In the process of installing all my software and I just came across something strange.
Vista popped up one of its little problems and solutions dialog and informed me that
there were new solutions for some of the issues found on my computer. Clicking
through I see three new solutions listed - which are all driver updates. These
included the Authentic AES2501 Finger Print reader, the Infinion TPM and the Motion
Button Driver. Since I knew I did not have a driver for the fingerprint reader
yet I click on that to view the solution. What I got was this message saying
that I need to install the driver from the manufacturer’s website.
Why is this weird? Well clicking on the link takes me to a
page on HP’s website, not Authentic’s. On that page there is a driver for
the fingerprint reader, but it also relies on HP’s security suite, so I’m not going
to grab it. But very stange…
Woe is me! My much loved little LS800 is down and out. After using it
for a couple of days with
its 2GB RAM upgrade I grabbed it off the desk and headed out. On the train on
the way into work I pulled it out of my bag and flicked the switch. The power
light came on and nothing else happened. Uh-oh. We have a problem.
Naturally because the RAM had just been upgraded I suspected the new RAM as the issue.
I swapped out the new RAM and replaced the old, but to no avail.
When I opened the LS800 to swap back the RAM there were some indications that make
me think the unit may have gotten very hot. I think that this is the root cause
of the problem. While I can’t prove it I have a theory about what happened.
I have my tablets configured to sleep when I hit the power button. On occasion
since upgrading to Vista the LS has failed to sleep properly when I hit the switch.
When this happens you need to force the unit off by holding the switch down.
When in this insomniac state the unit will not go into shutdown to protect itself
if it gets to hot. I know this as I had this happen to me once before when I
flicked the power switch and chucked the LS800 into my bag to change location.
When I pulled it out again it was in this hung state and stinking hot.
The other time the LS gets hot is when it is on power. This is where I think
I went wrong. It was late and I was tired. I’d been running off battery
for several hours so the charge level was low. I flicked the switch to send
the LS to sleep, plugged in the power and went to bed. I left the LS flat on
the desk, not propped up as I would if I was leaving it plugged in and on. I
don’t recall watching it to make sure it did actually sleep.
While I don’t believe that putting
2GB of RAM in the LS800 caused the issue I hasten to point out that I don’t believe
a 2GB upgrade to the LS800 is not supported or recommended by Motion. It is
certainly not supported by me - so if you are looking at that upgrade be aware that
it is at your own risk.
I’m hoping to get the LS800 fixed, but in the interim I’m using my Samsung Q1P as
my main tablet. This is an interesting and very different experience and I am
sure I’ll have much to blog about from this unintentional experiment.
I stopped by to see Hugo Ortega on the way home this afternoon to help him restore
a Vista Complete PC backup onto one of his many devices.
While I was there I caught the
bug that has been afflicting Hugo recently and cracked open my LS800 and put in
a 2GB DIMM just to see what would happen. What happened is it just worked like
a charm. Since I was unwilling to then part with said RAM I told Hugo to get TegaTech to
invoice me for it.
Now the LS800 is running really well. It really needs a rebuild as I have been
installing and uninstalling a bunch of software I have been evaluating recently and
much of that has been pre-release. However even in it’s sub-optimal and in need
of a rebuild state it is noticeably faster now.
Hugo snapped a sneaky snap of my beautiful LS with her clothes off - which he is going
to send me later to post. I’m sure it will end up on his
blog as well.
Yesterday I posted about entering
text with the Tablet Input Panel. Once you have mastered text entry with the TIPI
recommend you look of some of the options you can tweak to change the way the TIP
works. The TIP is actually quite flexible and you can adjust it to suit how you work.
To get started click on the Tools drop down in the TIP’s menu bar and select Options,
as shown below.
This will bring up the options dialog, which will be similar to the one shown sow.
I’m gathering screenshots on Vista. for the most port the options available on XP
are the same, but there may be some that are missing in XP Tablet Edition.
One of the important things to note we is the Restore button in the Restore
default settings area. Don’t be afraid to experiment as you can always get back
to the original settings.
On the Settings tab you can tweak where the TIP icon appears. you can also change
the insert buttons behavior so that hovering the point over the insert button will
insert the current text (without tapping the button). I find this a great time saver
but I do know other people who find it annoying.
The AutoComplete function is only available in Vista. It is on by default and I, personally,
would leave it that way. I posted about autocomplete a while ago in this
post.
