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McGraw-Hill Tablet PC User Manual

Tablet pc
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Summary of Contents for McGraw-Hill Tablet PC

  • Page 1 Brought to You by Team LiB Team LiB Like the book? Buy it!
  • Page 3 Tablet PC Bill Mann McGraw-Hill/Osborne New York Chicago San Francisco Lisbon London Madrid Mexico City Milan New Delhi San Juan Seoul Singapore Sydney Toronto...
  • Page 4 Neither McGraw-Hill nor its licensors shall be liable to you or anyone else for any inaccuracy, error or omission, regardless of cause, in the work or for any damages resulting therefrom.
  • Page 5 You two are great. In addition, this book is dedicated to the newest member of our household, Lightning the kitten, for her clear love for my Tablet PC and the many “paragraphs” she typed into the manuscript when...
  • Page 6 Bill Mann (Bedford, NH) is the author of more than a dozen books, plus numerous technology articles for publications including Internet World, TECH Edge, Palm Power, and Computer Bits. Bill’s past projects for McGraw-Hill/Osborne include I Want My MP3! How to Download, Rip, & Play Digital Music and Genealogy Online Special America Online Edition.

  • Page 7: Table Of Contents

    Meet Your Tablet PC ........
  • Page 8 How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC Use Windows XP Tablet PC Edition ......CHAPTER 4 Create and Manage User Accounts .
  • Page 9 Understand Handwritten Input Basics ......Understand Tablet PC Digital Ink .......
  • Page 10 Apply These Tips to Work More Efficiently ....Use the Tablet PC Input Panel for Pen Input ..... . .
  • Page 11 Talk to Your Tablet PC ........
  • Page 12 How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC Back Up Your Tablet PC ........

  • Page 13: Acknowledgments

    Margot, thanks for handling this and all my other book projects. Last, but certainly not least, my sincere thanks to all the folks who provided me with the information (and the cool toys!) I needed to do the job. Copyright 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Click Here for Terms of Use.
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  • Page 15: Introduction

    Tablet PC,” you’ll do exactly that. We start at the very beginning, by examining your Tablet PC and figuring out how to start it up, using the pen in lieu of a mouse, and navigating around the user interface. Once you have the bare basics down, we get down to work with a whirlwind tour of some of the unique benefits of the Tablet PC.
  • Page 16 Tablet PC to work the way you want it to. You’ll also be able to get your Tablet PC connected to wired and wireless networks, as well as the Internet.
  • Page 17 And with that, you’re ready to learn how to do everything with your Tablet PC. If you have any thoughts on the book, or the Tablet PC in general, I would love to hear them. You can reach me by e-mail at: books@techforyou.com. Or you can...
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  • Page 19: Get Acquainted With Your Tablet Pc

    Get Acquainted Part I with Your Tablet PC Copyright 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Click Here for Terms of Use.
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  • Page 21: Meet Your Tablet Pc

    Meet Your Chapter 1 Tablet PC Copyright 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Click Here for Terms of Use.

  • Page 22: Examine Your Tablet Pc Hardware

    So let’s start at the beginning, by investigating that shiny new machine. Examine Your Tablet PC Hardware When you take your Tablet PC out of the box, spend a few minutes looking it over. Depending on the style of machine you have, your new Tablet PC may look like an ultralight notebook computer.

  • Page 23: Chapter 1 Meet Your Tablet Pc

    Throughout this book, when I refer to digital pen (or just pen), I always mean the digital pen that came with your Tablet PC or any other digital pen designed specifically to work with your Tablet PC. There are two types of Tablet PC pens, so the pen from someone else’s machine might not work...

  • Page 24: Turn Your Tablet Pc On And Off

    For slates, the dock can also provide connections to a keyboard and mouse. Turn Your Tablet PC On and Off It’s time to turn on your Tablet PC. To do so, you must first provide power to the machine. If you bought the machine yourself, the package it came in should have...

  • Page 25: Use The Pen To Control Your Tablet Pc

    In the previous section, I asked you to use the pen to tap an icon. That’s the most basic way to use the Tablet PC pen. But you can use the pen to do more than just tap—it can completely replace the mouse.
  • Page 26 Tablet PC has. If you’re still shopping for a Tablet PC, your best bet is to ask. If you already have the Tablet PC, there are a few things you can do. The easiest is to see if your pen contains a battery. If it does, your pen (and the digitizer in the Tablet PC itself) is from FinePoint.

  • Page 27: Work With The Windows Desktop

    Since the Tablet PC is sensitive to the pen and not to you, you can rest your hand on the screen while using the pen, making it much easier to hover.

  • Page 28: Examine The Items On The Desktop

    Figure 1-2 shows what my Tablet PC screen looks like when I start my system. What you see will vary—each manufacturer sets things up a little differently.

  • Page 29: Find Your Way Around Windows

    Windows. The only difference is that you can navigate with the pen in addition to, or in place of, the mouse. With Windows XP Tablet PC edition, you can use the mouse and the pen interchangeably without any restrictions.

  • Page 30: Learn About The Start Menu

    How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC Start button Notification area Quick Launch toolbar Tablet PC Input Panel icon Running applications Although relatively few people do so, you can customize the taskbar in FIGURE 1-3 several ways. area is not normally visible on the taskbar, but I recommend you activate it.
  • Page 31 Windows automatically adds programs to this list, based on how often you use them. That means this list changes as the way you work with your Tablet PC changes. ■ All Programs All Programs appears beneath the most frequently used programs list and displays a menu of the programs you can run.

  • Page 32: Turn Off Your Tablet Pc

    Turn Off Your Tablet PC As I mentioned earlier in the chapter, there’s a correct process for turning off your Tablet PC. Although I’ve probably made it sound complex to you, it isn’t really. Here’s how you do it: Tap Start.

  • Page 33: Explore Your Tablet Pc

    Explore Your Chapter 2 Tablet PC Copyright 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Click Here for Terms of Use.

  • Page 34: Take Notes With Your Tablet Pc

    This chapter takes you on a whirlwind tour of some of the unique benefits of a Tablet PC. For now, you’ll stick with pen input only. Voice takes more effort to set up, and is covered in detail starting in Chapter 15. Grab your pen, and let’s give this thing a workout.

  • Page 35: Chapter 2 Explore Your Tablet Pc

    CHAPTER 2: Explore Your Tablet PC Windows Journal acts like an almost inexhaustible notebook filled with FIGURE 2-1 searchable, modifiable paper. If you wanted to save your note, you could write a title in the box at the top of the page and tap the Save icon on the Windows Journal toolbar.

  • Page 36: Enter Text With The Pen

    Writing Pad tab, and then tap the Tools button and select Text Preview to see the Tablet PC Input Panel’s handwriting recognition abilities for yourself. Write something on the Input Panel Writing Pad. You can print, write in cursive, or both. Then wait a few seconds while your Tablet PC tries to recognize...
  • Page 37 CHAPTER 2: Explore Your Tablet PC You Can Talk to Input Panel? Input Panel not only handles handwriting recognition for the Tablet PC, but it handles speech recognition too. This tool is clearly a key to working with your Tablet PC, and clearly merits its special spot on the Windows Taskbar. You’ll learn how to talk to Input Panel in Chapter 15.

  • Page 38: Change The Screen Orientation For Comfort And Usability

    In other words, you can change the display on your Tablet PC so it is readable no matter how you’re holding the device. The easiest way to understand this is to try it out for yourself.
  • Page 39 CHAPTER 2: Explore Your Tablet PC FIGURE 2-3 The Tablet PC screen is taller than it is wide in portrait mode.

  • Page 40: Draw Pictures On The Screen

    Record voice notes Draw Pictures on the Screen One of the great advantages about using the pen on a Tablet PC is that it works with existing, familiar applications, not just new ones like Windows Journal. In some cases, writing (or drawing) with the pen is a much more natural way to use an application than the keyboard or mouse.
  • Page 41 If you’ve ever used Windows Paint on a conventional PC, you know that a mouse is a clumsy tool for drawing. On a Tablet PC, Windows Paint is a much better tool because you can now use the pen on the screen to draw instead of the mouse on...

  • Page 42: Try Out The Enhanced Microsoft Reader

    PCs and laptops. The version of Reader that comes on your Tablet PC has been enhanced with the ability to display eBooks in portrait mode, add handwritten notes to eBooks, and more. With Microsoft Reader, a Tablet PC is a great way to read eBooks.
  • Page 43 CHAPTER 2: Explore Your Tablet PC With the Tablet PC version of Microsoft Reader, you can write in your FIGURE 2-6 eBooks like you might do in a printed book.

  • Page 44: Play A Game On Your Tablet Pc Using The Pen

    To go much further with Microsoft Reader, you’ll need to configure some of the Tablet PC buttons and download some new eBooks. For now, just note how nicely the Microsoft Reader eBook pages match up to the display in portrait mode and how nice the text looks, thanks to the Clear Type font technology used by the Tablet PC and Microsoft Reader.
  • Page 45 CHAPTER 2: Explore Your Tablet PC Sharpen your digital pen skills and take a break at the same time FIGURE 2-7 with InkBall. That’s basic InkBall. But things quickly get more complicated, with disappearing walls, walls that change the color of the ball, one-way color-filter walls, ramps,...
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  • Page 47: Set Up Your Tablet Pc

    Set Up Your Part II Tablet PC Copyright 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Click Here for Terms of Use.
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  • Page 49: Configure The Tablet Pc For Your Needs

    Configure the Chapter 3 Tablet PC for Your Needs Copyright 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Click Here for Terms of Use.

  • Page 50: Import Your Old Files And Settings

    ■ Configure Your Tablet PC Hardware Now that you’ve had a chance to explore your Tablet PC a bit, it’s time to get down to serious business. In this chapter, you’ll learn how to configure your Tablet PC to suit your needs. Windows XP Tablet PC edition has new controls and settings to go with its new features and the new capabilities of the Tablet PC hardware.

  • Page 51: Put The Files And Settings Transfer Wizard To Work

    Tablet PC. Tablet PC through a network. If you can have both machines on the network simultaneously, the wizard will make short work of the transfer. A direct connection between the two machines will also work, but using an existing network is much easier.

  • Page 52: Configure The Windows Interface

    You must make sure the hard disk of the old computer is shared with your Tablet PC if you’re transferring the files and settings across the network. To start the wizard on the Tablet PC, tap Start | All Programs | Accessories | System Tools | Files And Settings Transfer Wizard. Follow the step-by-step instructions and answer the questions that appear (see Figure 3-2) to complete the transfer.

  • Page 53: Configure Accessibility Options

    CHAPTER 3: Configure the Tablet PC for Your Needs One of the main goals Microsoft had in developing the Tablet PC was to create a personal computer that you would use more of the time, in more ways, and in more places than ever before.

  • Page 54: Configure Language And Regional Options

    Set the region to your current location if you want services that use this information to know where you are in the world. Configure your Tablet PC for your region and language to make yourself FIGURE 3-4 more productive.

  • Page 55: Configure The Windows Desktop

    In this section, you’ll learn to configure the options on four of the five tabs of the Display Properties dialog box. The fifth tab, Settings, deals with hardware display options like the screen resolution, and is covered in the “Configure Your Tablet PC Hardware” section of this chapter.

  • Page 56: Customize The Desktop

    Windows desktop and interface. You can use the Themes tab to change your theme. You can use the themes that came with your Tablet PC, save your current Windows desktop settings as a theme, or buy additional themes as part of Plus! for Windows XP—a set of graphics, games, and multimedia tools published by Microsoft.
  • Page 57 This option has a direct but nonobvious effect on how much work your Tablet PC must do when it synchronizes the web content. By default, X is 0, which means Windows downloads only the page you specified. If you set X to 1, Windows downloads the page you specified, as well as every other page on the same site the original page links to.
  • Page 58 Windows with that information. Choose and Customize Screen Savers The Screen Saver tab allows you to control what happens on your Tablet PC display when you’re not actively using it. This tab also gives you access to the full range of Tablet PC power schemes—which, among other things, determine when to turn...
  • Page 59 You’ll learn how to do this when we reach the Power Options Properties dialog box in the “Configure Your Tablet PC Hardware” section of this chapter.
  • Page 60 The next option controls how Windows smoothes the edges of screen fonts. By default, your Tablet PC should be set to use ClearType, a technology that takes advantage of the physical design of your Tablet PC liquid crystal display (LCD) screen.
  • Page 61 The ClearType method takes advantage of the fact that physically, each of the pixels on the Tablet PC LCD screen is made up of red, green, and blue elements side by side. ClearType manipulates the brightness of each of these elements to smooth the fonts.

  • Page 62: Customize The Taskbar

    How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC Customize the Taskbar By default, your Tablet PC should start out with the taskbar visible at the bottom of the screen. The taskbar is shown next. Proceeding from left to right, the taskbar...
  • Page 63 Drag the cursor to the bottom of the screen. If the taskbar is set to hide itself, this can cause it to appear. If the taskbar still isn’t visible, use your Tablet PC mouse, touch pad, or other nonpen pointing device to drag the cursor to the bottom of the screen.
  • Page 64 How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC Using this technique, you can reduce your taskbar to a thin strip along the edge of the screen, which can be very hard to work with, particularly using the pen. If this happens, you may need to use your mouse to drag the taskbar back to a usable size, or press the Windows key on the keyboard.

  • Page 65: Configure The Start Menu

    CHAPTER 3: Configure the Tablet PC for Your Needs If you select Auto-Hide The Taskbar and are using the pen, you may find it very hard to drag the cursor close enough to the edge to make the taskbar reappear. I strongly recommend that you do not auto-hide the taskbar on your Tablet PC.

  • Page 66: Change Folder Views

    How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC Use the Customize Start Menu dialog box to control what appears on the FIGURE 3-8 Start Menu. On the Advanced tab, you can go further in controlling which applications appear in the menu. This is also the place to activate the Most Recently Used Documents list, as well as set submenus to appear automatically when you hover the pen over the main menu.
  • Page 67 CHAPTER 3: Configure the Tablet PC for Your Needs Each template has specialized properties that are appropriate for the kind of content Windows expects you to store in them. To change the template used with a particular folder, you need to right-tap the folder’s icon; then in the shortcut menu that appears, tap Properties | Customize.

