Blog:: Craig Pringle

OK – here’s the scenario.  You work for company that has a few thousand employees.  The standard desktop currently has Windows XP on it.  And you wonder – should I start migrating to Vista now, or should I just wait until Windows 7 is released and deploy that?  After all, Vista got slated in the press but Windows 7 is getting rave reviews – surely that is a better move?

For my money no.  The short answer I give customers today is to ensure that they are buying Software Assurance so they are licensed for Windows 7 when it releases, but start deploying Vista where it adds value today.

There are two may reasons advice.

1. There are features in Vista that some of your users would benefit from today.  Starting your deployment with these low hanging fruit adds immediate value.
2. Your transition to Windows 7 will be eased significantly if you have already rolled out at least some Vista machines.

Lets look at those in more detail.

Add Value for the Low Hanging Fruit

Firstly – let me be clear.  Being a low hanging fruit is in no way a bad thing.  In our company I’m one!  What I mean by this is that there are some features in Vista that add immediate value to some users in most organisations.  For example I am a highly mobile tablet user with some commercially sensitive data on my machine.  As such the improved power management, fast sleep and resume, much improve handwriting recognition and BitLocker are quick wins for users like me in most organisations.

Easing Your Transition to Windows 7

The transition to Windows 7 will be easier from Vista than for Windows XP. Under the hood there was a significant change between Windows XP and Windows Vista.  The change between Windows Vista and Windows 7, however is relatively minor. 

Architectural changes in the operating system lead to driver and application issues.  As the architectural changes are cumulative the jump from XP to Windows 7 is slightly larger than from XP to Vista.  But if you start the transition to Windows Vista now, you can address the application compatibility, driver and hardware issues you will probably have now.  If you get all your applications running on Windows Vista then for the most part they will also run on Windows 7.  With a few exceptions if there is a Vista driver for your hardware it will work on Windows 7.  If your hardware will run Windows Vista it will run Windows 7.

The last point to note is that if you are planning for a Windows 7 deployment you can put  in place Microsoft Deployment Toolkit environment based on the MDT 2010 beta to deploy Vista and use this same infrastructure to deploy Windows 7 when it releases. This would allow you to build the skills to create, maintain and deploy standard builds and these skills would be transferable to your Windows 7 deployment

In Conclusion

Don’t wait.  If you are on Windows XP now, start deploying Vista to those who will benefit most.  This will add immediate value to your business and ease your transition to Windows 7 when it is released.

While I was pleased to see that there was, after a fashion, native ISO support in Windows 7 as I’ve previously noted it does not go far enough.  I have been seeing in my blog’s logs lots of referrers coming from searches for the likes of “Mount ISO in Windows 7”.

Here’s the bad news – Natively, you can’t. 

Here’s the good news – the key word there was natively.  You can mount ISOs in Windows 7 and previous versions of the OS, you just need to use a third party tool to do so.

My ISO Mounting tool of choice is Virtual Clone Drive by SlySoft.  I like it because it is light weight and easy to use. It is also free – but that is not a reflection on quality.  It is an excellent advert for SlySoft’s paid offerings like CloneDVD.

After downloading and installing Virtual Clone Drive (and I find rebooting is a good idea) you will find that you can mount an ISO file just by double clicking it (if nothing else is associated with ISO files) or by right clicking it and selecting Open With > Mount file with Virtual Clone Drive.

Once mounted the ISO will show up as another DVD drive in Explorer.  If autorun is enabled this does, of course work as well.

There is also a management application where you can add additional virtual drives or change the UI language.

Don’t ask me what the Virtual Sheep do – but it is a checkbox I’m sure some of my Aussie mates would tick ;)

According to the website Virtual Clone Drive supports the following Operating Systems:

Windows 98/98SE/ME/2000/XP/XP64/VISTA/VISTA64

I have found it runs fine on Windows 7 build 7000.

As I previously mentioned I am putting together a Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) environment to enable me to rebuild my Vista machines at will. 

I now have  a Windows 2008 Server machine running inside of Virtual PC that is a self contained MDT environment.

To do this I had to configure the Server with the following services.

• Active Directory - I promoted it to a domain controller in its own domain.
• DNS - required by AD
• DHCP - to give out addresses, required by WDS.
• Windows Deployment Services (WDS) - this is an optional Windows Component you can add on Windows Server.  WDS responds to network boot PXE requests from clients and sends them a Windows Pre-installation Environment (PE) boot image.
• MDT.

There are a number of other components that MDT needs to be able to deploy anything, but it is ridiculously easy to add these in.  The main management console of MDT is the Deployment Workbench, which contains a node in the navigation pane called components.  Clicking on that shows the current install status of the various things you need and you can download and install them inside the Deployment Workbench.  Click the image below to see what this looks like.

Once all the required software is in place it is a matter of creating a distribution share, adding the OS images (which you can do by right clicking Operating Systems and selecting New..  You then just pop in the CD and follow the prompts in the wizard.) and creating a build.

Another cool thing with MDT is you can import drivers in much the same way as operating systems.  These can be added to the build so that they are inject into the image before the hardware detection takes place, so if you have more recent drivers than those included with Vista you can insert them and it will never load the older driver.  Much cleaner.

To do this you right click on the Out-of-Box drivers node in the Deployment Workbench and select New...  This will launch a driver import wizard.

You fill in a path and optionally assign one or more groups that the drivers will belong to and then click Finish.  MDT will search the directory and any sub directories and import any drivers it finds.  Also by default, when you build your boot image it will include all Network and Storage drivers so that you should have the bare requirements to perform a network install once the Windows PE image boots.

I've got my build going on the Acer laptop I've been testing against to the base OS level with no input required from me beyond pressing F12 to initiate the network boot.  Now it is time to start working on the applications.

The MDT Team has a blog - so if you want to find out more that might be a good place to start.

Two of my machines are in desperate need of a rebuild.  Because it has been on my to-do list for a while I am going to look at Microsoft's updated desktop deployment solution accelerator - the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT).

I have used the previous solution (BDD 2007) to automate Vista builds in the past.  The constraint with BDD was that it could only do the desktop OS. 

MDT is an updated version of BDD that can deploy desktop and server operating systems.  There was a wealth of information in BDD, so I am looking forward to getting hands on with MDT to see what is there.  From the overview blurb:

Microsoft Deployment provides proven tools and practices with which IT professionals can:

• Create a software and hardware inventory to assist in deployment planning.

• Test applications for compatibility with Windows operating systems and mitigate compatibility issues discovered during the process.

• Set up an initial lab environment with imaging and deployment servers.

• Customize, package, and deploy applications.

• Automate image creation and deployment.

• Manage processes and technologies to produce comprehensive and integrated Lite Touch Installation (LTI) and Zero Touch Installation (ZTI) deployments.

• During deployment, migrate users’ documents and settings to their new computer configurations.

• During deployment, Microsoft Deployment supports the installation of all Roles such as Active Directory® Domain Services (AD DS), Domain Name System (DNS) server, Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) server, Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS), Windows Deployment Services, Windows SharePoint® Services, Windows Internet Naming Service (WINS) server, and Windows Server® 2003 Terminal Services. Additionally, Microsoft Deployment supports the configuration of the AD DS role.

• Ensure that computers are hardened to improve security within the environment.

Microsoft Deployment brings together time-honored and proven practices in addition to the following Microsoft technologies:

• Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT) 5.0 for gathering application inventory and for testing and mitigating application-compatibility issues

• Windows User State Migration Tool (USMT) for migrating user settings and data

• Windows Automated Installation Kit (Windows AIK) for configuring unattended Setup answer files (Unattend.xml) and capturing images

• Windows Deployment Services for starting Windows Preinstallation Environment (Windows PE) on target computers across the network

• Windows PE 2.0 for starting computers

As I write this I have a new Windows Server 2008 Standard virtual machine installing in Virtual PC that I plan to use as the deployment server.  After that is installed I'll be installing MDT.  Stay tuned.

