his custom installation of Office 2007 was the culprit.
It turns out that a customized install of Office may inadvertently remove the inking components necessary for inking within Office apps. Lesson learned: Do a Full / Non Customized Install. Head over to Mobile Barbarian for all the details. This is definitely something the Microsoft Office team needs to look at. It is not a good thing if someone can inadvertently break inking by choosing not to install features that don't appear at all related to inking. While you are on Jeffrey's site, be sure to checkout his vLite tutorial on streamlining a Vista installation.
- Warner Crocker
 This has been an absolutely insane last 5 months for me with a lot happening at the Wayside Theatre where I work. When I say insane, I’m not too far from the literal truth there. In addition thing are, as always, hot and heavy here at GBM as well. Somewhere in there I find time for a few moments of life away from work and the occasional moments for relaxation. A lot of things are changing for me at the theatre as we head into this next season and that will also change my workflow quite a bit.
As I always do, when I’m running through life at 120 miles per hour, I’m constantly re-examining what is working and what is not working for me on a variety of levels. So, I’ve been thinking about how I work and the tools I use when I’m mobile. I’ve been tossing around various scenarios that will keep me productive, and also happy, as I move into yet another season (this will be my 10th) at Wayside Theatre. For what it is worth, here is a sketch of my thinking as I’m re-evaluating.
- Warner Crocker
 The folks at Atozed Software think that they may have an alternative to the TIP on Tablet PCs. Their solution is called Inker. While it doesn’t replace the TIP, (it can run side by side), Inker is designed to reduce the number of pen clicks needed for input and corrections.
The Inker site contains lots more info (including a chart that sumarizes the difference in the number of strokes between Inker and the TIP) and a quick video to show you how it works. I’ll have to install this and check it out.
Here are what they list as Distinctive Features
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Text Tap Activation - No need to hunt around for the TIP icon that appears in random places, simply tap the text field with a pen and Inker activates. This functionality works in most applications, but for those that it does not, simply tap the Inker icon in the system tray.
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Text Corrections - Need to correct existing text? Just select it with the pen when Inker is empty and it will load the text and allow you to correct it.
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No Tabbing - Handwriting and corrections are performed in a single place and handwriting is replaced while you write with recognized text. No need to move around through different modes or screens.
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Improved Recognition - Inker is more accurate than TIP. While it uses the same recognition engine, Inker does more analysis of the input and uses this information to better choose when the recognition results return many candidates.
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Copy/Cut/Paste - Inker has buttons for quick copy/cut/paste. No need to wait for right click functionality, and thus no interference with text selections.
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Correction Gestures - Using simple up/down gestures you can change the case of a word or a letter, using left/right gesture you can insert new letters.
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Advanced Eraser Support - Tap words or letters with the eraser to delete.
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Sizable Input Area - Inker can be zoomed in and out to adjust for your screen size and resolution and achieve best balance between readability and space usage.
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See Through - Inker makes effort to not stay in your way - it becomes translucent and positions automatically on the screen when appropriate so you can see behind it, yet access it again quickly.
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History - Inker keeps texts you have inserted so you can easily reinsert again when needed.
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Favorite Words - You can define custom words or phrases that you can quickly insert in the writing area.
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Input Navigation - Inker allows you to easily fill forms by inserting the text and move to the next or previous form field through specialized insert buttons.
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Specialized Characters - Inker includes several virtual keyboard layouts that can be combined allowing you to optimize the size of Inker window
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Keyboard Corrections - Unlike TIP, you can use the virtual keyboard to correct handwriting recognition.
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Leading Space - To add a leading space, simply write after the leading space marker. No need to use a gesture or the virtual keyboard.
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Quick Alternate Word Selection - Alternative words are conveniently situated in a circle so you can easily find the one that you meant to write.
Hat Tip to jkOnTheRun
- Rob Bushway
HP is running a very nice special on their tx2000z Tablet PC: Save $374 on the HP Pavilion tx2000z Customizable Notebook, includes $150 instant savings, FREE upgrade to 2GB memory,and upgrade to Bluetooth, Free Printer with Mail in Rebate. Ends 5/7 Checkout the $374 savings special here. 
- Warner Crocker
Linda Epstein has just published her 2008 Mother’s Day Gift Guide on TabletPC2.com and it includes everything from the latest Tablet PCs to chocolates. As usual the photos Linda has created are quite lovely to look at. Head over to TabletPC2.com and check out some gifts for you Mom (or yourself.)