  • Page 68: Configure The Explorer Bar

    The exact contents of this menu vary depending on the applications installed on your Tablet PC. For example, I have Norton AntiVirus installed on my Tablet PC, and my Toolbars menus include the option to display a Norton AntiVirus toolbar.
  • Page 69 CHAPTER 3: Configure the Tablet PC for Your Needs ■ History Shows a day-by-day list of the files you’ve opened recently in Windows Explorer or Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer is covered in Chapter 7. ■ Folders Displays the folder tree.

  • Page 70: Configure Your Tablet Pc Hardware

    Configure the Tablet and Pen Because the tablet and pen are a new way to interact with your Tablet PC, it’s no surprise that Windows XP Tablet PC edition includes a new Control Panel applet you can use to configure them.
  • Page 71 Tablet PC components. In the Handedness section of the Settings tab, select the hand you use to hold the pen. You won’t detect any visible changes, but the Tablet PC handwriting recognition should work somewhat better than it would otherwise.
  • Page 72 Most PC and laptop screens have a landscape orientation, where the screen is wider than it is high. Tablet PC screens can work in landscape orientation, but they can also work in portrait orientation. In a portrait orientation, the screen is taller than it is wide.

  • Page 73: Calibrate The Screen

    You can change the screen orientation with the Hardware button assigned to screen orientation on your Tablet PC. This gives you a quick way to adjust the orientation to match the way you’re using the computer at the moment. However,...

  • Page 74: Configure The Keyboard

    Press And Hold in the list, and then tap Settings, you can change the length of time you need to press and hold before the Tablet PC recognizes a right-click, as well as how long you have to actually complete the action. I haven’t found it necessary to change any of these options, but you may find doing so to be helpful.
  • Page 75 Properties dialog box (see Figure 3-12) to adjust the amount of time that you can hold down a key before the Tablet PC starts repeating the character. To open the Keyboard Properties dialog box, tap Start | Control Panel | Printers And Other Hardware | Keyboard.

  • Page 76: Configure The Mouse

    You can set up power schemes on your Tablet PC that determine when (if ever) to turn off the display and the hard disk, as well as when the Tablet PC should go into standby or hibernate.
  • Page 77 As Figure 3-14 shows, there’s a menu of power schemes in the dialog box. When you select a scheme, the settings it includes appear at the bottom of the dialog box. Notice that there are settings for both when the Tablet PC is plugged in and when it is running on batteries.
  • Page 78 The exact values you should choose for the settings depend on the way you work. If you seldom spend long periods using your Tablet PC away from your desk, you’ll probably want to keep everything running as much as possible. On the other hand, if you spend a lot of time running on batteries, you’ll want to consider turning...
  • Page 79 However, you don’t really want to do anything with these settings. Remember, your Tablet PC comes with a built-in display. You can be sure that the manufacturer adjusted the display settings to work properly with the installed display. My best advice for you is to leave these settings as they are.
  • Page 80 How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC ■ Power Meter Shows how much power is left in the Tablet PC battery or batteries. ■ Advanced Among other things, lets you set a Power Meter icon to appear in the notification area so you can easily check power levels. There’s an option to require a password when resuming from standby, but this doesn’t...

  • Page 81: Chapter 4 Use Windows Xp Tablet Pc Edition

    Use Windows XP Chapter 4 Tablet PC Edition Copyright 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Click Here for Terms of Use.

  • Page 82: Create And Manage User Accounts

    You can share your Tablet PC with others, and Windows XP Tablet PC edition lets you do so safely by managing user accounts.

  • Page 83: Modify Existing Accounts And Create New Ones

    Computer Administrator account. Windows will not let you remove the last such account, or change the last such account into another type of account. If you have set up your Tablet PC yourself, your personal account should be a Computer Administrator account.
  • Page 84 How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC The User Accounts window for Computer Administrators is where you FIGURE 4-1 create new accounts and modify existing ones. The User Accounts window for Standard or Limited accounts has fewer FIGURE 4-2...
  • Page 85 CHAPTER 4: Use Windows XP Tablet PC Edition Change a User Account You can always make changes to your own account (unless you’re using a Guest account). For the rest of this section, I’ll assume you are using a Computer Administrator account.

  • Page 86: Add Password Protection For User Accounts

    Adding a password to a user account is easy to do, but there are ramifications to doing so, particularly on a Tablet PC. This section covers the issues you should understand before you add password protection to a user account.
  • Page 87 If your Tablet PC doesn’t have a removable disk drive (in the computer itself or in the dock), you cannot create a password reset disk. If a password reset disk is important to you, you may wish to invest in a USB floppy disk drive.

  • Page 88: Easily Share Your Tablet Pc With Fast User Switching

    Accounts, and then tap the icon representing the account you want to reset. Tap Remove The Password | Remove Password, and you’re done. Easily Share Your Tablet PC with Fast User Switching Fast User Switching is a feature of Windows XP that allows you to switch from one user account to another without closing your applications or logging off the computer.
  • Page 89 CHAPTER 4: Use Windows XP Tablet PC Edition Tablet PC, this process becomes much easier. Your daughter can just switch to her account without you having to close anything or turn off your computer. To switch user accounts, tap Start | Log Off | Switch User. When the Welcome screen appears, tap the icon belonging to the next person who will use the computer.

  • Page 90: Manage Files And Folders

    Your Tablet PC hard disk contains many files and folders created for use by Windows and by the various programs installed on the machine. You can also create new folders, as well as rename, copy, move, delete, and compress them.

  • Page 91: Manage Your Folders

    Instead, let’s look at how you can manage your files and folders. Manage Your Folders When Windows XP Tablet PC edition was installed on your computer, part of the process involved creating a number of folders on your hard disk. These include a...
  • Page 92 How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC bunch of folders that Windows uses, as well as a set of folders for the kinds of files with which you’re likely to work. My Documents, My Pictures, and similar folders make great places to store the relevant types of files.
  • Page 93 CHAPTER 4: Use Windows XP Tablet PC Edition Document folders like this one are the most versatile type of folder for FIGURE 4-6 most uses. To change the folder template, tap View | Customize This Folder, and then select the template you want to use from the list provided. Within the bounds of the selected folder template, you can change how the folder’s contents appear in...

  • Page 94: Manage Your Files

    Manage Your Files Although your Tablet PC may have tens of thousands of files on its hard disk, managing those files is relatively simple. You don’t create files like you create folders. Programs create files in the course of their operation. When you’re using...

  • Page 95: Manage Programs And Components

    Windows XP Tablet PC edition operating system. Windows XP is itself a very large and complex program. You install programs on your Tablet PC to allow it to perform tasks it couldn’t do before, or so it can perform those tasks better than it did before. For example, Windows XP doesn’t include its own antivirus program.

  • Page 96: Get Your Cd-Rom Drive Connected

    How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC Get Your CD-ROM Drive Connected Most programs that you will want to install on your Tablet PC come on a CD-ROM. Similarly, you’ll install Windows components from the Windows CD-ROM that came with your Tablet PC. Your computer may have a built-in CD-ROM drive, it may have a drive in the docking station, or it may have an external drive that connects to the Tablet PC through a cable.
  • Page 97 CHAPTER 4: Use Windows XP Tablet PC Edition FIGURE 4-8 If you don’t see an icon for the CD-ROM drive in the My Computers window, the drive isn’t connected properly or isn’t turned on. FIGURE 4-9 The Windows Components Wizard makes it easy to install or remove...

  • Page 98: Remove Programs

    This typically involves getting files and programs from the Windows CD that came with your Tablet PC, so you should have that CD-ROM in the drive or have it handy. The wizard guides you through the rest of the process.
  • Page 99 CHAPTER 4: Use Windows XP Tablet PC Edition FIGURE 4-10 When it is time to remove a program from your Tablet PC, the Add Or Remove Programs window gets the job done efficiently and cleanly. Although this method will get rid of the program, it isn’t a very neat solution.

  • Page 100: Remove Components

    How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC Remove Components You remove Windows components in much the same way you add them, using the Add Or Remove Programs window. To start the Windows Components Wizard, tap Start | Control Panel | Add Or Remove Programs | Add/Remove Windows Components.

  • Page 101: Search For Files And Folders

    CHAPTER 4: Use Windows XP Tablet PC Edition The Search Companion can find the following: ■ Files and folders ■ People (users and groups in your Windows Address Book, on the computer, and across the network) ■ Computers on the network ■...

  • Page 102: Use More Advanced Search Techniques

    How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC Fill in some or all of these fields to narrow your file or folder search. FIGURE 4-12 Say, for example, you enter this text in the filename field: c?t.doc. When doing the search, Windows will find any filename that has the first letter c, followed by any valid character, followed by t.doc.
  • Page 103 Search. Windows opens a standard file search dialog box named Save Search, and allows you to save the search anywhere on your Tablet PC or the network. These saved searches are just a type of file that records the search criteria you used, and ends in .fnd.
  • Page 104 How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC PC is meant to use as little power as possible and go into standby when it is idle (at least when it is running on batteries), the benefits the Indexing Service will provide to you will vary.

  • Page 105: Work With The Recycle Bin

    You May Have More Than One Recycle Bin? If your Tablet PC has more than one hard disk, or your hard disk is partitioned (more on hard disks in Chapter 17), your computer has more than one Recycle Bin. In most cases, even if you do have more than one Recycle Bin, it will have no noticeable effect on your work.
  • Page 106 How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC window like the one shown in Figure 4-14. In the right-hand pane of the window, you can see everything that’s in the Recycle Bin. Select the icon for the object you want to retrieve. Tap the Restore This Item link in the Recycle Bin Tasks pane to restore the object to its previous location.
  • Page 107 CHAPTER 4: Use Windows XP Tablet PC Edition Change the Size of the Recycle Bin Although Windows allocates a certain amount of space to the Recycle Bin (typically 10 percent of each hard disk or partition), you can change this setting to suit the way you do things.
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  • Page 109: Chapter 5 Manage Your Tablet Pc Hardware

    Manage Your Chapter 5 Tablet PC Hardware Copyright 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Click Here for Terms of Use.
  • Page 110 Tablet PC. If your printer only has a parallel port, you can’t use it with your Tablet PC. Likewise, if you use an ergonomic keyboard that connects to your desktop...

  • Page 111: Install And Remove Hardware

    USB ports. Say you need to connect a keyboard that uses a PS/2 port to your Tablet PC’s USB port. You can go to a site like CNET Shopper.com (http://shopper.cnet.com) and search for the words USB PS/2 to get a list of USB to PS/2 adapters.

  • Page 112: Install Non-Plug-And-Play Hardware

    The process was the same for my wife’s Nikon Coolpix camera. I connected it to my Tablet PC and, within a minute, I was viewing the photos in the camera’s memory. I didn’t need to load software from a CD or anything. Windows recognized the camera, installed a copy of camera driver software, and integrated the camera into my computer system as if it had always been there.

  • Page 113: Remove Plug-And-Play Hardware

    Windows. The software on the installation CD might not explicitly support Windows XP Tablet PC edition (or even Windows XP Professional, the OS Windows XP Tablet PC edition is built on), while the version of the same software on the manufacturer’s web site probably does.

  • Page 114: Remove Non-Plug-And-Play Hardware

    Tablet PC. For example, you may need to specify which printer on the network your Tablet PC will use as its default printer or to adjust the settings for your Tablet PC’s sound card.
  • Page 115 CHAPTER 5: Manage Your Tablet PC Hardware To make managing them quicker and easier, the Control Panel includes FIGURE 5-2 categories for hardware that commonly needs to be managed. The Sounds, Speech, And Audio Devices window helps you manage FIGURE 5-3...
  • Page 116 If you can’t resolve the problem with the help of the Sound Troubleshooter, I recommend you contact whoever is providing technical support for your Tablet PC. Unless you’re a computer expert, you could well do more harm than good at this point.

  • Page 117: Manage Printers And Other Hardware

    The Printers And Other Hardware category contains the rest of the hardware you’re likely to want to manage on your Tablet PC. As Figure 5-5 shows, the Printers And Other Hardware window helps with some printer-related tasks, but it also gives you quick access to the Properties dialog boxes for all sorts of hardware.

  • Page 118: Use Device Manager

    The Device Manager window is your view into all the hardware installed on your Tablet PC. It lists every item of hardware, lets you view the properties of each item and the device drivers associated with them, and lets you reconfigure your system.
  • Page 119 When you’re working with non-plug-and-play hardware, you may need to configure your system by changing hardware configuration by hand. You can damage your Tablet PC if you make the wrong changes when manually changing settings in the Device Manager. Please only make manual changes in Device Manager if you know what you’re up to.

  • Page 120: Check The Status Of Your Hardware

    To check the status of your hardware, open the Device Manager window. As I mentioned before, if anything is wrong with the hardware installed on the Tablet PC, Windows shows the defective devices. Usually, the problem device will be indicated by a yellow circle with a black exclamation point.
  • Page 121 CHAPTER 5: Manage Your Tablet PC Hardware This Driver tab has the same form as those for the rest of your Tablet PC’s FIGURE 5-7 hardware devices. your Tablet PC and follow any instructions provided by the manufacturer. Then tap Update Driver to start the Hardware Update Wizard. The opening screen of the wizard asks what you want it to do: you should tap Install from a list or specific location.

  • Page 122: Set Up Hardware Profiles

    How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC Once you tell the Hardware Update Wizard where to find the latest driver FIGURE 5-8 for a hardware device, the wizard guides you through all the steps needed to update that driver.
  • Page 123 But the situation isn’t as clear for Tablet PCs. They’re designed for surprise hot docking. In other words, you can grab your Tablet PC from its dock and walk off. You don’t have to shut down the machine before removing it from the dock or inserting it into the dock.
  • Page 124 How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC The Hardware Profiles dialog box lets you create and manage hardware FIGURE 5-9 profiles that match the resources available to your Tablet PC in different environments.

  • Page 125: Chapter 6 Connect To Peripheral Devices

    Connect to Chapter 6 Peripheral Devices Copyright 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Click Here for Terms of Use.