For my money UAC is a good thing Or rather it is a painful and annoying intrusion, but there is a good reason it is there. It helps to address a very real threat. But, I've often thought that it should have a way to mark an app as trusted, so it always runs as admin without prompting. Thankfully the how-to geek has a way.

Create Administrator Mode Shortcuts Without UAC Prompts in Windows Vista
One of the most talked about annoyances in Windows Vista are the UAC prompts that constantly pop up when you are trying to make system changes. It's especially irritating when you often need to run a particular tool that requires administrator mode in order to run. Thankfully there's a simple hack that you can do to create an administrator mode shortcut that doesn't prompt for UAC.

Read More...

Great tip!

This morning I was fortunate enough to have a one-on-one chat with Motion Computing's President and CEO, Scott Eckert.  Thanks for all those who posted comments and questions on my blog and on GottaBeMobile.  Rather than pose every question directly (as there were quite a few) I looked for the common themes in the comments and constructed questions from those. 

I met Scott in the foyer lounge of a Sydney Hotel.  We chatted for a couple of minutes about Sydney, the appalling weather and work, then got down to business.  He was pleased that I was taking notes on my LS800 at the meeting and allowed that he used one himself for two years.  This led nicely into my first question.  What follows is summary of my discussion with Scott.  This is not a verbatim transcript as I did not record the conversation.

--

Of the 12 comments posted on the two blogs (excluding the one about taking Scott hostage until he included ice cube makers - which we both took as a joke) fully 4 of them mentioned the LS800 directly and two others mentioned a desire for a smaller tablet.  When the LS range was dropped there were a lot of people who were very disappointed, myself included.  In my view Motion created and owned the Ultra Mobile category before the UMPC label even existed.   Given that there is an apparent market for these devices and that they were, and still are,  a device that really turned heads and got people interested in Tablets - why was it dropped?

In response Scott was pleased that I was crediting them with creating a category.  Their goal was to create a truly enterprise class UMPC and he felt that they had done well with that.  He also indicated that while the LS800 did enjoy some success in certain areas that it did not achieve the volumes needed to sustain it as an additional range.  That said the market for this type of device is still there and Motion is keeping an eye on it, there is ongoing R&D and as pen, touch and other technologies mature it is an area that they may re-enter.

Next I said that to me it seemed that sometimes Motion was focusing more on winning new customers than looking after their existing customer base.  Two examples I held up to support this.  The first was the inability to migrate accessories between ranges - such as the M-series range and the LE-series range.  The second was the relatively poor upgrade experience that Motion users had going to Vista. 

On the first point Scott pointed out that their ranges are expected to exist for about 3 years before being replaced by a new range.  They try to ensure consistency in the range, but in order to take advantage of rapidly advancing technology they won't necessarily have compatibility of peripherals between ranges. 

I suppose that this helps Motion evolve their products more quickly as they are not constraining a new range with the limitations of the old. 

Scott also pointed out that while accessories for previous ranges are not necessarily compatible, they are supported and spares are available long after the range stops shipping, which also helps to mitigate the issue for their enterprise customers.

On the second point Scott acknowledged that the Vista upgrade experience had not been all that smooth for end users.  They have learned from the feedback and hope to do it better next time.  He also pointed out that many of their enterprise accounts are still deploying XP based images on their Motion tablets.

There seems to be an increasing focus on verticals with the specialized range expanding and what I consider to be the general use/corporate range shrinking.  Is this going to be a trend that continues?

Motion are really highly focused on the verticals.  In fact when I was chatting to Scott this was very apparent long before I asked this question.  Scott told me that the way Motion look at it is that they have two primary verticals and three product ranges.  The vertical markets they are focused on are healthcare and field automation and the three product ranges can be applied to both of those.

This is not to say that there are not other niches and verticals that don't suit the Motion tablets.  Indeed some of the successful markets have come as something of a surprise to Motion.  The LS800 enjoyed quite a bit of success in the aviation market, and this was largely driven by a software partner who married up his software, the LS800 and a mounting solution and sold this as a bundle.

What other verticals interest you?

Motion's primary focus has always been people who need to use a computer while standing and walking. 

One of the questions that came up was around a slate for artists - any plans to enter that market?

Scott thought that the artist market was pretty well served today by the likes of the Wacom Cintiq which is not mobile, but it provides a much higher resolution and a better digitizer than what is available today in mobile devices.  There may not be too many mobile artists, but many of the ones that are out there are using the LE range devices today with success.

There were a couple of questions around multi-touch.  Motion was leading the market there - what happened?

The technology was very new and Motion just struggled to get it commercialized.  Touch, and the combination of touch and an active digitizer, is and will continue to be an important technology for future ranges.

(reading between the lines I take it there won't be one in the LE range, though I could be wrong.)

Motion also feels that for touch to really succeed it is critical that the applications are designed for and work well with touch.  This led nicely to my next question.

Again - from the questions posted is there any thought of entering the software market to help bring that about?

The short answer is that Motion is not looking to become a software house.  However Motion are already active in that space and they currently work with about 150 software partners in the vertical markets to help them write better applications.  It is better for Motion to have more partners and to work with them rather than compete against them.

This is where Scott talked about the aviation example and how a partner created a market for the LS800 and did really well in it.  Naturally Motion would like to find more partners like that, so for those of you reading this that write software - keep that in mind!

There are some general issues that most mobile users face, such as battery life and heat.  There are also some technologies that seem to be taking a long time to come to market, such as hybrid drives or that still carry a significant premium like solid state drives.  What do you see as the most important technologies coming.

Battery technology is really a chemical process, which means that adding capacity to batteries is not easy.  Motion have found it more fruitful to reduce the power consumption of the device and this is where they are investing.  This means both engineering better, more efficient hardware, adding technologies such as LED backlit displays and working with application developers to make the applications more efficient.

--

Some closing thoughts from me.  Scott is a genuinely nice guy and I really enjoyed my chat with him.  He is astute, passionate about his products and focused on the vertical markets and the Motion vision.  Motion are not merely aware of the bloggers, readers and commentors that make up the blogosphere.  They are not just listening to the conversations.  They are actively reaching out and engaging and I think that is a really good thing.  Thanks to Scott for taking the time to talk to me.

I have been living with the fact that SD Card reader on the LS800 does not work under Vista since I installed Vista last year.  However I recently had a conversation with a Motion Computing employee in which he indicated that he thought that issue had been solved.

Full of hope I rushed off to check the knowledge base article on the Motion site that documented the issue to see if it had been updated...

There is no SD card reader driver available for Windows Vista on the LS800/LE1600 at the time of this writing (1/29/2007).  Motion is working to provide this driver as soon as possible.  This knowledge base article will be updated at the time of the driver update.

Hmmm, still no joy.  However - while I was on the site I thought that I might as well see if there were any driver updates available.  Why OEMs don't put an RSS feed on their drivers page is beyond me.

While poking around I realise that there have been two BIOS revisions released since my version.  I'm was running A09 and A14 and A15 are on the site.  What happened to A10-A13 I wonder?

Nevermind.  I check the release notes for the two new BIOS releases.  Low an behold the Release Notes for A14 state:

What's New In This Release

· Support for Intel 1.1GHz processor

· Support for SD card reader in Vista

I check the release notes for A15 as well, nothing major in that one except one fix.  However BIOSes are cumulative, so A15 includes everything A14 had.  To avoid having to do two upgrades I flash the BIOS with the A15 version.

