Side Session: Tablet PC in Vista

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I had planned on going to a breakout session on managed code snap-ins for MMC, but I got an email inviting me to an informal side session on the Tablet PC instead (from someone who read my LS800 review no less).  This was a pretty neat session and I really enjoyed it, but it ran a bit long and into my next session which wasn’t so nice.

There was a representative from Motion Computing there and I overheard him talking about Motion offering a “HP Trade-in” program to accept old HP tablets of a model they were discontinuing for discounts on the new Motions.  I also noticed on the Motion web site that they will now support a 1 GB of RAM configuration for the LS800.  Sweet.

They are giving away a tablet each day of PDC and it has something to do with wearing a button that says “I want a Tablet PC”.  I’m wearing one, but not sure what I would do with another tablet except give it to my wife. :)

I got to mean Loren who is big in the tablet community.  His sister was also there and working with Microsoft on the tablet team.

Here’s the scoop of tablet PC features in Vista:

  • The Tablet PC will now be just part of the main Vista bits, not a superset of the OS like it is currently.  All installations of Vista will have the tablet PC features, which automatically switch on when installed on a machine that has a digitizer.  When I asked about this at the end it basically boiled down that when Vista comes out I should be able to buy an upgrade to Vista (or the full OS) and then install it on my tablet.  I may need to get specific drivers from my  manufacturer, but overall it should be pretty easy.  The Motion Rep said they had plans to release their drivers very close to the same period as Vista, if not immediately available with Vista.
  • Vista is introducing the idea of touch sensitive capability for touch screens that is part of the core OS.
  • Lost of work was done to make using the pen easier.  There is tap feedback now when you tap or double tap the screen little ripple effects occur to let you know the OS registered the action.  The pointer when using the pen is now smaller so that people aren’t trying to target with the very tip of the arrow cursor, but just the smaller pointer.
  • They have a panning tool built into IE7 to pan up and down in a web site easier.
  • They have also included “flicks” where you flick the screen with the pen either up, down, left or right.  This will work in any application that implements it and for IE7 allows for quick navigation like page up, down and back and forward.  I’ve already put these in as “shorthand” commands with the Shorthand application, but having it baked in will be nice.
  • They provide fixes for the problem of multiple selection with a pen, which is my biggest complaint about the tablet OS.  There is no easy way to hand Ctl-click for selection unless you bring up the TIP in keyboard mode and press the Ctl key and then make your selections.  Vista will now provide a checkbox for each document or object and you can simply click the checkbox to select it.  It will also have a select all and deselect all checkbox at the top of the lists of objects.  Pretty nice.
  • The handwriting recognition is improved by letting the tablet actually learn your handwriting and most commonly used words.  They have tapped into the Search capabilities in Vista to scan any of the text in your outgoing email only (and only the part you wrote) when using MAPI software (so Outlook, outlook express, etc.).  The most commonly used words in these emails that aren’t in the common dictionary are then added to the dictionary for possible recognition matches while working in Email only at the moment.  On top of this, when you correct a word in the TIP it then remembers what your corrected and helps the TIP do better at recognition.  You can also explicitly teach it how your write specific words or characters.  Then, for the really interesting thing is that you can send a list of recognition errors to Microsoft via the same reporting mechanism Dr. Watson uses to provide feedback to the Tablet team on improving their recognition engine.
  • The TIP was improved in many ways.  It now can erase using the eraser end of a pen and supports the idea of scratching something out (like it did previously), squiggling something out, or just a single slash through something.  Nice.
  • Oh, all the personalization is user based and can be transferred from one machine to the other using the setting transfer wizard in the OS.
  • They are putting out an update to the SDK soon that will have a lot of the APIs for the above items in it.  This will be an update to the current and will at least include the managed APIs for the improved recognizers  and ink analysis tools (which can take an entire page of ink and return you all the information about it).
  • The Tablet SDK is getting rolled into a Mobile platform SDK.  And the version 2.0 of the tablet SDK will ship around the time Vista does.
  • Oh, and they have autocomplete for the pen in the SDK and baked into IE, windows explorer and more. Nice.

This was a very informative session and I look forward to getting these features on the tablet.