  • Page 126: Choose Between Peripheral Formats And Connectors

    Connect to Other Peripherals In Chapter 5, you learned the basics of managing the hardware that’s installed on your Tablet PC. In this chapter, we’ll go into some depth on connecting to certain popular types of peripherals (external hardware) that you can connect to your Tablet PC.

  • Page 127: Choose Between Firewire And Usb

    Should you choose an internal or external modem? If you want to add peripherals to your Tablet PC, you get a different set of things to puzzle over. Should you go with a printer that uses Firewire or USB?

  • Page 128: Connect To Printers And Faxes

    PC Card or CompactFlash peripherals are preferable for a mobile device like a Tablet PC. They tend to be much smaller and lighter than external devices and because they fit within the Tablet PC, they’re safer and more convenient, too.
  • Page 129 Add a Printer The Add Printer Wizard allows you to connect your Tablet PC to a printer or printers. But there’s a good chance you won’t need the wizard’s help at all. If your printer is fairly new, there’s a good chance that Windows XP will recognize it and install it automatically.
  • Page 130 How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC for Windows to detect the printer. If Windows recognizes the printer, it will automatically install the printer for you or start the Found New Hardware Wizard to guide you through the process.
  • Page 131 CHAPTER 6: Connect to Peripheral Devices Some of the settings on a printer’s Advanced tab are well-worth adjusting FIGURE 6-3 to improve your printing experience. I strongly recommend that you turn on print spooling if it isn’t already activated. Print spooling increases the usability of your computer by increasing the apparent speed of your printing.
  • Page 132 How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC How Printer Spooling Works? You now know that printer spooling lets you get back to work faster when you’re printing a long document or lots of documents. But did you know how...
  • Page 133 CHAPTER 6: Connect to Peripheral Devices Normally, you’ll want to let your print jobs run without any interference. But, sometimes, you’ll want to step in before all the print jobs in the queue are complete. I would rather not admit the number of times that I’ve accidentally started printing an entire document when all I really wanted was to print a page or two.

  • Page 134: Work With Faxes

    Most Tablet PCs come with modems. Most modems are fax modems. Most likely, your Tablet PC has a fax modem installed and ready to be put to use. We’ll assume that’s the situation for you and go from there.
  • Page 135 The wizard makes everything go smoothly. You’ll be ready to send your fax in less than two minutes. To receive faxes with your Tablet PC, you can open the Fax Console and tap the Receive Now button. This launches the Fax Monitor, which waits for an incoming fax to arrive.
  • Page 136 How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC The Fax Console enables you to send and receive faxes on your Tablet PC. FIGURE 6-6 You Can Receive Faxes by E-mail? A few Internet services let you have a free phone number for receiving faxes.

  • Page 137: Connect To Scanners And Digital Cameras

    Windows XP includes extensive support for them. As a Tablet PC user, your needs may differ somewhat from those of typical home users. Even so, the capability to connect a scanner or digital camera to your Tablet PC can come in quite handy in many situations.

  • Page 138: Work With Scanners

    “Work with Digital Cameras” later in this chapter) and doesn’t ever show it in the Scanners and Cameras window. Also, a scanner or camera that’s installed may not appear in the window if it’s turned off or currently disconnected from the Tablet PC. Because scanners do normally appear in the Scanners and Cameras window, let’s talk about them first.

  • Page 139: Work With Digital Cameras

    CHAPTER 6: Connect to Peripheral Devices The Scanner And Camera Installation Wizard will help you install these FIGURE 6-8 devices when Windows doesn’t do it automatically. For example, you could configure your scanner to automatically activate your favorite graphics program whenever you press the Start button on the scanner. Open the tab by tapping View Device Properties | Events.
  • Page 140 Events tab. Install Your Camera Following the camera’s instructions, connect it to your Tablet PC. Check your connections, turn on the camera, and then wait a moment to see how Windows responds. If the camera is plug-and-play compatible, Windows will recognize and install it for you.
  • Page 141 The fastest way to get photos out of a camera memory card and into your Tablet PC is this: remove the card from the camera and insert it directly into the computer, where Windows will detect it and give you direct access to it.

  • Page 142: Connect To Other Peripherals

    Connect to Other Peripherals If you need to connect other kinds of peripherals to your Tablet PC, you can follow the same general approach used with printers, faxes, scanners, and digital cameras. If the peripheral manufacturer provided complete instructions for installing the device under Windows XP, follow those instead of the instructions listed here.

  • Page 143: Chapter 7 Set Up An Internet Connection For Your Tablet Pc

    Set Up an Internet Chapter 7 Connection for Your Tablet PC Copyright 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Click Here for Terms of Use.
  • Page 144 Tablet PC connected directly to the Internet. By that, I mean that your Tablet PC connects to the Internet without the aid of a network. Although Microsoft is kind enough to help you find an Internet Service Provider, or ISP (a company that provides the connection you use when you connect to the Internet), there are better ways to go about it.

  • Page 145: Install And Configure Dial-Up Connections

    “Connect to the Internet.” Create and Use Dialing Rules When you use a modem with a mobile computer like a Tablet PC, chances are good that you’ll want to dial in to your ISP or otherwise use your modem in different...
  • Page 146 Dialing rules allow you to set up configurations that your Tablet PC and modem will use in each location. Dialing locations are a convenient way to...
  • Page 147 Anything you do with dialing rules, from viewing a list of the dialing locations defined in your Tablet PC, to creating new locations, to editing existing ones, you do from the Phone And Modem Options dialog box. To open this dialog box, tap Start | Control Panel | Printers And Other Hardware | Phone And Modem Options | Dialing Rules.
  • Page 148 How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC If you want to create a new dialing location, tap New to open the New Location dialog box. Start on the General tab (shown in Figure 7-2). Enter the name you will use to identify this dialing location, along with the location from which you’ll be...
  • Page 149 CHAPTER 7: Set Up an Internet Connection for Your Tablet PC Next, you’ll want to look at the Area Code Rules tab (Figure 7-3). With the increasing number of phone lines in the United States, the rules for dialing within and between area codes have become more complex.
  • Page 150 How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC You edit existing area code rules and create new ones using the same dialog box. (Just the name changes, appearing as Edit Area Code Rule when editing and New Area Code Rule when adding a new rule.) Figure 7-4 shows the New Area Code Rule dialog box.

  • Page 151: Install And Configure Broadband Connections

    DSL. Explore Cable Modems A cable modem is a type of modem that connects your Tablet PC to your cable television system. Cable systems that support cable modems provide for two-way transmission: from the Internet through the cable system to your Tablet PC (downloading), and from your Tablet PC through the cable system to the Internet (uploading).
  • Page 152 Some cable systems reportedly still use a hybrid system, where the cable system delivers information from the Internet to your Tablet PC by way of cable, but you have to send information to the cable system by way of a dial-up modem.

  • Page 153: Install Your Broadband Connection

    CHAPTER 7: Set Up an Internet Connection for Your Tablet PC ■ They are always on. When your computer is connected to the cable modem, it has a live connection to the Internet. There’s no need to wait while the computer dials in to your ISP.

  • Page 154: Connect To The Internet

    Internet and tap Next. On the Getting Ready screen, select Choose From A List Of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) if you want to use MSN or one of the other The New Connection Wizard can help you connect your Tablet PC FIGURE 7-5...

  • Page 155: Use The Internet Applications Installed On Your Tablet Pc

    Continue through the wizard, entering your information and following the instructions provided to complete the connection. That’s all there is to it. Your Tablet PC should now have a connection to the Internet through your ISP. Use the Internet Applications Installed on Your Tablet PC Windows XP Tablet PC edition comes with Microsoft’s versions of the key Internet...
  • Page 156 Acer page is the home page for the copy of Internet Explorer that came installed on my Acer Tablet PC. The home page is the page that appears whenever I start Internet Explorer on this computer. You can change the home page for your browser.
  • Page 157 I feel like looking at when I first start my web browser. To start Internet Explorer, tap Start | Internet Explorer. Unless your Tablet PC manufacturer chose to use a different default web browser, Internet Explorer should appear under the Internet heading in the left-hand column of the Start menu.
  • Page 158 Your Tablet PC Has Two Web Browsers Installed? Windows XP Tablet PC edition comes with two web browsers built in. You’ve already met Internet Explorer. The other is called MSN Explorer, which is very similar to Internet Explorer; however, you can use it only if you are an MSN (Microsoft’s ISP) subscriber, or if you have a HotMail e-mail account.
  • Page 159 CHAPTER 7: Set Up an Internet Connection for Your Tablet PC Use the Add Favorite dialog box to record the address of web pages you FIGURE 7-8 wish to visit again. To return to a favorite web site, you tap the Favorites button on the Internet Explorer toolbar, instead of the one on the menu bar.
  • Page 160 Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer gives you a list of editors to choose from, depending on which applications are installed on your Tablet PC. In Figure 7-9, the Microsoft Word icon appears on the Edit button, because Internet Explorer has selected Word as the default editor for my Tablet PC.
  • Page 161 CHAPTER 7: Set Up an Internet Connection for Your Tablet PC ■ Discuss Appears on the toolbar when you have Microsoft Office installed on your computer. If a network administrator sets up an appropriate web server, you can use the Discuss button (which looks like a yellow sticky note) to hold discussions of the visible page.

  • Page 162: Explore Outlook Express

    This means you can handle both your business and personal messages from the same program without mixing things up. It also means you can share your Tablet PC with other people without getting into each other’s messages. As you’ve already learned, Internet Explorer can call on Outlook Express to handle e-mail and newsgroups.
  • Page 163 CHAPTER 7: Set Up an Internet Connection for Your Tablet PC Use Outlook Express as an E-mail Client If your Tablet PC came configured with the default Windows XP Tablet PC edition, Outlook Express should appear as the default e-mail program on the Start menu.
  • Page 164 How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC one or more e-mail accounts. Assuming you have an existing e-mail account somewhere that you want to access with Outlook Express, tap Tools | Accounts, and then select the Mail tab in the Internet Accounts dialog box. You can use this dialog box to add or remove e-mail and newsgroup accounts, as well as to import and export existing accounts from other e-mail clients and newsreaders.
  • Page 165 CHAPTER 7: Set Up an Internet Connection for Your Tablet PC How Newsgroups Work? A newsgroup is the Internet equivalent of a bulletin board. People who are subscribed to a newsgroup can post messages to the group. These messages can be viewed by any other subscriber of the newsgroup. People can respond to messages they see posted, and others can respond to their response and so on, creating what are known as discussion threads.
  • Page 166 How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC Use the Newsgroup Subscriptions dialog box to search for, and subscribe FIGURE 7-12 to, interesting and useful newsgroups. Find Newsgroups to Join With so many newsgroups to choose from, how can you figure out which ones to subscribe to? One answer is to already know the name of the newsgroup you’re...
  • Page 167 CHAPTER 7: Set Up an Internet Connection for Your Tablet PC What if you don’t know the name of a particular newsgroup? Then the Display Newsgroups Which Contain box becomes very helpful. Enter the name of the subject you’re interested in, and Outlook Express displays a list of all the newsgroups that contain it in their name.

  • Page 168: Work With Windows Messenger

    Messenger is enhanced to support file transfers and group chats, and it allows you to make voice calls to other computers or even telephone calls from your Tablet PC. The rest of this chapter is dedicated to helping you start using this powerful...
  • Page 169 Set Up Windows Messenger Setting up Windows Messenger is simple. Your Tablet PC almost certainly came with Windows Messenger configured to start whenever Windows starts. The little head and shoulders icon in the notification area is the Windows Messenger icon.
  • Page 170 How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC To use Windows Messenger you need only sign in. But before you can sign in, you must have an account with .NET Passport, the latest version of Microsoft’s Passport user identification service. The .NET Passport Wizard appears when you start Windows Messenger for the first time.
  • Page 171 CHAPTER 7: Set Up an Internet Connection for Your Tablet PC You’ll have to face this dialog box every time you start Windows FIGURE 7-15 Messenger unless you set the Sign Me In Automatically check box. To actually reach a contact, select the contact in the main Windows Messenger window, and then tap the option you want to use in the I Want To list at the bottom of the window.
  • Page 172 ■ Start Talking If your computer is equipped with a microphone and speakers (and what Tablet PC isn’t?), tapping this option allows you to add voice to your conversation. Of course the computer on the other end must also have speakers and a microphone for a full voice conversation.
  • Page 173 CHAPTER 7: Set Up an Internet Connection for Your Tablet PC Windows Messenger gives you many communication options once you FIGURE 7-16 have a conversation going with another person. ■ Make A Phone Call If you sign up with a Voice Service Provider (Windows Messenger helps you do this), you can make calls from your computer to a regular telephone.

  • Page 174: Use Remote Desktop To Control Another Computer

    Then you can use Remote Desktop to work with your key files and applications back at the office. But the Tablet PC is designed to be your primary computer and to go with you wherever you go. Therefore, much of the need for Remote Desktop disappears when you’re using a Tablet PC.
  • Page 175 CHAPTER 7: Set Up an Internet Connection for Your Tablet PC ■ The computer that will be remotely controlled must be running either Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP Professional, or Windows XP Tablet PC edition. ■ The computer that will be controlling the remote system must have Remote Desktop Connection (formerly called the Terminal Services client) installed.
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  • Page 177: Use Your Tablet Pc On A Network

    Use Your Tablet PC Chapter 8 on a Network Copyright 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Click Here for Terms of Use.
  • Page 178 Internet. For you as a Tablet PC user, the ability to connect to the corporate network is no less important. In this chapter, we’ll talk about the Tablet PC features and tools you need to be able to connect to corporate networks.

  • Page 179: Use Your Tablet Pc On A Corporate Network

    Connect the Ethernet cable from the network to the Ethernet port on your Tablet PC and you’re done. If you do plan on using your Tablet PC away from the desk a lot, it would be worth investigating a docking station at your main work location that could stay permanently connected to the network and save you from constantly having to connect and disconnect that Ethernet cable.
  • Page 180 How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC talk to the network properly. In this case, you can configure your Tablet PC’s network card through the Network Connections folder. Here’s what you need to do: Open the Network Connections folder by tapping Start | Control Panel | Network And Internet Connections | Network Connections.
  • Page 181 CHAPTER 8: Use Your Tablet PC on a Network tap Enable in the shortcut menu. If the driver remains disabled, contact your network administrator for help. Once you have an active connection, right-tap the icon for that connection. In the shortcut menu that appears, tap Properties to open the connection’s...