After a reboot I can see that the SDA Host Controller is listed in Device Manager without the little yellow exclaimation point it had before!

Full of anticipation I break out a SD card and slot it in.  **Poof**  Bluescreen of death.  Interesting.  I reboot and try it again.  **Poof** again.  Well at least the fault is repeatable...

Time to break out the Windows Debugging Tools to analyse the crash dump.  Not for the faint of heart.

After repeating this a few times and analysing three dumps I see the debugger pointing to three different drivers. None of which are the SD Card driver.  Given the highly repeatable nature of the fault I think it is clear that it is related to the SD Card Driver, so my guess is that the SD Card driver is corrupting bits of memory, which causes an exception when some innocent driver wanders along and falls into the whole.  Believe it or not - this is progress.

I have come across a command line tool in Vista that has some potential in the fight against the dreaded Vista Insomnia issue.

The tool is called powercfg.exe and there is a TechNet article about it here.

Running powercfg /? provides the following usage information.

POWERCFG <command line options>
Description:
  This command line tool enables users to control the power settings
  on a system.

Parameter List:
  -LIST, -L   Lists all power schemes in the current user's environment.

              Usage: POWERCFG -LIST

  -QUERY, -Q  Displays the contents of the specified power scheme.

              Usage: POWERCFG -QUERY <SCHEME_GUID> <SUB_GUID>

              <SCHEME_GUID>  (optional) Specifies the GUID of the power scheme
                             to display, can be obtained by using powercfg -l.
              <SUB_GUID>     (optional) Specifies the GUID of the subgroup
                             to display.  Requires a SCHEME_GUID to be provided.

              If neither SCHEME_GUID or SUB_GUID are provided, the settings
              of the current user's active power scheme are displayed.
              If SUB_GUID is not specified, all settings in the specified
              power scheme are displayed.

  -CHANGE, -X Modifies a setting value in the current power scheme.

              Usage: POWERCFG -X <SETTING> <VALUE>

              <SETTING>   Specifies one of the following options:
                          -monitor-timeout-ac <minutes>
                          -monitor-timeout-dc <minutes>
                          -disk-timeout-ac <minutes>
                          -disk-timeout-dc <minutes>
                          -standby-timeout-ac <minutes>
                          -standby-timeout-dc <minutes>
                          -hibernate-timeout-ac <minutes>
                          -hibernate-timeout-dc <minutes>

              Example:
                  POWERCFG -Change -monitor-timeout-ac 5

              This would set the monitor idle timeout value to 5 minutes
              when on AC power.

  -CHANGENAME Modifies the name of a power scheme and optionally it's
              description.

              Usage: POWERCFG -CHANGENAME <GUID> <name> <scheme description>

              If the description is omitted only the name will be changed.

  -DUPLICATESCHEME
              Duplicates the specified power scheme.  The resulting
              GUID which represents the new scheme will be displayed.

              Usage: POWERCFG -DUPLICATESCHEME <GUID> <destination GUID>

              <GUID>  Specifies a scheme GUID obtained by using the powercfg -l.

              If <destination GUID> is omitted, a new GUID will be
              created for the duplicated scheme.

  -DELETE, -D Deletes the power scheme with the specified GUID.

              Usage: POWERCFG -DELETE <GUID>

              <GUID>  obtained by using the LIST parameter.

  -DELETESETTING
              Deletes a power setting.

              Usage: POWERCFG -DELETESETTING <SUB_GUID> <SETTING_GUID>

              <SUB_GUID>      Specifies the subgroup GUID.
              <SETTING_GUID>  Specifies the power setting guid.

  -SETACTIVE, -S
              Makes the specified power scheme active on the system.

              Usage: POWERCFG -SETACTIVE <SCHEME_GUID>

              <SCHEME_GUID>  Specifies the scheme guid.

  -GETACTIVESCHEME
              Retrieve the currently active power scheme.

              Usage: POWERCFG -GETACTIVESCHEME

  -SETACVALUEINDEX
              Sets a value associated with a specified power setting
              while the system is powered by AC power.

              Usage: POWERCFG -SETACVALUEINDEX <SCHEME_GUID> <SUB_GUID>
                                               <SETTING_GUID> <SettingIndex>

              <SCHEME_GUID>   Specifies a power scheme GUID and may be
                              obtained by using PowerCfg /L.
              <SUB_GUID>      Specifies a subgroup of power setting GUID and may
                              be obtained by using "PowerCfg /Q."
              <SETTING_GUID>  Specifies an individual power setting GUID and may
                              be obtained by using "PowerCfg /Q".
              <SettingIndex>  Specifies which of the list of of possible values
                              this power setting will be set to.

              Example:
                  POWERCFG -SetAcValueIndex <GUID> <GUID> <GUID> 5
                  This would set the power setting's AC value to the 5th entry
                  in the list of possible values for this power setting.
  -SETDCVALUEINDEX
              Sets a value associated with a specified power setting
              while the system is powered by DC power.

              Usage: POWERCFG -SETDCVALUEINDEX <SCHEME_GUID> <SUB_GUID>
                                               <SETTING_GUID> <SettingIndex>
              <SCHEME_GUID>   Specifies a power scheme GUID and may be
                              obtained by using PowerCfg /L.
              <SUB_GUID>      Specifies a subgroup of power setting GUID and may
                              be obtained by using "PowerCfg /Q."
              <SETTING_GUID>  Specifies an individual power setting GUID and may
                              be obtained by using "PowerCfg /Q".
              <SettingIndex>  Specifies which of the list of possible values
                              this setting will be set to.

              Example:
                  POWERCFG -SetDcValueIndex <GUID> <GUID> <GUID> 5
                  This would set the power setting's DC value to the 5th entry
                  in the list of possible values for this power setting.

  -HIBERNATE, -H  <ON|OFF>
              Enables-Disables the hibernate feature.  Hibernate timeout is not
              supported on all systems.

              Usage: POWERCFG -H <ON|OFF>

  -AVAILABLESLEEPSTATES, -A 
              Reports the sleep states available on the system
              Attempts to report reasons why sleep states are unavailable.

  -DEVICEQUERY
              Return a list of devices that meet the specified criteria.

              Usage: POWERCFG -DEVICEQUERY <queryflags>

              <queryflags>  Secifies one of the following criteria:

              wake_from_S1_supported  Return all devices that support waking the
                                      system from a light sleep state.
              wake_from_S2_supported  Return all devices that support waking the
                                      system from a deeper sleep state.
              wake_from_S3_supported  Return all devices that support waking the
                                      system from the deepest sleep state.
              wake_from_any           Return all devices that support waking the
                                      system from any sleep state.
              S1_supported            List devices supporting light sleep.
              S2_supported            List devices supporting deeper sleep.
              S3_supported            List devices supporting deepest sleep.
              S4_supported            List devices supporting hibernation.
              wake_programmable       List devices that are user-configurable
                                      to wake the system from a sleep state.
              wake_armed              List devices that are currently configured
                                      to wake the system from any sleep state.
              all_devices             Return all devices present in the system.
              all_devices_verbose     Return verbose list of devices.
              Example:
                  POWERCFG -DEVICEQUERY wake_armed

  -DEVICEENABLEWAKE
              Enable the device to wake the system from a sleep state.

              Usage: POWERCFG -DEVICEENABLEWAKE <devicename>

              <devicename>  Specifies a device retrieved using
                            "PowerCfg -DEVICEQUERY wake_programmable".