- Matt Faulkner
Inside The Box, the Lenovo blog, has an article that talk about something we don't think of here much where people are 'mobile' all the time.. But there are also those that are mobile and also have to be a the desk a lot too. (That's me)
While it is centered around Lenovo computers, the article still puts out an interesting perspective on docking and the designing of docks. I have never seen or been in an office where 'hot desking' was in place, so that take on the dock idea never really crossed my mind:
Customers who use “hot desking” love this compatibility. Hot desking is often used in sales or other environments when users are commonly away from the office. Instead of giving each person a dedicated desk, users can drop in to the office once every so often, find an empty desk, and then sit down and work. This saves real estate space since on average only a small percentage of people will come by the office to work.
Read the full article over on Inside The Box and give comments if you wish. My first comment would be support for at least DVI, HDMI would be a bonus, but not necessary. What's the most important thing for you in a dock?
Survey Link
- Warner Crocker
Congratulations to the Father of Ink Blogging, Mark “Sumocat” Sumimoto. He’s managed to scribble over 1000 Ink posts, on his blog, Sumocat’s Scribbles. That’s alot of digital Ink. He’s also spawned a number of Ink Bloggers, but none has been as consistent or (or as legible) as Sumocat.
- Rob Bushway
When operating a Tablet PC in slate / portrait mode, sometimes you have to think a little differently to do tasks that are second-nature with the keyboard. One of those items is multi-selects. With a keyboard it is easy: click on the first item, then hold down the shift key and click on the last item. Or, hold down the Ctrl key, and select each individual item with your mouse. What about the pen? Here are several tips to accomplish the same productivity shortcuts with a pen: Shift Multi-Selects  Emails in Outlook
- Move your pen to the left of the email icon
- You'll see the pen cursor change from left-pointing cursor to a right-pointing cursor
- Move your pen to the screen and then drag down to select the emails you want to move / delete
Building off of Craig's great Vista Tablet PC post, another option is to modify one of the Pen Flick edit gestures to toggle the Shift key, thus using a gesture to activate the Shift key. You can also assign the shift key to an onscreen press / hold button in the Tablet PC settings. Ctrl Multi-Selects  For Ctrl individual multi-selects ( selecting multiple individual items in a list ) I've assigned a press and hold button to the Ctrl key. You can do this in the Tablet PC settings found in the Control Panel. You'll want to use the Press and Hold option because you have to hold down the Ctrl key while selecting each of the items with your pen, which mimics what you do with the keyboard.
I experimented with a Ctrl gesture for individual multi-selects, but it doesn't work right since there is no way to mimic holding down the Ctrl key with a gesture. Once the gesture is activated, the key stroke activates then deactivates. The press / hold onscreen button is the best solution I've found for Ctrl individual multi-selects.
- Warner Crocker
A short while ago word came down that there would not be a fix for those running Vista X64 machines for the missing Send to OneNote functionality until the next release of OneNote. Daniel Escapa of the OneNote team has posted a workaround that he uses that sort of kinda offers some help in the matter.
Essentially you install a converter program to output image files when you choose to “Print” and use this method to print a TIFF file into OneNote. The downside? The TIFF file isn’t OCR’d so if there is text invovled it won’t be searchable.
I’ll have to give this a try on the HP tx2051.
More details on Dan’s OneNote Blog
- Warner Crocker
 The HP tx2051 Entertainment PC has captured quite a bit of attention because of its very good dual digitizer and its comparatively low price point. Steve Seto is evaluating the HP tx2051 Entertainment Notebook as I am. He's written up another very thorough user review of the device for GBM that covers quite a bit of territory. (Note: I'll be shooting video of the HP tx2051 this weekend).
tx2000 / tx2051 Pavilion Notebook PC A User Review 29 April 2008 Bottom line first: The tx2051 is a competent convertible tablet with many nice features including a pretty reasonable street price. Perhaps in line with this price, I find that this convertible delivers only a slightly-above average tablet experience to the user and that there are a few design choices that seemingly could have been better integrated together. Note that I’m not saying that the tx2051 is poorly done…. I’m saying that it could have, and probably should have, been much better! The story here can’t be summarized in just a couple of sentences, so I invite you to read on… Read more ...
- Craig Pringle
I've often said that it is the applications that you install on your tablet that make it will return the most value. However, having said that there is a lot that you can do to Vista out of the box that will give you a better pen experience. Here are my top tips for getting more out of Vista on your tablet. First up - you need to improve your handwriting recognition. There are several things you can do to increase the percentage of your handwriting that is correctly recognised. - Proactively train the handwriting recognition engine. This can be done in two ways, as shown in the screen shot below (click for a larger image).