  • Page 182: Check The Status Of A Connection

    Next check the Activity section of the dialog box. If the connection is set up properly and the Tablet PC is talking to the network, both the Sent and Received Packets should be greater than zero. If these values are zero, this is a sign to seek help.

  • Page 183: Connect To The Internet Across The Network

    Exactly what you need to do to connect your Tablet PC to your network is determined by the way you built the network in the first place. That said, the following section walks you through an approach that should work for many people.

  • Page 184: Make Network Connections

    Networking is a complex subject, and it is beyond the scope of this book to address all the ways you can connect your Tablet PC to a network. This section describes one approach that will work in many cases, but the final decision as to the best approach for connecting your Tablet PC to your network must come from you.
  • Page 185 Select A Connection Method screen shown in Figure 8-4. Since you are connecting your Tablet PC to the existing network, you do not want to connect directly to the Internet. Select This Computer Connects To The Internet Through Another Computer On My Network Or Through a Residential Gateway.
  • Page 186 On the next screen, the wizard asks you to enter a name and description for this computer. This name and description will be used to identify your Tablet PC on the network in places like the My Network Places folder. If you already have a name and description set up for this computer, don’t change it.
  • Page 187 When the wizard is done setting up your system, it displays the You’re Almost Done screen shown in Figure 8-6. Since you’re connecting your Tablet PC to an existing network, the right option is to select Just Finish The Wizard; I Don’t Need To Run The Wizard On Other Computers.

  • Page 188: Build A Simple Home Network

    If you already have a computer at home that’s connected to the Internet, you can let your Tablet PC share that access by creating a very simple home network. As I mentioned earlier, networking can be complex, and there’s more than one way to do anything.
  • Page 189 CHAPTER 8: Use Your Tablet PC on a Network I did this diagram with Microsoft Visio. Like Paint, Visio is a program that becomes much easier and more natural to use on a Tablet PC, even without any Tablet PC–specific enhancements. You can find out more about Visio at: http://www.microsoft.com/office/visio/.

  • Page 190: Figure Out What Hardware You Need

    Each computer in your network needs an Ethernet port of some sort to connect to the hub. Your Tablet PC should have an available Ethernet port, but your desktop probably doesn’t. The Ethernet port on your desktop computer is almost certainly connected to the broadband modem that gives you your high-speed Internet access.

  • Page 191: Buy And Install The Hardware

    Ethernet port on your Tablet PC. Make sure everything is plugged in and turned on. Before going any further, confirm that the Internet connection on your desktop computer still functions properly.

  • Page 192: Run The Network Setup Wizard On Each Computer

    Network Adapter Problems” later in this chapter for more on this troubleshooter. Once the network connections on both the desktop PC and the Tablet PC are active, you’re ready to run the Network Setup Wizard and get the machines talking to each other.
  • Page 193 CHAPTER 8: Use Your Tablet PC on a Network Run the Network Setup Wizard on Your Desktop Computer Your desktop computer is the one that will provide the Internet connection for your network, but you still need to figure out which of the options in Figure 8-8 to select.
  • Page 194 When the wizard is done setting up your system, it displays the You’re Almost Done screen shown in Figure 8-9. Since you will be connecting your Tablet PC to this network, and that Tablet PC probably doesn’t have a floppy disk drive, the right option to select is Use My Windows XP CD.

  • Page 195: Troubleshoot Network Adapter Problems

    Now, you can connect your Tablet PC to the network. Insert your Windows XP CD (the one that came with your Tablet PC) into the Tablet PC’s CD-ROM drive. When the Windows XP menu appears, tap Perform Additional Tasks | Set Up Home Or Small Office Networking.
  • Page 196 How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC The Search box can move around in the Help and Support Center FIGURE 8-10 window, but it should always be there somewhere. The Drives and Network Adapters Troubleshooter asks you a series of questions and asks you to perform certain tasks, with the goal of helping you narrow down or completely resolve a network adapter problem.
  • Page 197 CHAPTER 8: Use Your Tablet PC on a Network The Drives and Network Adapters Troubleshooter can help resolve FIGURE 8-11 problems with your network adapters.
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  • Page 199: Go Wireless

    Chapter 9 Go Wireless Copyright 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Click Here for Terms of Use.

  • Page 200: Understand Wireless Networking Basics

    Tablet PC down with a network cable. One of the points of a Tablet PC is to be able to do your work wherever you happen to be. And you can, as long as you don’t need access to the corporate network or the Internet.

  • Page 201: What's The Big Deal About Wireless

    Do you run the cables to certain spots, then go work in one of those spots when you need to connect your Tablet PC to the network or the Internet? If you can’t use your Tablet PC where you want to, it defeats the whole purpose of the machine.

  • Page 202: Get The Terminology Straight

    Internet) communications. WebEx Meeting Center is fully Tablet PC compatible, which means you can conduct interactive, online meetings anywhere your Tablet PC can make a wireless (or wired) connection to the Internet. It’s just another example of the way that the power and flexibility...
  • Page 203 Internet access. Since few home broadband systems can connect to the Internet at even 3 Mbps, the 11 Mbps of 802.11b is just fine. The Wi-Fi Alliance certifies interoperability of wireless devices like your FIGURE 9-1 Tablet PC that use the 802.11b specification.

  • Page 204: What About Security

    Vast numbers of the wireless networks in use today, even at major corporations, are running without WEP activated. If you are connecting your Tablet PC to a corporate wireless network, you must, of course, do so in the manner prescribed by the network administrator. But if you are building your own wireless network, I advise you to activate WEP during the setup.
  • Page 205 CHAPTER 9: Go Wireless Tablet PC relative to the access point, to the properties of the materials between the access point and your computer. Figure 9-2 gives you some idea of what you might expect. ■ The signal from your access point or gateway travels out from the device in a more or less spherical pattern.
  • Page 206 How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC know what to look for. See “How to Find Wireless Hot Spots, Part II” for more information on the practice of warchalking and what it can tell you about nearby wireless networks.
  • Page 207 If you use public hot spots, it’s possible that someone will try to gain wireless access to your Tablet PC. A good basic precaution is to disable any shared drives or folders. You may also want to activate the Internet Connection Firewall on your Tablet PC.

  • Page 208: Connect Your Tablet Pc To An Existing Wireless Network

    Existing Wireless Network Now that you know the basics of wireless networking, it’s time to learn how to connect your Tablet PC to an existing wireless network. As usual, if you’re connecting to the company network, your network administrator should provide...
  • Page 209 WEP for security. If so, you need to know the network key before starting this process: Ensure that the wireless network card in your Tablet PC is active. Check the documentation that came with your computer for details on how to turn it on.
  • Page 210 How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC you wish to connect to is not using WEP for security, you will see the warning shown in the figure. In that case, you’ll need to set the Allow Me To Connect To The Selected Wireless Network, Even Though It Is Not Secure check box, then tap Connect to connect to the network.

  • Page 211: Build A Simple Wireless Network

    In the last part of this chapter, we’re going to design a simple wireless network. As in Chapter 8, the goal here is to create a network that allows your Tablet PC to share broadband Internet access with your desktop PC. But this time, the network will be wireless, and it will use a wireless access point, a hub, and a router to connect the computers to the broadband modem and to each other.

  • Page 212: Decide How You Will Handle Security

    Ethernet network interface card (NIC) installed and that this NIC is connected to your cable modem or other broadband device. I’ll also assume that your Tablet PC does have 802.11b equipment built in. One thing you need to think about is the access point, hub, and router. While...

  • Page 213: Buy And Install The Hardware

    CHAPTER 9: Go Wireless Many of the available gateways or base stations have a built-in switch instead of a hub. This provides performance benefits for all but the smallest networks and is worth looking for if you’re going to connect more computers to your network.
  • Page 214 How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC who just wants to get their wireless network up and running with the minimum of fuss. I have a degree in Electrical Engineering and found myself confused a few times when I set up my network with LinkSys equipment.

  • Page 215: Put Your Tablet Pc To Work

    Put Your Part III Tablet PC to Work Copyright 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Click Here for Terms of Use.
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  • Page 217: Understand Handwritten Input On The Tablet Pc

    Understand Chapter 10 Handwritten Input on the Tablet PC Copyright 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Click Here for Terms of Use.

  • Page 218: Understand Handwritten Input Basics

    Windows XP Tablet PC edition aren’t the first computers to use handwritten input, they surely offer the best implementation of handwritten input to date. You’ve already used the pen to work with your Tablet PC, and you’ve probably already done some handwritten input using Windows Journal and the Tablet PC Input Panel.
  • Page 219 ■ 2002 Microsoft launches the Tablet PC, which treats ink as a data type and features full handwriting recognition. As you can see from the timeline, the handwritten input successes to date have been character recognition systems.
  • Page 220 How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC entering the next. Another advantage is that character recognition systems have tricks they use to get your help in improving their recognition. The Graffiti system used by Palm OS devices has two main tricks. First, it uses its own version of the alphabet.
  • Page 221 You can see this for yourself. Give character input a try by opening the Tablet PC Input Panel and then tapping Tools | Options | Writing Tools | Show Character Recognizer On Writing Pad. This opens the Options dialog box shown in Figure 10-2 and enables the character recognizer.

  • Page 222: Understand Tablet Pc Digital Ink

    When you write on the screen with your pen in an application like Windows Journal, the marks you make are made with digital ink. The digital ink on your Tablet PC screen is a pretty good simulation of the kind of ink that comes out of your ballpoint pen.
  • Page 223 CHAPTER 10: Understand Handwritten Input on the Tablet PC The experience of writing with digital ink on a Tablet PC is much closer FIGURE 10-4 to that of writing with pen and paper than with previous handwritten input systems. circuitry. Figure 10-5 shows the innards of a Tablet PC using Wacom active digitizer technology (an Acer from the looks of it) with the various components broken out.

  • Page 224: Understand Characteristics Of Digital Ink

    On the Tablet PC, ink isn’t represented as a bitmap. Instead, it is treated by the Tablet PC as a data type, just as the information you type into a word processor is a data type within your computer. The information you type into your word processor...
  • Page 225 CHAPTER 10: Understand Handwritten Input on the Tablet PC How Windows Represents Ink? When you write on the Tablet PC screen, the strokes you make with the pen are called ink. But did you ever wonder how Windows sees ink? To Windows, ink is a set of equations.
  • Page 226 Some Tablet PC Pens Have Erasers? Some Tablet PC pens include erasers. When you use one of these pens, the back end of the pen is a button that looks a little like a pencil eraser. When you press this eraser against the screen in applications that have an erase capability, it is as if you were using a pencil eraser on a piece of paper.

  • Page 227: Understand Tablet Pc Handwriting Recognition

    There are some things you can do to improve the accuracy of handwriting recognition on a Tablet PC, but training it to recognize your writing style isn’t one of them.
  • Page 228 How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC It Takes a Lot of Samples to Make a Good Handwriting Recognizer? Coming up with a good handwriting recognizer takes a lot of work. Because human handwriting varies so much, you need to analyze a lot of writing samples when you design your recognizer.

  • Page 229: Understand Gestures

    What all this boils down to is that the handwriting recognition on the Tablet PC is probably at or at least near the state of the art for the year 2002. Whether that is good enough for you depends on your personal tolerance for incorrect recognition and on what you are doing with your Tablet PC.
  • Page 230 How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC Use Tablet PC Input Panel Gestures The Tablet PC Input Panel supports the five gestures shown in Figure 10-8, all of which must be done in the panel’s writing area. The first four, Backspace, Space, Enter, and Tab, represent those commonly used keystrokes, and must be done when no text is visible in the writing area.
  • Page 231 Use Gestures in Windows Journal and Windows Itself Windows Journal also uses the Scratch-out gesture supported by the Tablet PC Input Panel, but it works slightly differently. Because you write anywhere on the screen in Windows Journal, and whatever you write stays put (unless you move it yourself), using the Scratch-out gesture isn’t a race against the handwriting recognition engine...
  • Page 232 Gesture Setting slider toward Small to decrease the amount of pen movement required. If you really dislike the Start Tablet PC Input Panel gesture, you can clear the check box at the top of the dialog box to disable the gesture.

  • Page 233: Learn How To Get Better Handwriting Recognition

    Adjust the size of the Start Tablet PC Input Panel gesture in this FIGURE 10-9 dialog box. Tablet PC applications are likely to become as widespread and as useful as keyboard shortcuts are on regular applications. You can find out more about Alias SketchBook, Corel Grafigo, marking menus, and onionskins in Chapter 12.
  • Page 234 When writing in the Tablet PC Input Panel, write your words so that they mostly fill the space in the writing area.
  • Page 235 CHAPTER 10: Understand Handwritten Input on the Tablet PC Play the Writing Recognition Game Some time after launching the Tablet PC, Microsoft released a set of Tablet PC PowerToys: utilities that Microsoft doesn’t provide support for, but that will quite likely work for you without problems.
  • Page 236 How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC The idea here is that the game, by forcing you to write letters the recognizer understands, will train you to work better with the recognizer, instead of training the recognizer to work better with you. This isn’t exactly a mind-stimulating game, but if you’re trying to increase handwriting recognition accuracy, spending some...

  • Page 237: Chapter 11 Take Advantage Of Accessories

    Take Advantage Chapter 11 of Accessories Copyright 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Click Here for Terms of Use.