              Example:
                  POWERCFG -DEVICEENABLEWAKE "Microsoft USB IntelliMouse Explorer"

  -DEVICEDISABLEWAKE <devicename> disable the device from waking the system
              Disable the device from waking the system from a sleep state

              Usage: POWERCFG -DEVICEDISABLEWAKE

              <devicename>  Specifies a device retrieved using
                            "PowerCfg -DEVICEQUERY wake_armed".

  -IMPORT     Imports all power settings from the specified file.

              Usage: POWERCFG -IMPORT <filename> <GUID>

              <filename>  Specifiy a fully-qualified path to a file generated by
                          using "PowerCfg -EXPORT parameter".
              <GUID>      (optional) The settings are loaded into a power scheme
                          represented by this GUID. If not supplied, powercfg
                          will generate and use a new GUID

              Example:
                  POWERCFG -IMPORT c:\scheme.pow
  -EXPORT     Exports power scheme, represented by the specified GUID, to the
              specified file.

              Usage: POWERCFG -EXPORT <filename> <GUID>

              <filename>  Specify a fully-qualified path to a destination file.
              <GUID>      specifies a power scheme GUID and may be obtained by
                          using "PowerCfg /L"

              Example:
                  POWERCFG -EXPORT c:\scheme.pow 381b4222-f694-41f0-9685-ff5bb260df2e
  -LASTWAKE   Reports information about what woke the system from the last
              sleep transition

  -HELP, -?   Displays information on command-line parameters.

  -ALIASES    Displays all aliases and their corresponding GUIDs.
              The user may use these aliases in place of any GUID on
              the commandline.

  -SETSECURITYDESCRIPTOR
              Sets a security descriptor associated with a specified
              power setting, power scheme, or action.

              Usage: POWERCFG -SETSECURITYDESCRIPTOR <GUID|ACTION> <SDDL>

              <GUID>       Specifies a power scheme or a power setting GUID.
              <ACTION>     Can be one of the following strings:
                           ActionSetActive, ActionCreate, ActionDefault
              <SDDL>       Specifies a valid security descriptor string in SDDL
                           format. Call POWERCFG -GETSECURITYDESCRIPTOR to see
                           an example SDDL STRING.

  -GETSECURITYDESCRIPTOR
              Gets a security descriptor associated with a specified
              power setting, power scheme, or action.

              Usage: POWERCFG -GETSECURITYDESCRIPTOR <GUID|ACTION>
              <GUID>       Specifies a power scheme or a power setting GUID.
              <ACTION>     Can be one of the following strings:
                           ActionSetActive, ActionCreate, ActionDefault

Some useful things in there for looking into the Vista Insomnia issue are the following commands:

powercfg -lastwake

returns the name of the last device that woke the system.  Here's a screenshot of the output from one of my machines:

As you can see in this case the machine was woken up by the USB hub (in this case this is an expected resume - not a random one)

You can also enumerate the devices that can wake the machine with the following command:

powercfg -DEVICEQUERY wake_from_any

If you think that you have found the culprate then you can disable the device with the following command:

powercfg -DEVICEDISABLEWAKE <devicename>

you can then reverse that with

powercfg -DEVICEENABLEWAKE <devicename>

As you can see there is lots more you can do with powercfg, including tuning, exporting and importing power schemes; enabling and disabling hibernate and finding out what sleep states your device supports.  All told a very useful and very well kept secret.

I had high hopes that one of the fixes listed in the changelog for Vista SP1 might address the dreaded Vista insomnia issue.

l installed this on my Acer Ferrari which is constantly coming out of sleep mode. unfortunately this has rot resolved the issue. The Acer is still an insomniac.

I just blogged about an issue whereby Vista machines come out of sleep all on their own.  Then I was reviewing in more detail Long Zheng's list of changes in Vista SP1 and I spotted this item:

• Addresses the problem of the Video chipset (VSync interrupt) not allowing the system to stay asleep.

Could this be the fix to Vista Insomnia?  The problem occurs most frequently on my Acer, so I'll install the RC on that and report back here after some monitoring.

I previously posted about a work around I have used to get around the Sleep of Death issue on my LS800.  Unfortunately the same fix has not worked for for other LS800 users - there must be more variables.

However - as annoying as the sleep of death is it is not dangerous.  There is another issue I think is much worse.  Vista Insomnia.

I have 4 Vista machines that I have been using for a while.  These are:

• The Motion LS800
• An Acer Ferrari 1000
• A Samsung Q1P
• A custom built Media Centre

All of these machines have suffered from insomnia.  What I mean by this is I put a Vista PC into sleep mode and some time later it resumes by itself.  The reason I think this is worse than the sleep of death is that a Mobile PC coming out of sleep at the wrong time could be dangerous.  As an example I was using my LS800 to check some emails and feeds at the airport a while ago.  I used right up to the boarding line.  As I approached the counter I hit the power button to put the device to sleep - watched it go down because of sleep of death - and then dropped it into my carry-on bag to board the plane.  When we reached out cruising altitude I opened my bag to read my synced feeds and the bag was roasting hot.  The LS800 was awake again!

Now as bad as that is - it gets worse.  What happens to your hardware if you hit both problems?  If you put you device to sleep and it wakes itself up - what happens if you hit the sleep of death issue and it does not come all the way our of sleep?  Is the OS running?  If the OS has not resumed properly can it shut itself down if it gets too hot?   The night my LS800 died it was plugged in and lying flat on the desk.  The next morning it would not boot.  When I opened it up there was evidence of extreme heat damage and both the motherboard and hard drive were toast.  I can't prove it but I think the combination of these two Vista issues killed my device.  At any rate I have always been careful since to charge the LS800 in it's bumpcase so I can prop it up since then.

Warner Crocker points out some of the highlights in Vista SP1 for mobile users.

 As Microsoft prepares to roll out the Release Candidate of this to users soon, it might be worth taking a look. Some highlights that might be of interest to mobile users:

• Improves the effectiveness of a Windows ReadyBoost™ device in reducing the time to resume from standby and hibernate by increasing the amount of data stored in the ReadyBoost device that can be used during a resume cycle.

• Includes improvements to Windows Superfetch™ that help to further improve resume times, in many environments.

• Improves the time to resume from standby for a certain class of USB Hubs by approximately 18%.

• SP1 reduces the number of UAC (User Account Control) prompts from 4 to 1 when creating or renaming a folder at a protected location.

• SP1 addresses issues many of the most common causes of crashes and hangs in Windows Vista, as reported by Windows Error Reporting. These include issues relating to Windows Calendar, Windows Media Player, and a number of drivers included with Windows Vista.

• Improves power consumption when the display is not changing by allowing the processor to remain in its sleep state which consumes less energy.

Long Zheng of istartedsomething has posted an extensive list of fixes and it is on view here.  Worth checking out, methinks.

Several people have asked about the inking experience on the Shift in comments on my previous posts about the Shift. 1, 2, 3 & 4

The Shift has many good points. Inking is not one of them.  Like many UMPCs the Shift is fairly uncomfortable to write on.  If you do try it out you will find that you need to hold you hand up off the screen, otherwise the ink will jump between the point of the stylus and the heel of your palm.  This is because the Shift does not have any palm rejection technology.

In short, the Shift offers a much better touch experience than the inking experience.

One of the comments on my post about the HTC Shift's two operating systems has led me to a pretty interesting discovery.  There's a GPS in there!

In the screenshots of the tools in the HTC Debug Tools folder there is an icon called HTCGPSTool.

This led Hugo to ask if there was in fact a GPS in the device.

I had investigated this tool breifly over the weekend but it seemed a pretty basic tool and I had assumed that it was there to test an external GPS such as a bluetooth unit.  The comment got my interest up and I had some time on the train on the way to work, so I decided to investigate further. 

