One of my favourite new features in Vista is the “search” field in the start menu. This is great. You just hit the Windows key and type something and the computer will hunt high and low for that term. It will bring back documents, applications and even emails. Great feature and so easy to use...
Except when you are on the couch with your trusty slate. Then it is a bit too fiddly. You have to click start, then click the search field to make the TIP turn appear, then click that, then write something and click Insert – too hard!
Enter SearchPad. (I had this idea yesterday and had it kind of working last night. Tidied it up a bit tonight.)
Here’s how it works.
I have a shortcut to it in my Start-up folder so it will load at boot time. That puts a search icon in the system tray.
Double-click that and you get an ink enabled dialog above the system tray...
When you click “Start Search” it will bring up the Start Menu and enter the ink recognition result into the Search field. Vista does the rest.
You can also right-click the icon and select exit if you want to get rid of it, but why would you want to do that?
I’m going to release this version as a beta to a few people and then fix bugs – after which I'll make it available to all for free!