On the Opening tab you can control how you launch the TIP.
Similar to tweaking the insert buttons you configure the tip to launch when you point
at the TIP tab or the TIP icon.
On machines with lower end graphics you might want to consider clearing the checkbox
that says Show the Input Panel sliding open from the tab.
Also, if you find the TIP tab gets in the way of what you are working on then you
can clear the Show the Input Panel tab when the per is out of range checkbox.
Lastly on the Writing Pad and Character Pad tabs I like reducing the thickness of
the ink to Extra Fine Point, which gives me more room when writing in the TIP.
There are more settings there that I have not covered. Experiment to find the settings
that work best for you.
Not for show on any of the stands but when I saw Hugo he gave me a quick look at the OQO
02.
The unit he was sporting had the extended battery fitted and this gives it ~5 hours
battery life. The display is a bright, clear and readable 5″ with 800×480 native
resolution. It was the model with the 1.5GHz processor and was running Windows
XP Tablet Edition. The same unit is also available with Windows Vista pre-installed.
The slide out thumb board is quite usable.
Another cool feature is the two scroll bars on the edge of the screen.
Dragging on these will scroll the active window.
Quite a functional little device.
Walking the floor at CeBIT Australia I dropped into the Motion Computing stand.
There is a lot of interest in the Motion range. The C5 is
drawing considerable interest.
However one of the coolest things on the stand - IMO - is easy to miss and you really
need to play with it for 5 minutes to really get in touch with the unique experience
that is WriteTouch.
On the stand is one of the new LE1700
units equipped with the WriteTouch option. This is Motion Computing’s answer
to the dual mode touch and active digitizer model and it works very well. If
you are attending CeBIT Australia, then make sure you drop in and check this out.
Before WriteTouch there were basically two ways that touch and digitizer have been
implemented together. The first is to turn the touch screen on and off based
on the proximity of the pen. If the pen is in range then touch is disabled.
If the pen is out of range then touch comes on. This is also known as the soft
switch approach.
The second approach to this problem that emerged was a hard switch approach.
In this model there is a hardware button on the device that toggles touch on and off.
WriteTouch is a combination of these two approaches and could best be described as
a hard switch on, soft switch off. What I mean is that touch is disabled completely
if the pen is in range, hence the soft off. However you have to proactively
enable touch when the pen is out of range. The difference is that there is no
button to enable touch. You simply double tap the screen with your finger and
touch is enabled. This gives you the ease of use of the soft approach without
the accidental screen clicks that you sometimes get with the hard approach.
Very, very cool.
There are some other differences between the WriteTouch tablets and other touch enabled
tablets I have used in the past. These differences stem from the fact that it
is not a resistive touch screen - it is capacitive touch. A
resistive touch screen responds to pressure and therefore needs to be a little spongy
so there is give - i.e. something to press. The capacitive touch screen, however,
recognizes your finger as a finger because it is conductive. This means that
the Capacitive screen does not need to be spongy and the WriteTouch Le1700 has a writing
feel just like any of the other Motion slates. Another side effect of this is
that you have to use the fleshy part of your finger, not your fingernail or a ballpoint
pen.
Overall I was very impressed by the WriteTouch LE1700 and look forward to getting
one to play with for a bit longer in the near future.
One of the toys I picked up while in the US recently is a Samsung Q1P that has been
provided for evaluation.
Physically the Q1P is looks pretty much identical to the Q1 and the Q1B. The
shiny black finish gives the unit a smart, sophisticated look and the Q1P will look
right at home your lounge. Here’s a quick tour of the exterior.
Across the top you of the unit you will find…
A) The power switch
B) The Windows Security button (a recessed button that sends Ctrl-Alt-Delete - you
need to use the stylus to press it)
C) A Compact Flash Slot covered by a dust flap, rather than a removable insert
D) RJ-45 network port. This is also covered by an attached dust cover.
On the left side there is a mini AV output, a USB port headphone jack, volume control
and a lock switch. The lock switch disables the touch screen and the hardware
buttons so you can’t do anything by accident.
On the right side of the unit there power input, a second USB port and a VGA connector
under a dist cover.
On the front left below the screen there are four indicator lights. Left to
right they are drive activity, network, charge indicator and power indicator.
There are also two microphones on the front bezel.
There are hardware buttons and controls on the front of the unit on both the left
and right of the screen.
On the left there is a directional control and a resolution zooming button.