I started up the debugging tool.  There is a dropdown box with Com Ports listed.  By default it was on COM4.  I clicked on Open and low and behold I started seeing GPS strings in the output window.  I changed it to a different COM port and clicked open - and I got an error saying it could not find a GPS device.  Clearly the tool actually thinks there is a GPS in there.

I swapped back to COM4 and opened the port.  There are a number of tabs that show GPS information if you have a fix (which I didn't) and another radar display that shows the satellites that the device can see.  Initially there weren't any (hey I was on a train) but suddenly I saw one pop up.  It dropped off again a minute later.  I kept the GPSTool running when I got off the train.  As soon as I got out of the station and into some fairly open ground I got a satellite again.  Within 100m I had three more and even (breifly) got a fix.  Not bad in the middle of the CBD as the valleys between the buildings play hell with a GPS.  At my desk I can see one satellite - so I recorded a short video of the tool and clicked through the tabs before I had to give the device back.

So it would seem that the device does have a functioning GPS internally that is accessible inside of the Windows Mobile OS.  There is not, however, any software installed to actually use the GPS in Windows Mobile.

But - as I mentioned in my previous post is is possible to connect the Windows Mobile OS and the Windows Vista OS via Windows Mobile Device Centre over a "virtual" USB connection.  This means that it may be possible to install moving map software such as TomTom onto the Windows Mobile OS from Vista.

I could not find a way to access the GPS device from the Vista OS, nor could I see it listed in device manager.

Since HTC announced the Shift there has been some confusion about how the two operating systems on the device play together.  What can you do in each one?  Do they talk?

Well I have to preface this whole section by stating that as far as I know the software on the unit I had to evaluate is not the final version that will be on the devices when they ship.

In Windows Mobile...

The WM6 installation on the Shift has been stripped down and customized.  It is important to note that even though the device includes the 3G radio there is no phone application.  The Shift is not a voice device.  When you access the WM interface you are presented with a heavily customized Today screen.

This gives you access to your next couple of appointments, the date, time and calendar.  There are also buttons to access your full calendar, email, SMS, contacts, weather information and some settings.

The weather interface is quite nice - cool thunder storms tomorrow :)

The settings button takes you into an explorer view that gives you access:

Notice there are a bunch of things that are usually in WM6 that are missing?  Most of the settings interfaces have been replaced.  Don't expect to add too many applications either.  There is no programs folder so you would have to launch them through the file explorer.  And there is not much memory for running applications either.

The HTC Debug Tools folder in the settings folder gives you a bunch of little utils.  I don't know if this is going to be the same in the released version.

The bottom most icon in that - oops name was cut off - is called USBTool.  This offers a menu with two options - cable in and cable out.  When you select cable in with Vista running it creates a virtual USB connection between the two personalities of the HTC Shift.  This allows you to run up Mobile Device Center and explore the WM OS from Vista.  This makes it easier to set up things like Exchange ActiveSync.

The Windows Mobile OS stays running even when the Vista OS is sleeping or powered off.  If you configure it to use Direct Push you can receive your Exchange email even when Vista is off.  If you prefer or if you don't have an email account with Direct Push, you can use the virtual USB cable described above to sync directly with the local copy of Outlook in the Vista environment.  Of course in this configuration you will only see in WM a copy of what is in Vista.  You will not receive new emails while Vista is not running.

In Vista...

In Vista there is also a Connection Manager type of application that is called - for reasons that escape me - The Shag Control!  This is a fairly clean interface that gives you access to connection management, power management and other settings.  There is a gem buried in there - here's a tour:

Opinion

Given how stripped down the WM OS is I almost wondered why they bothered doing it that way.  I'm not saying that it is not useful - far from it - but I would almost rather that the second OS was implemented as a sideshow host rather than a WM environment.  You would not be able to do the push email, but you could access the data from the local instance of Outlook...  and potentially do a bunch of other cool things.  Food for thought.

In my previous post I gave a tour of the HTC Shift.  I promised to explore, among other things, what it is like to actually use the device.

One thing I quite like about the HTC Shift is that it is designed in such a way that it is very flexible.  There are three main ways in which you can use this device. 

Firstly you can use it as a slate.  Like most slates this has the advantage of actually being usable while you are standing up and moving around. 

The next option is to slide the screen up to expose the keyboard and use it as a thumb board.  This is a little cumbersome compared to other thumb boards, but it is usable. 

The third option is to put the device on a hard service and tilt the screen up, making it more like a laptop.

The video below explores these three modes.

Some questions I have had sent through about usage are below - with my answers in blue:

What is the screen like compared to the Q1 Ultra (or even the Q1)?

Similar - the screen is clear and viewable indoors.  The screen is not an outdoor viewable one, and the screen is hard to read in direct sunlight.

How long does the battery last under normal conditions?  In Vista? in WM6?

My experimentation here has been limited due to the short time I've had the device.  I've not tweaked the power settings at all, but at default it gets about 2 hours when using Vista for browsing and feed reading over wi-fi.  When I hibernated Windows Vista and left the device with Windows Mobile and push email the battery only lost 4% points of charge over 6 hours.  This leads me to believe that the battery life if you use Windows mobile exclusively will be measured in days.

How solid is the keyboard/screen mechanism?

It is easy enough to use but firm enough to support the weight of the screen at any viewing angle you should choose.

How useful is the touchpad?

It works well enough, but I don't tend to use it much.  I personally find it easier to just touch the screen.  One thing I did find odd is that it does not work in the Windows Mobile OS.  This seems a waste as WM does support using a mouse.

How useful is the WM6 component in reality?

I'll talk about this more in my next post.

How well will it work with voice applications such as Skype?

I did not try it, but I recorded a screencast on the device and the audio from the microphone seemed fairly good.  I would think that it would work well, though bear in mind that cellular networks such as HSDPA are usually quite latent and this can impact your voice experience.

I'll be interested in how the battery life is as well as the ease of text entry if you are holding it with both hands.

Battery life as above.  Yes you can use it holding it in two hands - using the keyboard like a thumb board.  As thumb boards go it is a fairly sizable one - and that can make text entry a bit cumbersome.

...the biggest question I have is regarding the battery life as I am considering a shift to replace my laptop. I have a desktop computer at work but regularly leave the office, travelling the country a fair bit and would like to know if the Shift could really satisfy my mobile needs?

It would depend on what you are wanting to do with it.  If you are primarily thinking of email then using Windows Mobile the battery life is stunning.  If you are wanting to use Vista for extended periods then the battery life could be an issue.  It is worth noting here that the power brick is quite small.

My Conclusions

The Shift is designed as a secondary device - to be used in conjunction with a "real computer".  At this it excels because you are actually getting a secondary device and a tertiary device in the one package.  I often say that mobility is all about having options.  Therefore a good mobile device needs to be a multi-tool.  Your Leatherman is not likely to be the best pair of pliers, knife or corkscrew you could own, but the fact that you have more than one tool in the same compact package is useful in and of itself. 

The Shift is the same deal.  The screen is ok for reading emails and browsing the web, but it can be a bit small for working on a large document, video or images.  There is of course a VGA port so you can always plug in a monitor.  Similarly the keyboard is neither a great keyboard or a great thumb board - but it can be used as either and that is powerful.  And of course there is a USB port - so you can plug stuff in.

I've now had some time with the HTC Shift and I'm getting to know it a lot better.  I've already had some questions posted in response to my earlier post - but I'll repeat the call.  I only have this device for the weekend so if there is anything you want me to investigate then post a comment and I'll do my best.