  • Page 238: Explore The Accessories Folder

    Try the Snipping Tool Microsoft Windows has traditionally come with a set of accessory programs— smaller utilities and tools that handle specific tasks. Windows XP Tablet PC edition is no exception. This chapter looks at those accessories, as well as the Snipping Tool, a very cool tool that fits the accessory description, even though you need to download it from the Microsoft web site.
  • Page 239 CHAPTER 11: Take Advantage of Accessories The Accessibility accessories covered in this section are: ■ Magnifier ■ Narrator ■ On-Screen Keyboard ■ Utility Manager Magnifier Magnifier is a basic screen magnification utility. It zooms in on the section of the screen near the cursor and displays a magnified image of that section at the top of the screen.
  • Page 240 The On-Screen Keyboard (see Figure 11-2) is distinct from the on-screen keyboard in the Tablet PC Input Panel. The on-screen keyboard that’s part of the Input Panel is the best choice for most users, since that’s the one designed explicitly for the Tablet PC.
  • Page 241 WINDOWS+U or by tapping the same on the Tablet PC Input Panel keyboard. Figure 11-3 shows the Utility Manager dialog box. The list at the top of the dialog box shows the current state of each accessibility accessory. The Start and Stop buttons, as well as the three check boxes below them, apply to whichever of the accessories is selected in the list, meaning each accessory can be controlled independently.

  • Page 242: The Communications Folder

    Most of the accessories in this folder are therefore discussed in Chapters 7 and 8 (as shown in the following table), where you learn to connect your Tablet PC to the Internet and to a network. Accessory...

  • Page 243: Sound Recorder

    This has led to things like portable MP3 players as well as the ability to put your entire music collection on your Tablet PC’s hard drive. It has also led to massive piracy of music, with virtually any song you might want to listen to available somewhere on the Internet in MP3 format.

  • Page 244: The System Tools Folder

    (fonts) contain far more characters than you can enter by just tapping keys on the keyboard or by writing them in the Tablet PC Input Panel. If you need special characters that aren’t part of the standard set on the keyboard (perhaps Æ, È, or ù),...
  • Page 245 CHAPTER 11: Take Advantage of Accessories When you start the Character Map, you see a window similar to the one in Figure 11-5. At the top of the window is a Font list. Open the list and select either the font that corresponds to the one you’re using in your document or a font that contains the character you need.

  • Page 246: Other Common Accessories

    Calculator. You’ll surely find that it’s much quicker and easier to use Windows Calculator with the pen on the screen of your Tablet PC than it is to use with a mouse and a keyboard on a conventional PC. So stop hunting for that handheld calculator and use your Tablet PC instead.
  • Page 247 Windows. Synchronize One potential problem with a mobile computer like a Tablet PC is the possibility of files on the computer getting out of synchronization with files on the network. Windows has the ability to automatically synchronize offline files (copies of files...
  • Page 248 How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC Prepare to Use a File Offline First you must make sure that your computer is set up to use offline files. Here’s how you do it: Tap Start | My Computer. In the My Computer window, tap Tools | Folder Options to open the Folder Options dialog box.
  • Page 249 ■ When you log on or log off ■ When your Tablet PC has been idle for a certain amount of time ■ On a schedule you specify Tour Windows XP The name of this item gives it all away. Tour Windows XP is a guided tour to the Windows XP Professional operating system.

  • Page 250: Windows Explorer

    It also shows any network drives that appear as additional drive letters on your computer. Figure 11-8 shows a Windows Explorer view of the My Documents folder on my Tablet PC. While you can customize the view Windows Explorer provides, the basic layout includes a hierarchical list of the information on your computer in the Folders pane, while showing the contents of the selected folder in the View pane on the right.
  • Page 251 CHAPTER 11: Take Advantage of Accessories Windows Explorer provides a single window for viewing and FIGURE 11-8 manipulating the information on your computer. Start | My Documents, you open the Windows Explorer window, just as if you tapped Windows Explorer in the Accessories folder. WordPad WordPad is an editor that has some additional capabilities beyond those in Notepad.

  • Page 252: Try The Snipping Tool

    Sometimes the easiest way to get your point across is with a picture. With your Tablet PC, you can draw pictures and use them in documents or even e-mail them. But what if the picture you want to use is already on your screen, perhaps on a web...
  • Page 253 Or you could use the Snipping Tool (see Figure 11-10), a free utility for any Tablet PC. The Snipping Tool lets you use your pen to capture anything on the screen, simply by circling it. In addition, the Snipping Tool lets you annotate these clips, then save them, print them, or e-mail them to someone.
  • Page 254 InstallShield Wizard that installs the Snipping Tool. Use the Snipping Tool To start the Snipping Tool, tap Start | All Programs | PowerToys For Tablet PC | Microsoft Snipping Tool For Tablet PC Preview Release | Microsoft Snipping Tool.
  • Page 255 Exit icon on the Snipping Tools floating toolbar. This is where things get cool. Say I think my buddy Joe should buy a Tablet PC, and the Get a Tablet PC Today! image in Figure 11-12 expresses my sentiments exactly.
  • Page 256 How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC Circle the area of the screen you want to capture as a clip, and the FIGURE 11-13 Snipping Tool captures it for you. When I do get a clip I like, I can annotate it. That is, I can write on the screen and my writing will be included in the clip.
  • Page 257 CHAPTER 11: Take Advantage of Accessories ■ Lasso This tool selects only your ink strokes. When you lasso some of your strokes on the screen, they’re surrounded by a selection box that allows you to drag and resize what you wrote. Once you’re done annotating the clip, you have four options.
  • Page 258 Snipping Tool and the Snipping Tool Editor. However, this isn’t the same kind of tutorial as we’ve seen for using the Tablet PC Input Panel or Windows Journal. This tutorial takes the form of a large topic in the Snipping Tool help system.

  • Page 259: Chapter 12 Get The Most From Those Multimedia Applications

    Get the Most from Chapter 12 Those Multimedia Applications Copyright 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Click Here for Terms of Use.

  • Page 260: Use Windows Media Player

    Microsoft, new software is sure to follow. In this chapter and the next, we’ll look at some of the great programs that either ship with Windows XP Tablet PC edition, or were significantly updated to take advantage of the Tablet PC, or were written specifically for the Tablet PC.
  • Page 261 CHAPTER 12: Get the Most from Those Multimedia Applications automatically detect that your Tablet PC is running Windows XP (it doesn’t distinguish between the different editions of Windows XP). It then shows you a list of the programs you can download (only Windows Media Player 9 Series was available when I wrote this).

  • Page 262: Start Using The Media Player

    Windows Media Player will start instead of your preferred viewer. You need to be logged on to your Tablet PC using an account with Administrative rights if you want to change any of the settings in the Customize the Installation Options window.
  • Page 263 CHAPTER 12: Get the Most from Those Multimedia Applications I’m not going to give you a complete rundown of everything Media Player can do, nor am I going to attempt to describe all the controls and options. Instead, the next few pages will walk you through some of the most common things people do with Media Player.

  • Page 264: Play Audio Cds

    Playing an audio CD with Media Player is simplicity itself. Insert the CD into a CD-ROM drive that’s connected to your Tablet PC. If this is the first time you’ve tried to play a CD on this machine, a dialog box appears, asking you what Windows should do with this kind of disc.
  • Page 265 CHAPTER 12: Get the Most from Those Multimedia Applications If you have an Internet connection, Media Player downloads album information from the Web and displays that as it plays the music. Depending on the information available about your CD, you may see the Info Center view (Figure 12-3) or a visualization.

  • Page 266: View A Video Clip

    Visualizations to determine which visualizations you’ll see, download new visualizations, and adjust visualization options. To learn how to play audio clips that are stored on your Tablet PC hard disk, read “Play Content from Your Media Library” later in this chapter.
  • Page 267 CHAPTER 12: Get the Most from Those Multimedia Applications To listen to an Internet radio station, tap Radio Tuner in the Features taskbar. Media Player connects to the Internet, then displays a list of featured stations similar to the one in Figure 12-4. If you see a station you would like to know more about, tap its name.

  • Page 268: Stock Your Media Library

    This takes only a few minutes, and you may be surprised at all the good stuff that’s already available on your Tablet PC. If you agree to the search, Media Player displays the Add To Media Library By Searching Computer dialog box in Figure 12-6.
  • Page 269 CHAPTER 12: Get the Most from Those Multimedia Applications FIGURE 12-5 The Media Library is a central location for keeping track of your media files and Internet radio stations. The options you choose here can have a great effect on the amount of FIGURE 12-6 time it takes to add your new media files to the Media Library.

  • Page 270: Play Content From Your Media Library

    How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC You can add any audio or video files that you’ve download to the Media Library. Find the file on your hard disk and double-tap it. Assuming it’s a type for which Media Player is the default player, Media Player starts and begins to play the file.

  • Page 271: Learn To Skin Your Media Player

    CHAPTER 12: Get the Most from Those Multimedia Applications Use this dialog box to create and save playlists. FIGURE 12-7 Learn to Skin Your Media Player Somewhere along the line, someone decided that having your programs look the same all the time was boring, and they decided to do something about it. That something is called skinning an application.
  • Page 272 How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC With the Skin Chooser feature, you can radically alter the appearance of FIGURE 12-8 the Media Player window. Note that there’s a list of skin names between the Feature toolbar and the window containing the Windows XP skin.

  • Page 273: Try These Media Player 9 Tips And Tricks

    (particularly useful if you’ve been using digital media for some time and want to transfer your existing library to your Tablet PC). To back up your licenses, tap Tools | License Management. In the License Management dialog box (Figure 12-9), tap Change and browse to the folder where you want to store the backup licenses, then tap Backup Now.
  • Page 274 Tap Browse to specify the location of the files you want volume leveling values added to. If you want this done for all the MP3 and WMA files on your Tablet PC, select the C:\ drive as the Location. Tap Advanced Options to display the Advanced Search Options check boxes.

  • Page 275: Take A Quick Look At Windows Movie Maker

    While these are great capabilities, your Tablet PC is almost certainly a business tool, and editing home videos isn’t a prime use for such a machine. In addition, Tablet PCs aren’t powerful enough to give you a really good experience...
  • Page 276 How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC FIGURE 12-10 The Windows Movie Maker window has several areas and toolbars that help you do your work. To the right of the Collections list is the Clips pane, which shows all the clips in a given collection.

  • Page 277: Should You Upgrade To Movie Maker 2

    With all the great things about Movie Maker 2, you’re probably wondering why we’re wasting time talking about whether you should upgrade. The somewhat surprising answer is that your Tablet PC may not be powerful enough to run Windows Movie Maker 2.
  • Page 278 I suggest you upgrade to Movie Maker 2. Why? Movie Maker 2 may run slower on your Tablet PC than you would like, but you’ll have access to all the new features. And slow performance isn’t as much of an issue when you’re only using the program once in a while.
  • Page 279 CHAPTER 12: Get the Most from Those Multimedia Applications Free Resources for Movie Maker 2 Since Movie Maker 2 can use all the resources your Tablet PC can give it, you should take steps to free as much of your system resources as you can when you’re going to use this application.
  • Page 280 How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC Download link and follow the instructions to download and install Windows Movie Maker 2. Windows Movie Maker 2 appears in Windows Update. If you don’t want to upgrade to Movie Maker 2, be sure you don’t accept the Movie Maker 2 updates that Windows Update offers you.

  • Page 281: Sketch, Annotate, Draw, And Collaborate With Corel Grafigo

    Sketch, Annotate, Draw, and Collaborate with Corel Grafigo Corel Grafigo is a tool designed specifically for the Tablet PC. With it, you can create graphics, exchange ideas, and collaborate on common designs using Microsoft NetMeeting. Grafigo is a business graphics program. As you might expect from such a program, it includes multiple pens, a marker, and an eraser, along with a lasso for selecting objects and a text entry capability.

  • Page 282: Make Your Tablet Pc A Digital Sketchbook With Alias Sketchbook

    Alias SketchBook The people at Alias|Wavefront, the publishers of Alias SketchBook Pro, describe their product as a business and personal productivity tool that turns your Tablet PC into a mobile, networked, digital sketchbook. You can use it to create wonderful sketches like Figure 12-14.
  • Page 283 CHAPTER 12: Get the Most from Those Multimedia Applications SketchBook Pro gives you a full range of drawing tools, including pressure-sensitive pencils, pens, markers, highlighters, brushes, and airbrushes (if you have a pressure-sensitive pen). And the interface is clearly designed specifically for pen input.
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  • Page 285: Chapter 13 Use Journal And Other Cool Tablet Pc Programs

    Use Journal and Chapter 13 Other Cool Tablet PC Programs Copyright 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Click Here for Terms of Use.

  • Page 286: Take Advantage Of Windows Journal

    ■ Try Your Hand at These Tablet PC Power Toys This chapter continues our look at programs that either ship with the Tablet PC, or were significantly modified for the Tablet PC, or were written from scratch for it. In Chapter 12, we focused on multimedia applications like Windows MovieMaker and Alias SketchBook.
  • Page 287 Once you finish the tutorial, I recommend you spend some time using Journal for regular note-taking, then check out the following advanced topics. FIGURE 13-1 The Journal tutorial included on your Tablet PC is a great way to learn Journal basics.

  • Page 288: Explore Some Advanced Journal Topics

    How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC Explore Some Advanced Journal Topics If you’re comfortable using Windows Journal, and ready to take the next step, here are some things you can try. The Journal help system covers some additional advanced topics beyond the ones here.
  • Page 289 2003. From what I’ve seen so far, this looks like a must-have application for every Tablet PC user. To copy content from a Note into an e-mail message, you follow these steps: Select the ink that you want to add to your e-mail message.
  • Page 290 (the default format) is your best choice. If the file you’re importing is mostly images or uses text fonts that you don’t have installed on your Tablet PC, you should probably use the Print As An Image option. Print As An Image is slower and produces larger files, but you’ll be sure that what you import into...

  • Page 291: Apply These Tips To Work More Efficiently

    Use the Tablet PC Input Panel for Pen Input It’s time to talk about the Tablet PC Input Panel (or simply the Input Panel) again. I know we’ve talked about it a couple of times already (in Chapters 2 and 10), but there’s even more to say about it.

  • Page 292: Explore The Different Pen Input Modes

    You learned about this mode in Chapter 2, under “Enter Text with the Pen.” Use this mode if the Tablet PC does a good job of recognizing your handwriting and you need to enter a lot of text.
  • Page 293 CHAPTER 13: Use Journal and Other Cool Tablet PC Programs The Input Panel help system provides a guide to the symbols used with the Block Recognizer. Search for Block Recognizer Reference to see them. ■ Keyboard Keyboard mode lets you enter text by tapping on a picture of a keyboard.