The directional control basically emulates the directional keys on a standard keyboard.
Pressing the zooming button toggles between the native resolution (800×480), emulated 800×600
and emulated 1024×600. When zooming to a resolution higher than the native resolution,
there is naturally some loss of fidelity in the image, but it is handy for dialogs
that don’t fit into a screen 480 pixels high.
On the Right there is a control that looks like a D-pad, but is actually four programmable
buttons. These are called the User Buttons and Samsung provides a utility to
create and switch between profiles that assigns different actions to each of the buttons.
Below the User Buttons are an Enter button and a button that brings up the menu utility
provided by Samsung.
One of the fantastic design features of the Samsung UMPCs is the integrated stands.
When not in use these sit flush with the back of the unit.
The larger of the two stands props the unit upright.
The smaller stand props the unit up at quite a shallow angle, for better
on table viewing.
The initial impression is that the Q1P is a little heavier than it looks like it should
weigh, but there is a lot in the package to account for that. The petit size
belies the power in the package. The Q1P boasts a 60GB hard drive, 1GB of RAM
and a 1GHz Intel Pentium M processor. That is more than enough to run Windows
Vista, and in fact that is just what I am doing.
More on using the Q1P and the general Vista-gami experience coming soon.
awesome little kid
Author: gmastafunk
Keywords: rock, burgin hunner randy dowling awesome rock
Added: April 3, 2007
Find out more and free information on rock.
Sell Stylish Mp4 Player 1.8 Inch Screen
Features:
1) 8-in-1 MP3 / MP4 player: USB disk, MP3/WMA player, repeat, recording,
built-in FM
Looking for rock?Find exactly what you want today.
The Beatles T-shirt ROCK MUSIC 70s GIRLS SHIRTS PUNK M
 |
US $9.99 (0 Bid) End Date: Wednesday Apr-04-2007 8:30:00 PDT Buy It Now for only: US $12.50 Bid now | Buy it now | Add to watch list |
The 5.6.7.8’s Rock & Roll Santa 7″ TRASHWOMEN garage
 |
US $4.99 (0 Bid) End Date: Wednesday Apr-04-2007 8:37:09 PDT Bid now | Add to watch list |
NEW ROCK II WIRELESS CONTROLLER FOR PS2 GUITAR HERO 1 2
 |
US $39.99 (0 Bid) End Date: Wednesday Apr-04-2007 8:38:54 PDT Bid now | Add to watch list |
rock related to tags.
Before heading
away to Seattle I wanted to rebuild my trusty LS800. I’ve recently had some
stability issues and wanted a clean start. I don’t think you should read too
much into the “stability issues” statement… When Vista released many of the
drivers and applications installed were still in beta. As the final versions
have become available I’ve removed the betas and installed the final versions.
Doing this for one or who drivers and apps may not present much of a problem, but
doing it for a host is a recipe for disaster!
The other reason I wanted a rebuild is I still have a couple of outstanding issues
and I wanted to see if a clean build with the released Motion drivers fixed the faults.
Will keep you posted.
I deploed Vista Ultimate and Office 2007 Ultimate using Microsoft’s new deployment
tool, BDD
2007. Man that is slick!
Since then I have manually layered on:
I still have lots to put on and I’ll get to those over the next few days. Things
I have to have include:
So much to do - so little time…
One of the common beliefs I encounter from people who have not used a tablet is that
the OS will never be able to decipher their particular brand of handwriting because
it is not neat or consistent enough.
My usual response is to show some of my handwritten notes and demonstrate how they
have been correctly recognized and are searchable in OneNote.
However, while at the MVP Global Summit in Redmond recently I decided to dispel this
myth once and for all with a little help from some of my fellow Tablet MVPs. I opened
a new page in OneNote and passed my LS800 around. What follows are actual handwriting
samples from some tablet MVPs. These are all very heavy tablet users and all report
very high levels of accurate recognition, especially in Windows Vista.
Here’s mine:
Trevor Claiborne of The Student Tablet PC:
Honorary Tablet MVP Charlie Russel:
Gotta Be Mobile’s Rob Bushway (nicely
put Rob!) :
Also from Gotta Be Mobile, Dennis Rice:
WNewquay:
As you can see even those with great penmanship have inconsistencies and chickenscratchers
(like me and JK) can still experience a high level of successful handwriting recognition.
Hopefully this shows that your handwriting is not a barrier to realizing the amazing
benefits of using a Tablet PC.