One of the first questions I had was from Chippy at UMPC Portal- is this unit the retail version?  The answer is no.  I understand the hardware is final, but the it does not have the final version of the system software installed on it.  This is an important caveat when I am talking about the software features of the Shift - they are not yet carved in stone.

I thought I would start with a tour of the physical device.  I'll follow up with posts about the software, usage and the interplay between the two operating systems.

In slate mode the Shift is small, thin and light.  On the front bezel there are a number of features worth noting.

In the top left corner there is a web camera.  In the top right there is an ambient light sensor. 

The two hardware buttons below the light sensor are function buttons.  When in Windows Mobile mode they don't do anything.  In Windows Vista the top button launches the Shift Control center.  The button below that toggles the screen resolution between 800x480 and 1024x768.

The black square below the two function buttons is a touch pad that allows you to control the mouse pointer in Windows Vista.  The left and right mouse buttons are the two buttons below the web camera on the left.  There are also two black oval slots.  These are the speakers.  Below the right speaker is the fingerprint reader.  Below the left speaker is the hardware button that toggles between Windows Mobile and Windows Vista.  Along the bottom of the screen (under my thumb) there are a number of indicator lights, including power, battery indicator, caps lock indicator, HDD activity, wireless indicator, 3g indicator and alert light.

On the right edge there is the power button, one USB port, the power input and an SD Card slot.

The silver power button is a soft switch.  Sliding this to the right toggles the power switch.  If you slide the switch to the left it locks in place and this disables all the buttons and the touch screen.

On the left side of the unit is the headphone jack.  This is on the left of the picture below.  Just visible on the right of the photo below is the inbuilt microphone.  There is also another hole on the front edge of the same corner.  Roughly in the middle is the slot for the stylus.  The stylus is ejected by pressing the end in, it then pops out.  When slotted in place it locks in positively.

On the top edge, when in slate mode, is a VGA output.

Sliding the screen upwards reveals a qwerty keyboard.  The screen slides up quite easily.  You can use the device quite comfortably in this mode while sitting or standing and using the keyboard as a thumb-board.

You can also convert the device into laptop mode.  The hinge is fairly stiff - this allows you to position the screen at any angle that suits you.  It does mean that you need a fair bit of leverage to pull it up.  You can achieve this one handed if you place your thumb at the base of the screen and pull up on the top edge with your fingers.

In order to use the onboard HSPDA you need to insert a SIM card.  To do this you need to remove the battery.  This is done by removing a cover on the back of the unit to expose the battery.  You then slide back two red clips that hold the battery in place.

Once you remove the battery you can see the SIM card slot. 

The only other points of interest on the back of the unit are three vents that let out heat and four rubber feel.  The rubber feet provide good grip on smooth surfaces - which is important when you have such a smooth finish on the unit.

Overall it is a good looking unit and feels well made.  Stay tuned for more on what you get when you fire it up.

Because I have a HTC Shift in my hot little hands for the weekend.

I'm really excited to have this opportunity. I think the Shift is an incredible and innovative device. Packed into it's tony frame are two operating systems - Windows Vista and Windows Mobile. It has embedded 3G wireless. There is a lot to play with.

Unfortunatly there is also a lot of confusion in the market about it as well. I aim to try and help clear someof that up. If there is something about the Shift you want me to check out while I have it leave a comment.

There is an issue that many mobile and tablet users have encountered with Windows Vista, myself included.  Warner Crocker also has encountered this issue and describes it thus:

I’m still frustrated with Vista on one front here and that is putting the Tablet PC to sleep. 3 times out of 4 everything will work as advertised. Close the lid, unit goes to sleep, open the lid, unit returns. But occasionally the OS just goes off into its own world without sleeping, or after a successful sleep, not returning. Occasionally it will return from sleep but the screen will stay dark.

I personally believe that this issue is not a Vista issue per se, but rather a driver issue.  I think that some drivers are poorly written and interfere with the sleep and resume process.  I also think that this issue is much more serious than it initially appears.  I have come to refer to it as the sleep of death.  But that I'll leave for another post. 

For Warner it seems his issues are related to when he is using Wi-fi.  For me it was BlueTooth.  Either way it points at drivers.

I’m beginning to think (this seems to be somewhat reproducible here) that these issues have something to do with being connected or disconnected to our WiFi network. Here’s what I’m experiencing and maybe someone smarter than me can help out here with some thoughts.

What worked for me was to disable the Power Management features for the affected driver.  For a wireless driver you would do this by going into Device Manager, right clicking on the relevant device and selecting Properties.

You may then see a Power Management tab.  Not all device or drivers implement this interface, so if yours does not you will not see the tab.

If there is one select that tab and then clear both of the checkboxes shown in the screenshot below. 

I have done this for my LS800 and it has all but eliminated the dreaded sleep of death issue.  I use to encounter this several times a week and now I get it less than once a month. 

The new software update for my first generation Zune has finally addressed one of the gripes I've always had with the Zune.  Namely the complete lack of integration with my Windows Vista Media Centre.  Because there was no support for recorded TV I never installed the Zune software on the Media Centre.  Since the new update supports this I installed it and set about syncing my Music, Pictures and Recorded TV to the Zune.  It took an age and I held my breath and navigated to the Videos folder on my Zune.  I played an episode of Futurama...  I marvelled at the spectacular picture - crystal!  Only then did I start to wonder why I could not hear anything...

As it turns out none of my recorded TV had audio.  I did some investigating and found that this was because all of my recorded TV was recorded from HD channels.  It is not that the Zune does not support HD, per se, but it does not support Dolby Digital audio that inherent in the HD stream.

As an experiment I recorded a movie off a channel that is not HD and lo and behold it plays fine.  This at least gives me a work around.   All of the channels that are available in HD are also available in standard format.  Now I can semi easily get my recorded TV on the train.

After a litany of supply problems I won't recount here "new" but "end-of-life" tablet arrived. It is a Lenovo X60. (I will say that the issues were internal and were not due to Lenovo.)

Since we are only allowed to connect certified hardware to the corporate LAN I have been working with two devices and synchronisation strategy that would challenge most people for the last 6 months.

Now I have the X60 life just got a whole lot simpler.

My only gripe -and it is a big one- is that the standard image is XP Tablet Edition. More on that later.

The Mobile Tech Roundup team and Warner Crocker over at GBM are asking where the slates have gone.

Its true. Relative to the whole tablet market, there are fewer slates around now than there were. When I say "relative to the whole market" I am referring to the new form factors such is UMPCs and the new entrants such as Dell.

But why are the slates disappearing?

More accurately what is preventing slate adoption growing as rapidly as their keyboarded cousins?

I'd put the answer in three parts.

1. Fear. People are use to having a keyboard and giving one up (albeit part-time) scares some fairly savvy users.
2. Pen-abled applications - or more accurately a lack of. We need more applications that either expose more functionality when run on a tablet or are written explicitly for the tablet.
3. Natural language Input is just not there yet. Many working age people can type faster thanthey can write.  And that percentage is only increasing. Speech is a good alternative and works well, but it is fairly resource intensive, and many smaller devices such as UMPCs just can't hack it. Not to mention it is simply not possible to dictate to your PC in many situations. I'm inking this post on the train, can you imagine the irritated looks I would be getting if I were talking to myself?

That may sound pretty dire, but does it mean that slates will only be a niche player? I think not.

Why? Because the first two of those points are addressable now.

The fear factor can be addressed by education. Teach the market that you can use a computer without a keyboard. Teach them that if you dock a slate it works just like a "normal" PC. We call this education of the market "marketing" and it has been sorely lacking since the tablet was launched in 2002. It is time for Microsoft and OEMs, especially slate specialists like Motion, Tablet Kiosk and Electrovaya to lift their game.