  • Page 294: Experiment With Write Anywhere

    How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC Entering text with any of these modes works the same. Tap the spot in a document where you want to enter text, then start writing in the appropriate spot of the Input Panel. The words or characters appear in the document at the spot you tapped.

  • Page 295: Make Corrections To Your Entries

    You can use these buttons to Hide or Show the Pen Input Area (the main window of the Tablet PC Input Panel) and pop up a small Quick Keys pad or a Symbols pad (a block of buttons representing the most commonly needed keyboard symbols).
  • Page 296 How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC Using the alternate list, you can replace an incorrect conversion with the correct word taken from the alternate list, as well as enter the correct spelling of the handwritten word. In addition, you can add that spelling to the Input Panel’s dictionary of known words, thereby increasing the likelihood that Input Panel will recognize the word correctly in the future.

  • Page 297: Try These Input Panel Tips

    ■ Learn and use the Start Input Panel gesture. See “How to Do the Start Tablet PC Input Panel Gesture” in Chapter 10 if you need a refresher on how to make this gesture. ■ Use the correct input mode for the task at hand. The Writing Pad is the best...

  • Page 298: Read Your Favorite Magazines On Your Tablet Pc With Zinio Reader

    Computers were once billed as a tool to create the paperless office. Well, as we all know, that never happened. But with a little help from Zinio Reader, the Tablet PC might be able to eliminate your need to subscribe to printed magazines.

  • Page 299: Explore The World Of Ebooks With The Enhanced Microsoft Reader

    With a Tablet PC and Zinio Reader, you may never read a paper magazine again. You can download a version of Zinio Reader for the Tablet PC at the Zinio web site: http://www.zinio.com. Zinio Reader is available free of charge—you just pay for the magazine subscriptions.
  • Page 300 (eBooks) that have been formatted for use with Reader. The version of Reader that has been enhanced for the Tablet PC can display eBooks in portrait mode (a much more natural way to read them) and allows you to annotate the pages of your eBooks.

  • Page 301: Configure The Tablet Pc Buttons To Work With Microsoft Reader

    PAGE UP PAGE DOWN backward through an eBook, but by default, Tablet PC hardware buttons aren’t set up to function that way. The problem here is that there are only a very limited number of hardware buttons and button combinations that you can change.
  • Page 302 How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC Reconfigure a Hardware Button Reconfiguring hardware buttons is a multiple-step process. First you need to open the Tablet And Pen Settings dialog box to the Tablet Buttons tab. To do this, right-tap the Tablet And Pen Settings icon in the notification area, then select Properties in the shortcut menu that appears and go to the Tablet Buttons tab.

  • Page 303: Download Free Ebooks

    CHAPTER 13: Use Journal and Other Cool Tablet PC Programs Tap Change to open the Change Tablet Button Actions dialog box. The name of the button you selected appears at the top of the dialog box, right above an Action list.
  • Page 304 How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC This is a page from one of the nearly 2,000 eBooks available at the FIGURE 13-8 University of Virginia’s Electronic Text Center. The FrogPad Will Offer One-Handed Typing for Your Tablet PC? While all this handwriting recognition and character recognition stuff sounds great, what if you just can’t get the hang of writing on the screen of your Tablet...

  • Page 305: Activate Microsoft Reader And Shop For Ebooks

    CHAPTER 13: Use Journal and Other Cool Tablet PC Programs The FrogPad Keyboard is a form of one-handed keyboard. Using just 20 multipurpose keys, the device replaces a full keyboard. The design has reportedly been optimized for fast data entry by putting the 15 letters most commonly used in English words in the most efficient locations.

  • Page 306: Experience Mobile Collaboration With Groove

    .NET Passport password, for example) and it can take a while for the process to actually finish. Once you have Microsoft Reader activated on your Tablet PC, you’re ready to go shopping for premium eBooks. There are lots of places to shop.
  • Page 307 Visit this page on the Microsoft web site for links to major booksellers who sell eBooks. While Groove has been around since well before the Tablet PC arrived (I’ve used the Groove Workspace on my last few book projects), it’s an application that’s well suited to the Tablet PC:...
  • Page 308 How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC ■ Groove Workspace uses 192-bit encryption to secure its always-on connections with shared spaces, meaning you can be in touch with your team and your spaces wherever you are without worrying about the security of your information.

  • Page 309: Enhance Your Productivity With Franklincovey Tabletplanner

    Enhance Your Productivity with FranklinCovey TabletPlanner The FranklinCovey TabletPlanner brings the famous paper-based FranklinCovey planner system to the Tablet PC. With this application, you get the layout and organization of the paper-based system, along with the benefits of digital ink and handwriting recognition.
  • Page 310 How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC The Calendar view in the FranklinCovey TabletPlanner looks very much FIGURE 13-11 like the original paper version. In the Daily Task List and Appointment Schedule, when you tap a spot the TabletPlanner opens a window for you to enter your information and relevant settings, such as an appointment’s start and end times.

  • Page 311: Stay In Sync With Corporate Data

    CHAPTER 13: Use Journal and Other Cool Tablet PC Programs The task status gestures (see Figure 13-12) are a great adaptation of the Tablet PC’s handwriting recognition abilities. The TabletPlanner recognizes a set of gestures that corresponds to the status of your tasks, and when you enter those gestures in the first column of the Task List, it automatically recognizes them, converts them to their text equivalents, and applies the indicated status to the task.

  • Page 312: Tie All Your Information Together With Ebinder

    How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC an important benefit. Since TabletPlanner synchronizes across the Web, you can synchronize your data anywhere that your Tablet PC can get a connection to the Web. This provides far greater flexibility than any synchronization scheme involving a direct connection to your corporate network.

  • Page 313: Try Your Hand At These Tablet Pc Power Toys

    Tablet PC to a Microsoft Exchange server. Try Your Hand at These Tablet PC Power Toys In Chapter 10, you visited the Microsoft PowerToys for Tablet PC web page to download a copy of the Writing Recognition Game. In Chapter 11, we went back to that page to grab the Snipping Tool.

  • Page 314: Thumbnail View

    Once you install a PowerToy, you can run it from the PowerToys for Tablet PC folder. To reach this folder, tap Start | All Programs | PowerToys For Tablet PC | and the name of the PowerToy you want to run.

  • Page 315: Tablet Pool

    Bill Mann.jnt and ToDoList.jtp, represent the two types of Journal files. Tablet Pool Imagine, if you will, a photorealistic game of pool where your Tablet PC pen serves as the pool cue, and you can play by yourself, against the computer or against other people locally, on a network, or connected through the Internet.

  • Page 316: Puzzle Game

    If you’ve ever done a jigsaw puzzle, consider this a jigsaw puzzle on your Tablet PC. Puzzle Game comes with five images that you can use as puzzles, each of which can be chopped up into varying numbers of parts depending on the difficulty level you choose.
  • Page 317 CHAPTER 13: Use Journal and Other Cool Tablet PC Programs figure also shows one of the optional components of Puzzle Game—the Key. You can have the Key visible to help you work on the puzzle, or you can hide the Key to make things that much tougher for yourself.

  • Page 318: Tic Tac Toe

    FIGURE 13-17 Tic Tac Toe Do you play Tic Tac Toe? If so, now you can play on the Tablet PC and save some paper. The Tic Tac Toe PowerToy works about the way you would expect it to. You play against the computer, and write your X’s or O’s on the screen instead of typing...
  • Page 319 CHAPTER 13: Use Journal and Other Cool Tablet PC Programs Play Tic Tac Toe against your Tablet PC with this computerized version FIGURE 13-18 of the classic game. Okay, there is one thing fancy here. If you make a mistake while writing X or O in a spot, you can resolve it by tapping the Clear button, which appears in the square while you’re making your move.
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  • Page 321: Extend Office Xp With The Tablet Pack

    Extend Office XP Chapter 14 with the Tablet Pack Copyright 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Click Here for Terms of Use.
  • Page 322 You can follow these simple steps to view the Tablet Pack demo on the Microsoft Web site: Go to the Office XP and Tablet PC Web page. To do so, open Internet Explorer and go to this address: http://www.microsoft.com/office/tabletpc/. Tap the See a Tablet Pack demo link found somewhere on this page.

  • Page 323: Download And Install The Office Xp Pack For Tablet Pc

    Download and Install the Office XP Pack for Tablet PC Right now, the Office XP Pack for Tablet PC is available only as a download, although its capabilities will be integrated into future versions of Microsoft Office. The file you need to download is over a megabyte in size, and according to Microsoft it will take about eight minutes to download with a slow modem, so this shouldn’t be a real burden...
  • Page 324 How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC Look in this dialog box to see that Service Pack 2 (SP-2) or higher is FIGURE 14-1 installed before downloading and installing the Tablet Pack. Once you’re sure you have Service Pack 2 or higher installed, you should close any open Office XP program (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or Outlook) as well as Windows Journal.
  • Page 325 CHAPTER 14: Extend Office XP with the Tablet Pack Internet Explorer may pop up a dialog box warning you that this file could be dangerous. Ignore this warning and tap Save to download opsetup.exe to your hard disk. In the Save As dialog box that appears, specify the folder you want the download stored in, then tap Save to begin downloading.
  • Page 326 How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC Installing the Tablet Pack is also easy. Here are the steps you follow: Once Internet Explorer finishes downloading opsetup.exe, it should give you the option to Open the downloaded file, which starts the installation process.

  • Page 327: Uninstall The Tablet Pack

    If so, you can do so using Add Or Remove Programs. Tap Start | Control Panel | Add Or Remove Programs. In the Currently Installed Programs list, select Microsoft Office XP Pack For Tablet PC. Tap the Remove button, then follow the onscreen instructions to uninstall the Office Pack.

  • Page 328: Add Handwritten Content In An Ink Drawing And Writing Area

    How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC Add Handwritten Content in an Ink Drawing and Writing Area When you use the Ink Drawing And Writing Area command to add handwriting to a document, it works very similar to inserting a graphic in a document. A movable and resizable box appears at the entry point (the point where you placed the cursor in the document).

  • Page 329: Add Handwritten Comments With The Ink

    CHAPTER 14: Extend Office XP with the Tablet Pack If you are using Word in Normal view and you insert an Ink Drawing and Writing area, Word switches to Web Layout view so it can display the change. If Word is in Print Layout view when you insert an Ink Drawing and Writing area, it remains in Print Layout view.

  • Page 330: Use Handwriting In E-Mail

    How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC Insert a comment at an exact spot in a Word document with the Ink FIGURE 14-5 Comment command. about a particular comment, as well as looking at it in the onscreen version of the document.
  • Page 331 HTML or RTF messages. Figure 14-6 shows a message containing both text and handwriting, as it appears on a non–Tablet PC. While the recipient can’t respond in handwriting, he can at least view the message as you meant it to be seen.
  • Page 332 How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC You can send handwritten messages to people who don’t use a Tablet PC FIGURE 14-6 without any problem. Use Word As Your E-mail Editor If you want to use Word as your full-time e-mail editor, you can set this up by following this procedure.
  • Page 333 CHAPTER 14: Extend Office XP with the Tablet Pack In the main Outlook window, tap Tools | Options to open the Options dialog box shown in Figure 14-7. Tap Mail Format if the Mail Format page isn’t visible, then in the Message Format section of the page, set the Use Microsoft Word To Edit E-mail Messages check box if it isn’t already set.

  • Page 334: Use Handwriting In Excel Spreadsheets

    If you like the ability to include handwritten comments in e-mail messages, you’ll love the Snipping tool. The Snipping tool for Tablet PC lets you select anything on the screen, write on it, then cut it out and save it, or e-mail it to someone.

  • Page 335: Use Handwriting In Powerpoint

    The ability to add inked comments to a PowerPoint presentation, while you’re presenting it, is a great example of the future of the Tablet PC. It gives you a way to do something that was easy and natural when presenting overheads but became difficult or impossible when we started using PCs for our presentations.
  • Page 336 How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC You can easily add handwritten content to a PowerPoint presentation FIGURE 14-9 you’re creating. causes a subset of the Ink toolbar to appear. Write anywhere on the presentation as necessary. The entire screen is an active drawing area. Figure 14-10 shows a slide from an active presentation that I’ve just scribbled all over without exiting the...
  • Page 337 CHAPTER 14: Extend Office XP with the Tablet Pack Being able to write anywhere on a presentation while you’re presenting FIGURE 14-10 it can really be useful. The abbreviated Ink toolbar contains the Ink Color button and an Arrow button. Tap the Arrow button to convert the writing tool back into a pointer and resume your normal presentation.

  • Page 338: Take Advantage Of The Tablet Pack Extension For Windows Journal

    How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC Take Advantage of the Tablet Pack Extension for Windows Journal In addition to its other capabilities, the Tablet Pack gives Microsoft Journal and Outlook XP the ability to share information with each other. Specifically, it allows you to: ■...

  • Page 339: Insert Outlook Meeting Information Into A Journal Note

    CHAPTER 14: Extend Office XP with the Tablet Pack Correct handwriting recognition in the Convert To Outlook item dialog FIGURE 14-11 box before inserting into an Outlook item. Where the converted text appears in the Outlook item depends on the type of item it is.
  • Page 340 How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC The meeting must already appear in your Outlook Calendar before you can transfer its information into a Journal note. Start by opening the Journal note that you want to use. Then follow these simple steps: In Journal, tap Insert | Outlook Meeting Information.
  • Page 341 CHAPTER 14: Extend Office XP with the Tablet Pack Figure 14-13 shows the Journal note with the meeting information inserted. You’ll notice that the text that came from Outlook is integrated right into the note so you can do things like write on it or highlight it. FIGURE 14-13 This Journal note contains meeting information taken from an Outlook Meeting item.
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  • Page 343: Talk To Your Tablet Pc

    Talk to Your Chapter 15 Tablet PC Copyright 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Click Here for Terms of Use.

  • Page 344: Understand Speech Recognition Basics

    From there, we’ll cover using speech recognition on the Tablet PC in general, along with specific tips for specific applications. Once you’re comfortable with all that, you can explore the advanced features and general tips at the end of the chapter.