Engadget has details
of the new Samsung Q2 UMPC. This looks like a very cool device. One
of the nifty features is the split QWERTY thumboard, which looks very cool.
And check out the picture on Engadget - is that 3D Flip? Looks like it is probably
a photo shop mockup to me - but I can’t wait for more info on the internals to emerge.
Among the details that Engadget have released:
“…7-inch touchscreen, 1GB of RAM, and 60GB hard drive…”
“…the Q2 will sport an unknown Intel (not Via) CPU running Vista Home Premium, a
1,024 x 600 WSVGA resolution (no 800 x 600 here), two digital cameras (1.3 megapixel
for “photography” and 0.3 megapixel for videoconferencing), and a fingerprint scanner…”
And much more! Check out the full post and pictures here.
Since putting Vista on the LS800 I’ve had a couple of issues that have been every
so slightly spoiling my Vista goodness. One of those issues is that the SD Card
Reader on the LS800 does not work. This is a real shame as I would love to throw
a 2 GB SD card in there full time and use it for ReadyBoost to make the machine run
a little faster (not that it is that bad, but any gain is good.)
However, Motion are aware of and working on this problem. Here is the related article
in their Knowledge Base. Good to see Motion are on the case 
Note you can subscribe to the feed
for the LS800 related kb articles.
I had a question arrive from a blog reader via email today asking if I could point
to a concise summary of the benefits of Vista over Windows XP Tablet Edition on a
Tablet PC. I’ve been blogging about the pros (and cons) of Vista for a while
now, but I think that this would be a good time to summarize the key benefits of Vista
over Windows XP for Tablet users.
One of the key things to remember is that when all is said and done Tablet PCs are
a member of a larger family of computers - Mobile PCs. As such many of the benefits
of Vista on a Tablet apply to the broader category of Mobile PCs as well.
There is a lot in Vista for mobile users. In essence these can be grouped into
these broad headings.
Let me expand on these three topics.
Security
Bit locker - As previously mentioned more and more people are taking their
computing mobile - both at work and in their personal lives. For businesses
this presents a very real risk. Every time a machine leaves the office it is
at risk of being lost, stolen or falling into the wrong hands in some other way.
With an unencrypted machine it is trivial to retrieve data off it when you have physical
access. BitLocker provides whole volume encryption and therefore provides protection
for the data on the machine even if a “bad person” has physical access to it.
As with all security measures there are some best practices and caveats around this,
but on the whole BitLocker is a good thing for Mobile PCs.
Boot file integrity checking - How many of us knew the term “Root Kit” when
XP shipped? OK - I probably did, but I am a geek. Root Kits are a very
real problem. Put simply the way they work is they either replace or shim a
critical system file so that they can alter what that system file returns and therefore
what is displayed. For instance, some root kits target the system driver that
read the disk and provide info to - for example - Windows Explorer. If you try
to browse the directory that the root kit resides in, it will remove itself from the
list of files in the directory and thereby become invisible. Boot file integrity checking
stores a hash of the key system files and checks each one at start-up. If a
core system file has been replaced or modified then the machine won’t boot until you
restore the correct version of the system file using the recovery tools on the Vista
DVD.
Firewall - Bi-directional and configurable by Group Policy. At last!
UAC - The much maligned User Access Control (UAC) addresses a very real problem.
Things are not always what they seem. In Vista, by default, even if you are
logged on as an admin (not the admin - that is different) every
action you perform or program you run will happen in the context of an unprivileged
user. If you run something that needs more rights it will ask you if you want
to do this. Here’s a scenario. You need to convert a file from one type
to another. You Google it, find a util and down load it. You try to use
it to convert your file and it returns an error message that does not mean much to
you, so you download the next one on the list and use that to convert your file.
Meanwhile, the first app you tried, between you clicking on the “Convert Now” button
and the error message tries to disable the firewall, installs a key logger, starts
sending your info to some dodgy site out on the web and writes something to the registry
to ensure that the key logger et al will start up every time any user logs onto the
machine. In XP if you are local admin that will work and lots of laptop users
out there are running as local admin because they had to in order to be able to do
simple things like change the timezone. In Vista UAC will see the request to
do something that requires admin rights and either prompt for consent or credentials,
depending on how it has been configured. If you download a simple utility
and it wants admin rights to run - here’s a tip. Click Cancel. UAC is
intrusive - but it addresses a very real problem and is therefore a necessary evil.