On the second point there are some really good pen-abled apps out there, but we need to see more marketing from the companies that develop that software. It's a differentiator, promote that fact. But we need more, too, so as a community we need to educate developers and most importantly demand pen features in the apps we use now.

The third point will be eased as hardware performance improves, but will not be eliminated (lMO) any time soon. We need at least the next version of the Windows OS. We can't write off Apple here, either. Now that we have all seen the i-phone you can imagine that a Mac tablet would challenge the UI paradigms we operate in.

Check out this very short video of me with the Motion LE1700, filmed the night before I had to send it back.

It shows the auto-rotate feature, where the tablet uses an accelerometer to determine its orientation and rotates the display accordingly.  This actually works at a very shallow angle, or even when flat on the table it you give it a bit of a flick.

I've been luck enough to have a Motion LE1700 in the house for a while but I have not had the time to really explore it.  I had just started having a real look at it when low and behold Motion needed it back.  C'est la vie.  I snapped a few photos before I sent it back so I could post this mini-review.  Click on any of the photos in this post for a larger image.  Motion have promised to send a unit with the WWAN module in it, so I'll do a full review then. 

I've had a couple of Motion slates in the past, including the LS800 I still use on a daily basis.  I have always found them to be well designed and with quality construction.  The LE1700 is no exception.  It has a very functional design and the silver and black finish is striking.  The unit is very comfortable to hold in either portrait or landscape mode, because it is very well balanced.

Here's a tour:

The tablet buttons are similar in design to previous Motion tablets.  There is a directional pad with enter in the middle, surrounded by four buttons.  On one side you have the programmable buttons, on the other you have an Esc button and a function button, which alters the action associated with the other buttons if you press it before another one of the buttons.

On the side below these buttons are the infrared port and the PCMCIA slot.  There is also a SD-card reader, but that is just out of the shot above - you can see it better below.

On the other end of the same side is the stylus and the antenna for the embedded WWAN module.  This particular unit did not actually have the WWAN module so I can't report on that, but you can see how the antenna can be raised up as shown or lowered so that it sits flush with the front of the tablet. 

The antenna is designed to snap on and snap off, so that if it takes a hard knock while raised it will snap off rather than breaking or transmitting any force into the body of the tablet.

Here's the antenna sitting flush.  Just below the antenna you can see one of the three microphones on the outer bezel of the tablet.  The other two are in the bezel as well, but in the bottom left and bottom right (when the unit is in landscape mode).

On the side below the screen (when the tablet is in landscape mode) is a Motion accessory port and (under the cover) a connector for when the tablet is used with either the convertible keyboard or the FexiDock.

On the left side of the tablet (when it is in landscape mode) you will find the following up the top on the front.  Two indicator lights - one for power and one for charge.  The fingerprint reader and the Windows Security button (pressing that is like pressing Ctrl-Alt-Del on a keyboard).  Notice there is no HDD activity light.  I've had another tablet without a disk activity light and it was a minor annoyance.  However the version of the Motion Dashboard that comes with the LE1700 puts an icon in the system tray.  This can optionally be configured to blink on disk activity - nice touch.

On the side of the unit below the activity lights are a hardware switch for the wireless, the power switch and two USB ports.  A couple of points worth mentioning here - the power switch is on the opposite side on this tablet than it is on my LS800 - though the units are otherwise laid out pretty similarly.  This is not a problem, but it does take a little getting use to.  However that is always the way with a new unit.

The other difference between the layout on the LE1700 and my beloved LS800 is that on the LS800 the USB ports are upside down - in that the top of most USB devices ends up facing towards the back of the tablet.  I'm pleased to report that this has been corrected on the LE1700.

In the middle of the left side there are microphone and headphone jacks; next to that is a DVI-D output, below which is a SIM card slot for the WWAN.  On the right of the photo below is a VGA output.

On the bottom left corner there is an RJ-45 Gigabit Ethernet port and a laptop lock slot.  On the front bezel you can see another of the array microphones and the ambient light sensor.

Last but not least - on the back you will find three covers held in place with screws.  The top left one covers the WLAN and WWAN modules, the bottom left exposes the HDD and the third cover exposes the two RAM slots.  Very easy to service.  The sliding cover you can see exposes the extended battery connector.  One of the great features of the LE series tablets is the shape of the back - note how there is a slight inset about an inch below the top of the tablet?  This is so that when you fit the extended battery to the unit it sits quite flush.  Because the battery is rectangular and flat the additional weight is evenly distributed and the unit is still easy to use for extended periods when you are moving about.

Using the LE1700 is a joy.  I've had 12 inch slates before and I've had tablets with SXGA screens before (which gives you a native resolution of 1400x1050) but to have both really is having your cake and eating it, too.  The unit I had did not have the ViewAnywhere display option - having had that on my LS800 I would highly recommend it.  The unit I had was the Core 2 Duo model and the performance was fantastic.  It came with XP Tablet edition pre-installed, but with Motion's permission I rebuilt it with Vista.  The Vista experience is flawless.

Overall a great experience.

I was cleaning out my digital video camera today and found a quick video review of the Sahara i440d slate from TabletKiosk (available in Australia from Tegatech).  I had recorded the video literally just before I had to step out the door to drive across town to return the unit to Hugo Ortega.  I went straight from there to the airport to pick up my wife and daughter who were returning from a quick break in New Zealand.  I got a bit sidetracked and never posted the video!

Overall I thought it was a good device - though not the prettiest.  It is white and fairly blocky, which is not a particularly corporate look.  However as I say in the video it does not actually feel blocky, it is quite comfortable to hold.  Certainly worth a look so check out the video.  (sorry - I never grabbed the screenshot or the photos I mentioned in the video.  I finished recording and had a "oh (*#& - need to leave now" moment)

I've seen the U1010 briefly a couple of times, but tonight I've got one in my hot little hands for the whole night.  And that is long enough to do a quick review with lots of photos. Click on any of the photos for a larger version of it.

The U1010 is a very exciting device.  Personally I think it is the most compelling UMPC sized device I have yet seen.  Fujitsu have packed an incredible amount into a really tiny package.  The photo below - that's a Zune next to it!

In laptop mode the Fujitsu U1010 offers a usable keyboard.  Fujitsu have maximised what they have squeezed into the device by giving a lot of the keys a secondary function (which is accessed by pressing the Fn key followed by the key with the function you want).  This has allowed them to do away with the traditional F1-F12 keys, thereby doing away with an entire row of the keyboard. 

The external styling of the U1010 is nice - you can see why some people have dubbed it "The Stormtrooper".  Overall the unit is white with black trim.  The "Fujitsu" and "Lifebook" logos on the back of the lid are in silver.

The U1010 is well designed to be used in slate mode, too.  The screen is offset away from the hinge, giving you a space to hold onto without obscuring the screen.  This is an important usability consideration for an ultra-portable device, but one that some vendors seem to forget.  In addition all of the hardware buttons are accessible when you are in slate mode, which is of course when you need them most.

The screen is crystal clear.  The native resolution is 1024x600 so you get a fair bit on that little screen.  Naturally on a small screen there is not much room to write, but if you do try it you will find that the U1010 offers a surprisingly good ink experience for a touchscreen.

Now a quick visual tour...

On the front right corner (when in laptop mode) there are the usual indicator lights.  From left to right power in indicator, battery level indicator (goes from green, to orange to red), disk activity and wireless network activity.

On the right side there is a compact flash slot, the power switch and a USB port that is hidden under a little white rubber flap.  The latter two are white on white, so are a little hard to see in the photo below.

Ah.. there's that USB...