  • Page 345: Chapter 15 Talk To Your Tablet Pc

    CHAPTER 15: Talk to Your Tablet PC it. To give you some idea of the scope of the effort that got us here, this timeline shows some of the steps in the progression: ■ 1922 The Elmwood Button Company produces the first speech recognition system.
  • Page 346 How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC ■ 2000 Lernout & Hauspie acquires Dragon Systems. ■ 2000 TellMe introduces the first worldwide voice portal. You could dial this system from anywhere and ask for information such as stock prices or the weather forecast for any location.

  • Page 347: Learn A Little About How Speech Recognition Works

    CHAPTER 15: Talk to Your Tablet PC Learn a Little about How Speech Recognition Works While each speech recognition system has its own unique features and ways of doing things, it’s possible to give you a general idea of how they work. The speech recognition process begins when a system detects an utterance.

  • Page 348: Use Tablet Pc Speech Recognition

    Another aspect of many dictation speech recognition systems, including the one in your Tablet PC, is the use of a dictionary. This dictionary contains a list of words that the system “knows.” The speech recognition system uses the dictionary to help it guess at the spoken input it receives.
  • Page 349 Figure 15-3 indicates. If you plan to do a lot of voice input on your Tablet PC, you should seriously consider investing in a high-quality USB microphone or headset.
  • Page 350 FIGURE 15-2 your Tablet PC will accept spoken input. faster your Tablet PC learns your voice. Carefully read and heed the instructions in each of the Wizard’s windows to get the best results from the training. After you work your way through each voice training session, the system adjusts your speaker profile with the training data gathered during the session (see Figure 15-4).

  • Page 351: Run The Speech Tutorial

    Even if you’re done with voice training sessions for now, don’t exit the Wizard yet. Your Tablet PC is ready to accept spoken input from you. To really get the feel for how this works, I suggest you open a blank Notepad document and work through the Speech tutorial before trying to use speech input in a “real”...

  • Page 352: Start Using Speech Recognition In Your Daily Work

    How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC The Speech Tutorial is a great way to learn the basics of speech input on FIGURE 15-5 your Tablet PC. At the top of the Speech Tutorial window there’s a link to a version of the tutorial that uses only text and images.
  • Page 353 One thing I have trouble with when using speech recognition on my Tablet PC is remembering the proper forms of the general voice commands. When I forget one, I refer to the Input Panel Voice Command Reference in the help system.
  • Page 354 How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC The What Can I Say dialog box lists the voice commands that are FIGURE 15-6 available to you in the active document. As explained in “Speak to Microsoft Office Applications” later in this...

  • Page 355: Use These Tips For Speech Recognition In Specific Applications

    Use These Tips for Speech Recognition in Specific Applications Now that you know how to use speech recognition on your Tablet PC in general, it’s time to learn about the idiosyncrasies of using speech recognition with specific applications. This section covers speech recognition with Microsoft Office applications, Internet Explorer, and Windows Journal.

  • Page 356: Speak To Internet Explorer

    I saw this for myself at the Tablet PC launch event. The ScanSoft representative merely handed me a Tablet PC in the middle of the crowded and noisy exhibition hall, and let me start talking. I was able to navigate through the sample form perfectly, despite the noisy environment, and despite never having trained (or even spoken to) the system OmniForm was running on.

  • Page 357: Try These General Speech Recognition Tips

    CHAPTER 15: Talk to Your Tablet PC In addition to OmniForm, ScanSoft is upgrading several of their other programs with Tablet PC support. For a complete rundown of Tablet PC support in ScanSoft programs, visit their Tablet PC Productivity Applications web page at: http://www.scansoft.com/tpc/.

  • Page 358: Try These Advanced Speech Recognition Options

    ■ Finally, don’t let someone else use speech recognition when they’re signed on to your Tablet PC under your user name. The system will try to recognize their voice, and begin training itself to recognize them. This will hurt your recognition results.
  • Page 359 To see the complete list of formatting voice commands, search for the phrase “formatting voice commands” in the Tablet PC Input Panel help system. Figure 15-7 shows a few of the over 30 formatting voice commands that the Input Panel understands.
  • Page 360 “What Can I Say” command. Customize the Way Speech Recognition Works You can customize the way your Tablet PC works to make using voice input easier for you. You can mix and match any of the four customizations described here to meet your needs.
  • Page 361 CHAPTER 15: Talk to Your Tablet PC Set the Text Preview Pane to Automatically Open When Necessary Some programs won’t display the alternate list when you select a word that you’ve dictated. To address this situation, you can have the Input Panel automatically use the Text Preview pane with programs that behave that way.
  • Page 362 How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC Disabling sets of voice commands you don’t use can increase the FIGURE 15-9 recognition accuracy for the commands you do use. making Working With Text commands available in Dictation mode by reducing the total number of commands you make active.
  • Page 363 CHAPTER 15: Talk to Your Tablet PC perhaps you do a lot of work in two different environments, say your office at work and your home office. In this case, it would be nice to have two profiles, one for each environment.
  • Page 364 How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC Recognition Profiles area. All the speech recognition profiles for this user account appear in the Recognition Profiles list, with the active profile checkmarked. Tap New to start the Profile Wizard, which guides you through creating a new profile.

  • Page 365: Fix What Ails Your Tablet Pc

    Fix What Ails Part IV Your Tablet PC Copyright 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Click Here for Terms of Use.
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  • Page 367: Prevent Problems With Regular Maintenance

    Prevent Problems Chapter 16 with Regular Maintenance Copyright 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Click Here for Terms of Use.
  • Page 368 Like anything else you own, your Tablet PC needs some sort of regular maintenance to keep performing at its best. This chapter covers some of the most important preventive maintenance tasks you can perform to keep your Tablet PC in shape.

  • Page 369: Maintain Your Tablet Pc Hardware

    CHAPTER 16: Prevent Problems with Regular Maintenance Maintain Your Tablet PC Hardware A little basic maintenance of the physical structure of your Tablet PC will go a long way toward keeping it functioning properly. After all, this is a machine that’s expected to be used more, and venture into more environments than the normal notebook computer.
  • Page 370 How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC ■ Right-tap the Tablet and Pen Settings icon in the notification area. In the shortcut menu that appears, tap Properties. On the Settings tab shown in Figure 16-1, tap the Calibrate button (located in the Calibration section).
  • Page 371 A weak battery in your pen could result in erratic behavior. Clean and protect the exterior of your Tablet PC, because it is likely to be touched much more than a regular desktop or notebook computer. It is also likely to be exposed to more harsh environments than the other kinds of machines.

  • Page 372: Maintain Your Disk Drive

    How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC Consider buying a protective case for your Tablet PC to shield it from FIGURE 16-3 damage (and perhaps make it easier to use). Maintain Your Disk Drive Perhaps the single area where maintenance matters the most and where you can do the most is the disk drive.

  • Page 373: Defragment Your Hard Disk

    CHAPTER 16: Prevent Problems with Regular Maintenance Find and fix disk errors with this error-checking tool. FIGURE 16-4 I recommend that you select both these options: Automatically Fix File System Errors, and Scan For And Attempt Recovery Of Bad Sectors. Selecting only Automatically Fix File System Errors is faster, but it can result in the loss of a bit of your disk drive’s storage capacity as bad sectors accumulate on the disk.
  • Page 374 How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC Over time, the number of fragmented files on the disk grows, increasing the chances that new files will also need to be fragmented to fit. Fragmented files take longer to access, and as the fragmentation of the disk as a whole increases, you’ll eventually notice slower performance from your Tablet PC.
  • Page 375 Disk Defragmenter can reorganize the files on your hard disk to improve FIGURE 16-5 your Tablet PC’s performance. information on your hard disk. Look in the status bar at the bottom of the window to see the percentage complete and the file currently being defragmented.

  • Page 376: Free Disk Space With Disk Cleanup

    Despite the fact that hard disks store more information than ever before, it is possible for your Tablet PC to run low on disk space. This problem may be even more likely to occur than it was with the last computer you used. For one thing, the disk drive in your Tablet PC may store less information than the one in your desktop computer.
  • Page 377 Is Available It takes only a few seconds to determine how much space is available on your Tablet PC’s hard disk. Just follow these steps: Tap Start | My Computer. The My Computer window appears. In the View pane you should see some folders, along with an icon representing the hard disk.
  • Page 378 To start Disk Cleanup, tap Start | All Programs | Accessories | System Tools | Disk Cleanup. Assuming your Tablet PC has only one hard disk (as do all the Tablet PCs available at this writing), Disk Cleanup begins by immediately calculating how much space it can liberate by deleting the files in various locations.
  • Page 379 CHAPTER 16: Prevent Problems with Regular Maintenance Disk Cleanup scans your hard disk to calculate potential space savings, FIGURE 16-7 allowing you to decide what to delete. Once Disk Cleanup finishes its analysis of your hard disk, the main Disk Cleanup dialog box appears.
  • Page 380 How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC Set or clear the check boxes in the Files To Delete list to tell Disk Cleanup which types of files you want it to remove. If you’re not sure what a particular type of file represents, tap the name of the type and then check the Description area below the list.
  • Page 381 CHAPTER 16: Prevent Problems with Regular Maintenance FIGURE 16-10 You can free disk space by uninstalling programs you don’t use. Tap a program to see how much space it occupies on the hard disk and when you last used it. If you decide to uninstall it, tap the Remove button (which sometimes appears as the Change/Remove button) and follow the onscreen instructions.

  • Page 382: Schedule Maintenance Tasks

    How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC Schedule Maintenance Tasks The sheer number of possible system maintenance tasks could make keeping your system running its best a real headache. The Scheduled Tasks utility can prevent this headache. Scheduled Tasks allows you to assign maintenance tasks, or any program, to run on the schedule you specify, with the settings you choose.
  • Page 383 Figure 16-12 shows the wizard and a small fraction of the programs it can run on my Tablet PC. The wizard gives you the option to run a program at any of the following times: ■...
  • Page 384 How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC Continue working your way through the wizard. Depending on the program you choose to run, the wizard may ask you to enter a user name and password, which it then uses to run the program as if it were started by that user.

  • Page 385: Maintain Optimum Performance

    Me Of Missed Tasks. Maintain Optimum Performance You can perform a few tasks to optimize the performance of your Tablet PC. A Tablet PC in general has a smaller hard disk, a slower processor, and less memory (RAM) than a high-end desktop system or notebook computer. At the same time, your Tablet PC has to handle all the needs of Windows XP Professional, plus the additional burdens of pen input and handwriting recognition.
  • Page 386 How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC The place to tune display settings is the Visual Effects tab of the Performance Options dialog box, which appears in Figure 16-14. To get there, tap Start, then right-tap My Computer. On the shortcut menu that appears, tap Properties | Advanced.

  • Page 387: Adjust Processor And Memory Settings

    This will give more processor time to the handwriting recognition engine, and may speed up your system. If you tend to use only a few applications on your Tablet PC at a time, you may want to experiment with changing the Memory Usage setting. Giving the system cache priority can improve performance if you use only a few applications at a time, but use them with large files.

  • Page 388: Resize The Paging File

    How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC You can make some helpful adjustments to your processor and memory FIGURE 16-15 settings on this tab. Resize the Paging File The paging file is an area on your hard disk that Windows sets aside to use as virtual memory.
  • Page 389 The first situation is when your computer has more than one hard disk, which is seldom the case with a Tablet PC. The second situation is when you are running very low on disk space. In that case, you may want to reduce the size of the paging file to free some disk space.
  • Page 390 I recommend against it unless you’ve got a gigabyte or more of memory stuffed into your Tablet PC. Tap Set to make the change. You’ll have to restart Windows before the change will go into effect.

  • Page 391: Chapter 17 Back Up Your Tablet Pc

    Back Up Your Chapter 17 Tablet PC Copyright 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Click Here for Terms of Use.
  • Page 392 Then there was that breakfast meeting at the local diner last week, and so on. Using a Tablet PC a higher percentage of the time increases the wear and tear on the machine.

  • Page 393: Understand Your Tablet Pc Backup Options

    What this means is that your Tablet PC is more likely to suffer a fatal accident than a notebook or desktop computer. What that means is backing up your Tablet PC is extremely important.

  • Page 394: Let The Backup Or Restore Wizard Do The Work

    How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC Let the Backup or Restore Wizard Do the Work The best way to back up your Tablet PC (unless you’re an advanced user) is with the Backup or Restore Wizard. As its name indicates, the wizard (shown in Figure 17-1) can either back up files and settings, or restore them.
  • Page 395 Tablet PC, on another computer connected to yours by a network, or on removable media like floppy or Zip disks.

  • Page 396: Use Automated System Recovery

    To do this, you’ll need a floppy disk (and a floppy drive that can connect to your Tablet PC). With those in hand, start the Backup or Restore Wizard by tapping Start | All Programs | Accessories | System Tools | Backup. On the wizard’s second screen, select Backup Files And Settings.

  • Page 397: Use The Advanced Backup Mode

    System Recovery Disk you can use for an Automated System Recovery. If your Tablet PC didn’t come with a floppy disk drive, you can buy a plug-and-play drive with a USB interface for around $50.

  • Page 398: Use System Restore To Quickly Recover From Problems

    System Restore can reset your Tablet PC’s system settings to the state they were in before the problem reared up and started making life miserable for you. System Restore is easy to use, too.
  • Page 399 CHAPTER 17: Back Up Your Tablet PC If you need to configure System Restore, this tab is the place to start. FIGURE 17-5 System Restore On All Drives check box, or select one of the drives System Restore is monitoring and tap Settings to configure System Restore on that drive.

  • Page 400: Create A Restore Point

    How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC Create a Restore Point You should consider creating a manual restore point when you’re about to do something risky like installing software from a source you’re unfamiliar with. You should also consider creating a restore point when your system is running great.

  • Page 401: Return The System To A Previous Restore Point

    CHAPTER 17: Back Up Your Tablet PC Return the System to a Previous Restore Point If something goes haywire and you want to return your system to an earlier state, you can follow these simple steps: Tap Start | All Programs | Accessories | System Tools | System Restore to open the System Restore Wizard.

  • Page 402: Undo The Return To A Previous Restore Point

    How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC Confirm the name of the restore point you want to use. Heed the warnings in this window, and save all your work and close all your applications before tapping Next. Windows will shut down for a short while as it resets the system to the selected restore point.