Protected Mode IE - Lots of the bad things to which out machines are exposed
come in via the browser. In Vista IE7 runs with less privileges than
a standard user. This does not apply to IE7 on XP, because there were some architectural
changes required to make it work. Much like the UAC scenario above, this protects
users form ActiveX controls and scripts on sites they visit running with elevated
privileges and doing bad things to your PC.
There are lots of other security enhancements, but for my money those are the big
ones.
Ease of Use
Mobility Center - To be a really effective Mobile User in Windows XP you
had to be a bit of a power user. You needed to know to go to Network Connections
to configure and join wireless networks, power options to tweak power settings, a
tab on the property page of a network file to configure Offline Files, a control panel
applet to configure tablet buttons and screen rotation and Display settings to attach
a second monitor. In Vista all this and more is pulled into the Mobility Center,
which you can access quickly by pressing Windows Key + X. You can also configure
one of your tablet’s hardware buttons to show or hide the mobility center. Check
out my Mobility
Centre Drill Down.
Backup - Mobile users who are away from the office for days or weeks on end could
potentially lose a lot of data if they have a hardware failure. Using the native
tools in XP to back up data was a bit lame and for the most part people would use
3rd party tools (which cost money) or not bother (which could end up costing a lot
more!) In Vista the backup tool has been completely rewritten and is very easy
to use. With minimal instruction most users could back up their files onto removable
media. There is also a very cool Complete PC backup feature that I have blogged
about here and posted a video
of here.
Offline files - If you tried to use offline files in XP you probably ditched
it pretty fast and tried some other method. The main complaints were poor performance
when online and the fact that certain file types were skipped. Even when it
was working fine it was way too chatty and this would confuse users. In Vista
offline files work really, really well. Firstly it is less chatty so you hardly
notice it is there. There have been some changes that make it work much better
as well. For one thing all reads are serviced from the local cache when you
are online. This improves the connected experience considerably. Writes
still go to the server copy when online as that is considered the master copy.
Also if a file is changed on the client while offline then only the changes (not the
whole file) are synced back to the server when you reconnect. This change has
made it possible to include all file types as well, as the file types that were excluded
(such as Access databases) were excluded because they were large an changed often
- hence making them expensive to sync. The cached copy is also encrypted by
default, even if you are not using BitLocker - so your local data will have some protection.
Efficiency
Reduced Start time - From a cold boot Vista presents a usable interface to
the user faster than XP does… But…
Sleep mode - Who needs to do cold starts? Vista supports a new power
state called sleep that is really cool. Unlike XP’s standby a computer in Sleep
will consume very little power. Also if it does start to run low on power when
in sleep it is awake enough to know this and will write everything in memory to disk
and hibernate. From a user point of view you get a machine that will resume
very quickly without going flat or setting your laptop bag on fire.
Again there is plenty more to love in Vista - I’ve just hit one some key ones for
Mobile users.
In addition to the general Mobile PC benefits above there are a few others that are
specific to Tablet PCs.
Learning handwriting - the handwriting recognition engine in Vista rocks.
It can learn. You can train it. In XP, it trains you. After using
a Vista tablet for a few weeks (assuming you use it as a tablet and write on it from
time to time) your handwriting recognition will be much higher. If you spend
15 minutes to do the training sessions it will go through the roof. I actually
thought the recognition in XP was pretty good, but Vista blows it away.
Pen Flicks - pen flicks allow you to use a quick pen gesture to do simple
tasks like:
These are very handy and a great time saver. You can also customize them if
you like to make them really work for you.
Snipping tool - This use to be available as an add-on in the experience pack,
but it is bundled in with Vista. a great little tool.
Better TIP - The Tablet Input Panel has been reworked. It now
docks on the side of the screen (you can choose which side) and hides away nicely.
You can also use the stylus eraser in the TIP if your stylus has one.
AutoComplete - Common pain points for people using the pen to enter text
in XP were the Browser address bar and the To: field in the mail client. These
both support a new autocomplete feature where by as you start to write the recognition
result is compared to you history (in the browser) and recent recipients (in Outlook).
Possible matches are displayed above the TIP. If you see the one you want you
click on it and it will be inserted and navigated to (for the browser anyway).
No need to then press enter. Very efficient.
The above tablet points were all covered in a bit more detail in this
post I did way back in April last year!