I recommend doing the second option first - this runs through a wizard that takes about 20 minutes. the wizard presents a number of sentences that you write in your normal handwriting. The information is collected during the session and then updates the recogniser engine. The first option can be used to focus on specific characters that you are having a problem with. - Write in cursive. I know - it sounds weird, but it is true. Cursive (or joined up) writing is easier for the recogniser to process. In essence, the fewer strokes that make up a word, the better the recogniser will be able to process it.
- As Rob posted recently, turn on Personalised Handwriting Recognition and Automatic Learning. Personalised Handwriting Recognition adds words that are in emails you create to the recogniser. This means that if you have typed something like a place name that might not be in the dictionary you have a better chance of it being correctly recognised when you write it in the TIP or in an ink aware application like Journal. Automatic learning means that every time you pick an alternate when correcting something in the TIP the recogniser is updated. There is an important point to note here - if you use a scratch-out gesture in the TIP or erase the ink and then write it again, the recogniser is not updated. Look to see if there is an alternate.
You can also improve the way you navigate with the pen. Here's how: - Turn on Pen Flicks. By default you get Navigational Flicks, which allow you to page up and page down the active window by flicking the pen up or down; and Forward and Back by flicking the pen to the right or left.
- Go one further and turn on Editing Flicks as well as shown below:
 - If you have problems with getting the flicks to work, drop the sensitivity a bit. It can make a world of difference.
- Remember you don't need to keep the defaults - I know some people who don't want to have delete available as a flick, just in case. Personally I think with Undo there as well, you can't do too much damage but a fun alternative is replace one of the diagonal flicks with the keys to bring up Windows Flip 3d. To do this:
- hit the Customize button on the Flicks tab of the Pen and Input Devices control panel applet (as shown above).
- click the drop down next to the flick you want to replace and select Add...
 - Enter a Name in Name field and then click in the Keys field. Hold down control and windows keys and press tab. The result should look like the shot below, click Save:
 - It's not all about flicks - another navigation tip is to remember to use the panning hand in Internet Explorer! Look for the hand icon in the menubar.
Click that and you can drag the page up and down with your pen. Another way Vista adds value is that you can have multiple actions assigned to most hardware buttons. For most buttons you can assign an action to the button being pressed and an second action to pressing and holding the button. This effectively doubles the number of things you can do with hardware buttons but most hardware manufacturers don't take advantage of this. - Add press and hold actions to your tablet's hardware buttons. Here's some suggestions:
- Launch the Mobility Center - this gives you quick access to a bunch of useful tools. (There is also a keyboard shortcut for this Windows Key+X)
 - Launch Windows Flip or Windows Flip 3D - depending on which your graphics processor supports. I have this assigned to the press and hold action for the center button of my D-Pad. This means that if I want to switch to a different window that what is in front I just hold the center button, then use the direction buttons on the D-Pad to select the window I want, then press the center button again to select it. This means I can quickly switch between windows on my slate using just the D-Pad.
- Turn the display off. Having a quick way to turn the screen off is a great way to squeeze the most life out of your battery. Some tablets don't seem to like using a press and hold action for this and they will turn the display off and then come straight back on. On my X60 I've remapped the rotate button to rotate on press and hold and I use the press to turn the display off.
A little performance can go a long way - even if you don't think you need things to run faster, less CPU cycles will use less power. - Warner posted about this - double the height of the taskbar. This actually provides slightly better performance because the graphics process or does not have to deal with the edge of the Start Orb overlapping the bottom of windows.
Last but not least - tweak the TIP for speed! Not everyone likes this, but I find it much more efficient. - Insert text by pointing at insert. In the tools menu at the top of the TIP select Options. On the Settings tab select "Pointing to the Insert Button inserts the text"
- Open the TIP by pointing at it. Also in the tools menu at the top of the TIP select Options, then the Opening tab. Select "Point to the Input Panel icon or tab to open the Input Panel.
- Get the input panel tab out of your way when in laptop mode - still on the opening tab clear the "Show the Input Panel tab when the pen is out of range" checkbox. Note - don't do this on a touch screen!
That's a baker's dozen of tips to help you get more from your tablet. It was getting to be a bit of a long post - so if you want more detail on any of the tips leave a comment and I'll do a follow-up how to post. Happy inking.
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The vision of GottaBeMobile.com is to become the definitive source for mobile computing news, reviews, and commentary, as well as the home for the mobile community to discover and discuss these issues. When you think mobile, think GottaBeMobile.com.
The mobile computing space is one of the fastest growing and fastest changing spaces, and indeed industries worldwide. Within that constantly evolving and face paced world, GBM covers a range of spaces and technologies including Tablet PCs, UMPCs, MIDs, Ultra-portable computers, operating systems, software, natural human interfaces, accessories, mobile connectivity solutions, and other solutions that appeal to the mobile user.
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