  • Page 403: Configure Startup And Recovery Settings

    Automated System Recovery,” earlier in this chapter. Configure Startup and Recovery Settings If your Tablet PC experiences a major problem that causes it to stop running, you’ll want it to take certain steps that will make recovery and troubleshooting easier. The computer should already be set up to take the most common steps, but it’s worth a...

  • Page 404: Consider Using A Portable Automatic Backup System

    Consider Using a Portable Automatic Backup System If you accept that it’s important to back up your Tablet PC regularly, then it would be nice to have an automatic backup system, one that makes doing the backup as easy as possible.
  • Page 405 Start | My Computer, and then right-tap the icon representing the ABSplus drive. In the shortcut menu that appears, tap Explore to view the contents of the ABSplus drive. This will be nearly identical to the contents of your Tablet PC hard disk, as Figure 17-9 shows.
  • Page 406 How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC You should be able to use the ABSplus automatic backup system with all its default settings. One setting you might want to configure is the Reminder. This option reminds you when it’s time to back up your hard disk again. To activate the Reminder, right-tap the ABSplus Launcher icon in the notification area.

  • Page 407: Chapter 18 Use The Tablet Pc's Tools To Solve Problems

    Use the Tablet PC’s Chapter 18 Tools to Solve Problems Copyright 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Click Here for Terms of Use.

  • Page 408: Get Familiar With The Help And Support Center

    The exact appearance of your computer’s Help and Support Center will depend on which model of Tablet PC you have, but it should look something like the one in Figure 18-1. If the form of the Help and Support Center looks familiar, it’s because the center is implemented as a set of web pages stored on your Tablet PC and displayed in a customized Internet Explorer window.
  • Page 409 CHAPTER 18: Use the Tablet PC’s Tools to Solve Problems FIGURE 18-1 The Windows XP Help and Support Center is a good place to look for tools and information to fix problems with your Tablet PC. Tap the category you’re interested in and you’ll jump to a page structured similarly to the one in Figure 18-3.

  • Page 410: Run Dr. Watson When Required

    How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC The Fixing A Problem section of the Help and Support Center can help FIGURE 18-2 with all sorts of problems. Run Dr. Watson When Required Dr. Watson is a utility that creates a log of the state of your computer when an error occurs.

  • Page 411: Use Windows Update To Fix Problems

    In Chapter 5, we talked about Windows Update as a way to ensure that you have the latest versions of the relevant device drivers on your Tablet PC. If you run with that concept a little, you can see how Windows Update can be a tool for fixing system...
  • Page 412 How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC Set Up and Use Automatic Updates Setting up your Tablet PC to automatically check for updates is a simple process. To configure your Tablet PC to automatically check for updates: Tap Start | Control Panel | Performance And Maintenance | System | Automatic Updates.
  • Page 413 Windows Update link to see the window in Figure 18-4. The key feature of this window is the Scan For Updates link in the View pane. Make sure your Tablet PC has an active connection to the Internet, and then tap Scan For Updates.
  • Page 414 How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC Windows Update can fix what ails your Tablet PC by helping you install FIGURE 18-4 new versions of programs that may include a fix for your problem. to your computer (if any). Tap Review And Install Updates to find out more about the updates recommended for you, and to choose which you want to install now.
  • Page 415 If service packs or critical updates should be installed, Windows Update guides you to deal with them first, before installing any of the noncritical changes. Figure 18-5 shows two critical updates that should be made on my Tablet PC before I worry about the driver update that’s also applicable.

  • Page 416: Solve Problems With The Troubleshooters

    Tablet PC. When I say custom software, I’m particularly thinking about things like the custom business applications companies create internally or pay consultants to develop.
  • Page 417 CHAPTER 18: Use the Tablet PC’s Tools to Solve Problems The Printing Troubleshooter is just one of the many interactive FIGURE 18-6 troubleshooters included in the Windows XP Tablet PC edition Help system. can adjust the video settings to try and re-create the video mode the old application was designed for.

  • Page 418: Use Other Tools For Diagnosing Problems

    Use Other Tools for Diagnosing Problems The Help and Support Center isn’t the only place to find tools for diagnosing problems on your Tablet PC. This section takes you to some of those other tools. Investigate Problems with System Information The System Information window provides detailed information about the configuration of your computer.

  • Page 419: Solve Specific Problems

    CHAPTER 18: Use the Tablet PC’s Tools to Solve Problems Use the Compatibility tab of a program’s Properties dialog box to adjust FIGURE 18-7 compatibility settings manually. You can start System Information by tapping Start | All Programs | Accessories | System Tools | System Information.

  • Page 420: Office Xp Pack For Tablet Pc Security Warning Appears

    Tablet PC features. Microsoft made the Office XP Pack for Tablet PC available as a free download to add some Tablet PC integration to Office XP. And it did. Unfortunately, there was a side effect.

  • Page 421: Terminate Hung Programs With Windows Task Manager

    Unless you know the solution, this Security Warning appears every time FIGURE 18-9 you start Journal after installing the Office XP Pack for Tablet PC. If you’d rather not automatically trust every ActiveX control that Microsoft wants to install on your computer, then you’ll have to get used to seeing that Security Warning.
  • Page 422 On the Applications tab is a list of the tasks (programs and folders) running on your Tablet PC at this moment. If you look under the Status heading, you’ll see tasks that are running normally have a status of Running. Any task that’s hung will have a status of Not Responding.

  • Page 423: Do A Reset To Recover From A Hung Tablet Pc

    The cursor might be frozen in place or even disappear altogether. In a situation like this, you have little choice but to do a reset of your Tablet PC. A reset turns off the computer without regard to what’s going on in Windows. Terminating a program that’s not responding means you can lose unsaved data in that program.

  • Page 424: Make The Tablet Buttons Work

    Power button on your computer until it shuts down. Wait a little while (at least 10–15 seconds), and then turn the Tablet PC back on again. The chances are pretty good that your problem will be gone and you’ll be back in business.
  • Page 425 When the Windows Task Manager appears, tap Performance. This tab, shown in Figure 18-12, gives you a snapshot of the resources in use on your Tablet PC right now. Take a look at the CPU usage. This tells you how intensively your computer’s CPU (the microprocessor) is being used.
  • Page 426 CPU time or memory by scanning down the list. If more than one person is using your Tablet PC right now (if you’re using Fast User Switching to share the machine), set the Show Processes From All Users check box before proceeding.

  • Page 427: Repair Windows Problems With The Windows Xp Setup Wizard

    If you don’t see anything amiss on Windows Task Manager’s Performance and Processes tabs, you may just be asking your Tablet PC to run too many programs at once. Try closing applications you’re not actively using and see if the problem clears up.

  • Page 428: Get Help With Remote Assistance

    Tap Install Windows XP and follow the onscreen instructions. After the wizard reboots your Tablet PC, it should detect that you already have Windows XP Tablet PC edition on your computer. It will then offer you the option to repair the installation.
  • Page 429 If you use your Tablet PC in the office, where you have support staff nearby, this isn’t usually a problem. All you need to do is get your Tablet PC and the technician into the same room, and then get out of the way. But, if you were on the road or otherwise unable to put your computer and the right person in the same room, you used to be out of luck.

  • Page 430: Prepare Your Computer To Receive Remote Assistance

    Participate in the remote assistance session Prepare Your Computer to Receive Remote Assistance To allow Remote Assistance sessions on your Tablet PC, tap Start | Control Panel | Performance and Maintenance | System | Remote. This opens the Remote page of the System Properties dialog box, as shown in Figure 18-15.
  • Page 431 CHAPTER 18: Use the Tablet PC’s Tools to Solve Problems In the Remote Assistance section of the page, set the Allow Remote Assistance Invitations To Be Sent From This Computer check box. This enables you to request help, but doesn’t control how much control over your computer the other person will have or the amount of time the invitation will remain in effect.

  • Page 432: Request Remote Assistance

    How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC control of your computer, too. So, it isn’t as if the person helping you takes over your computer and leaves you helpless while they do whatever they want. The general rule for the length of time that you should allow an invitation to remain open is this: the shorter, the better.
  • Page 433 CHAPTER 18: Use the Tablet PC’s Tools to Solve Problems Use either Windows Messenger or your e-mail program to send FIGURE 18-17 a request for assistance. although it’s easy to miss it when you’ve sent the invitation by Windows Messenger.

  • Page 434: Participate In The Remote Assistance Session

    From here on, you should work with your assistant to resolve the problem. If, at any time, you want to terminate the Remote Assistance session, tap Disconnect on the Remote Assistance window, or press the key on your keyboard. The ESCAPE key on the Tablet PC Input Panel also works for this. ESCAPE...
  • Page 435 CHAPTER 18: Use the Tablet PC’s Tools to Solve Problems The Remote Assistance window is your way of interacting with FIGURE 18-19 someone assisting you remotely. Tap Yes to let your assistant share control of your keyboard and mouse FIGURE 18-20...
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  • Page 437: Index

    All Programs menu, Tablet PCs, 13 284–285 antivirus software, 350 appearance, 4 Appearance tab, 41–43 cable modems, 133–135 application buttons, 12 Calculator, 228 applications, defined, 77 calibration, 53, 55, 352 audio Copyright 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Click Here for Terms of Use.
  • Page 438 How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC cameras. See digital cameras System Restore, 380–381 case, 353, 354 tablet, 52–56 CD-ROM taskbar, 44–47 connecting the drive, 78 themes, 37–38 playing audio CDs, 246–248 Windows desktop, 37–43 Character Map, 226–227 Windows interface, 34–52 character recognition, 201–204...
  • Page 439 Electronic Text Center, University of erasers, 208 Virginia, 285, 286 finding out what kind you have, 8 e-mail Get Going with Tablet PC tutorial, 8–9 e-mailing clips, 239–240 hovering, 8–9 receiving faxes by e-mail, 118 learning to use, 7–9 using handwriting in, 312–313,...
  • Page 440 How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC Files And Settings Transfer Wizard, 32–34 Get Going with Tablet PC tutorial, 8–9 Firewire, 109 Google, 147 folders Graffiti, 202–203 Accessibility, 220–223 Grafigo, 23, 263–264 Accessories, 220–240 Groove Workspace, 155–156, 288–290 changing bars, 50 Guest accounts, 65 changing views, 48–50...
  • Page 441 Ink Drawing And Writing Area command, updating drivers, 102–104 310–311, 316–317 See also Device Manager; digital InkBall, 26–27 cameras; faxes; peripherals; printers; Input Panel. See Tablet PC Input Panel scanners installation Help and Support Center, 14, 390–400 broadband connections, 135 Dr. Watson, 392–393 of components, 78–80...
  • Page 442 How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC speaking to, 338 Microphone Wizard, 331–333 starting, 139 Microsoft Excel, using handwriting in, toolbar buttons, 141–143 316–317 Internet radio stations, 248–250 Microsoft Office, speaking to Office Internet service providers. See ISPs applications, 337 ISDN, 134 Microsoft Reader, 24–26, 281–283...
  • Page 443 Index Network Setup Wizard, 166–169, PC Card, 109–110 174–177 pen. See digital pen troubleshooting network adapter performance, optimizing, 367–372 problems, 177–179 Performance Options dialog box See also home networks; wireless Advanced tab, 369, 370 networking Virtual Memory dialog box, 371–372 New Connection Wizard, 128, 136–137 Visual Effects tab, 368–369 news servers, 147...
  • Page 444 How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC managing print jobs, 114–115 vs. Remote Desktop, 411 and other hardware, 99–100 requesting, 414–416 Print Control window, 115 Remote Desktop, 156–157 print queue, 114–115 Remote Assistance vs., 411 print spooling, 113, 114 resetting, 405–406...
  • Page 445 Speech tutorial, 333–334 tutorial, 240 system software voice using, 236–240 commands, 342 writing tools, 238–239 Tablet PC Input Panel, 18, 19 sound text formatting voice commands, 341 muting or changing volume, 98 tips, 339–340 Sound Troubleshooter, 98, 99 training the speech recognizer, Sounds, Speech And Audio Devices 330–333...
  • Page 446 How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC Pocket PC Letter Recognizer, 274 Pocket PC Letter Recognizer Including Tablet And Pen Settings dialog box Accented Characters, 274 Display tab, 54–56 Quick Keys, 277 Pen Options tab, 56 ritePen, 279 reconfiguring hardware buttons, Start Tablet PC Input Panel gesture, 284–285...
  • Page 447 329–330 hung Tablet PCs, 405–406 See also speech recognition network adapter problems, 177–179 utilities, defined, 77 Office XP Pack for Tablet PC security Utility Manager, 223 warning, 402–403 repairing Windows problems with Windows XP Setup Wizard, View menu, 74–75 409–410...
  • Page 448 How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC navigating, 11–14 automatically resizing video Notification area, 12 window, 257 pinned item list, 12, 47 digital media licenses, 255, 256 Quick Launch toolbar, 11–12, 47 Features taskbar, 245 Run icon, 14 hiding or showing the Features...
  • Page 449 Index Collections list, 257 WebEx Meeting Center, 184 free resources for Movie Maker 2, 261 Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP), Monitor, 258 186, 194 starting, 257 wireless hot spots, 187–188, 188–190 upgrading to Movie Maker 2, 259–262 wizards Workspace, 258 Accessibility Wizard, 35 Windows Paint, 22–24 Add Hardware Wizard, 94–95 resizing background, 24...
  • Page 450 INTERNATIONAL CONTACT INFORMATION AUSTRALIA McGraw-Hill Book Company Australia Pty. Ltd. SOUTH AFRICA TEL +61-2-9900-1800 McGraw-Hill South Africa FAX +61-2-9878-8881 TEL +27-11-622-7512 http://www.mcgraw-hill.com.au FAX +27-11-622-9045 books-it_sydney@mcgraw-hill.com robyn_swanepoel@mcgraw-hill.com CANADA SPAIN McGraw-Hill Ryerson Ltd. McGraw-Hill/Interamericana de España, S.A.U. TEL +905-430-5000 TEL +34-91-180-3000 FAX +905-430-5020 FAX +34-91-372-8513 http://www.mcgraw-hill.ca...

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