There is nothing across the back, just the battery.

On the other side there is a wireless hardware switch by the power connector (again, white on white so hard to see), an SD Card reader (which unfortunately I could not get to work with ReadyBoost), volume up and down controls, headphone jack and microphone jack.

On the front edge there is a connector for a dongle that gives you both an ethernet port and a VGA out.

There is also a mouse of sorts.   To the right of the hinge (in laptop mode) there is a little joystick pointer.  Also just above that on the screen bevel you can see the Ctrl-Alt-Del button and the bottom edge of the fingerprint reader.

On the other side of the hinge there are the left and right mouse buttons.  Yes it really does run Vista!

There are a number of other handy hardware controls.  Next to the mouse thumbstick there is a function button and a scroll up and scroll down button.  The function button alters the action of the other hardware buttons.  For instance function scroll up or scroll down = page up or page down.

Directly above the hinge there are two programmable hardware buttons and a screen rotate button.

By default one of the programmable buttons turns on the head lights.  This is a handy little feature that illuminates the keyboard so you can type in the dark.

Another handy feature is the integrated web camera on the top edge of the screen. 

Another good design feature is the stylus.  It has been designed to telescope out so that it fits into the device but is still big enough to be usable when extended.

Before...

After...

Over all the U1010 is a very usable device.  There is a lot packed into this tiny package and every aspect of the design shows that it has been carefully thought out.  The price is very reasonable and performance is surprisingly snappy.  All told a solid offering.

 James Kendrick has posted a great review of the HP 2710p he just purchased. James include what he bought, what he is running on it and his conclusions. a good read.

It is no doubt apparent that I am very pleased with what HP has brought to the tablet with the 2710p.  It is not only a great Tablet PC but also a stellar thin and light notebook computer, something that other OEMs have attempted to do but none as successfully as this in my book.  The hardware components are a decent compromise for providing great battery life while still providing very good performance, even under the resource hog that is Vista.  HP has done a good job making sure that the entire package works as flawlessly with Vista as anything I have seen yet.  The thin and light design is stellar at providing a great OOBE and daily usage. 

This is a post I have been meaning to write for a while. 

There has been a lot of discussion of late about Vista and its readiness - or lack of - for the public.  Lots of people have lamented that Vista is just not there yet.  That it came out too soon.  That it is a failure.  Some have even reverted back to Windows XP as they believe that it is more stable and performs better.

Lots of people have voiced opinions one way or the other.  James Kendrick was one of the first to speak out against Vista, and his post  included most of the key gripes.

First and foremost in the area of performance.  I have not seen adequate performance running Vista on anything less than a Core 2 Duo processor.  Those are only available in the larger Tablets so the UMPCs and smaller Tablets are out of luck.  Vista also needs 2 GB of memory to run well and the smaller mobile devices usually are only offered with 1 GB, which isn't enough. 

...

If you use Sleep and Resume you quickly fall victim to the dreaded Vista la-la land where the device fails to resume properly.  Sometimes the device comes back fine but without a screen which is oh so useful.  Other times it comes back but hangs the entire device up in just a few seconds. 

...

One of the most beneficial things you can do to improve the mobile device experience is use it with a dock.  Don't even get me started with how badly Vista handles docking and undocking of these mobile devices, especially if you hang an external monitor off the dock.

Other general concerns are performance, battery life and mysterious disk thrashing. These are all real and valid concerns.  However, they are not the end of the world and they are not unique to Vista.  In fact - I believe that many of them are not the fault of Vista at all. 

I disagree with those that say that Vista is a dog and I will not be going back to XP on any of my machines - ever.

The first point I will make in Vista's defense is to point out that not everything bad that happens in on a computer is the fault of the OS.  On every single computer there are hundreds of device drivers and bits of software that could be the culprit for some of the issues outlined above.  Specifically the resume from sleep and docking station issues described above are most likely driver issues.  XP has been around for a while and hardware manufacturers have had a lot of practice writing nice, stable and functional drivers for the XP platform.  Vista is both new and very different.  I am disappointed, but not very surprised, that driver support is not that great.

Secondly, none of this is new to Vista.  I am an IT consultant.  I worked on a very early Windows XP deployment for a government client in New Zealand.  And guess what?  Driver support was appalling across the board, but it was worse for mobile PCs.  Performance was a joke.  There was no way Windows XP could really run on a machine that just met the minimum specs.  Blue screens and hangs were common.   When XP shipped it was worse than my experience working on a project with Vista in the Technology Adoption Program using beta code.  The released code is far and away more stable than Windows XP was at the same time in the product lifecycle.  What is significantly different is that the flaming and debate happened in the newsgroups rather than on the blogs we have today, which was much more of a closed community.

When Microsoft ships a new OS they tend to lead the hardware.  By that I mean that it is the hardware that comes out 6 months after the OS that runs it really well.  I think this is probably intentional - perhaps because it then extends what they can include in the product at ship date, bearing in mind that it will need to be a viable product for a couple of years.  I suspect that this will be the same for future OS releases.

The short version of all of that is that the issues we are seeing today are normal for a new OS and they are much more complex than "Vista is Bad".  Some of the blame rests with application developers.  Some rests with hardware manufacturers and some rests with Microsoft, but it will all be fixed in the fullness of time.

Until then I won't go back - simply because the benefits out weigh the pain.  The tablet functionality is way better.  The networking is better.  The Mobility Center is better.  Presentation mode rocks.  All of that functionality is nothing compared to the security enhancements.  When XP shipped the world was a different place.  The general public knew about viruses but had never heard of root kits, malware or spyware.  The Internet was not the efficient distribution system of nasties that it is today.  User Access Control (UAC) and protected mode IE go a long way to preventing then initial infection and Windows Defender makes it easier clean up after the fact.

Vista is here to stay.  I'm not going back and the experience will get better as the hardware catches up.

At TechEd Australia in the Gold Coast I had the chance to talk tablet on camera for the Virtual TechEd crew. The only catch was I had to bring my own interviewer. No problem Lee Williams was at TechEd with me and stepped up to the plate.

We had a good fun chat. Check out the video here.

You can also check out the other Virtual TechEd videos here.

 Search is one of the really powerful and addictive features in Windows Vista. Over on Geekzone Mauricio has a great whitepaper available for download.

The Windows Search Technologies Overview for Business Customers is a XPS document written by Arvind Mishra, Product Manager for Search, covering search from an enterprise perspective, but with lots of insights that would be of interest for personal use and small business as well

This is a great whitepaper that is currently only available from Geekzone.

Now that I have posted the PressureLevels utility I thought that I should give some insight into how it works - in case any real developers want to look into something similar. :)

While it is trivial to collect ink on a tablet using the controls provided by the Tablet SDK if you want more direct, low level access to stylus information then you need to use the Real Time Stylus API.  This is a pretty bare bones API that provides a stream of packets as the stylus moves around.  As a developer you can create a plug in that basically filters this information to just what you are interested and executes code every time on of those "events" fires.

I found this CoDe Magazine article by Marcus Egger to be very well written and extremely useful.

I have a class that contains this plug in that looks roughly like this:

Imports Microsoft.StylusInput

Public Class SimpleStylus
    Implements IStylusSyncPlugin
    Dim iLastPressure As Integer = 0

    Public ReadOnly Property DataInterest() _
    As DataInterestMask _
    Implements IStylusSyncPlugin.DataInterest
        Get
            Return DataInterestMask.Packets _
                Or DataInterestMask.StylusDown _
                Or DataInterestMask.StylusUp
        End Get
    End Property
    Private attachedControl As Form
    Public Sub New(ByVal form As Form)
        Me.attachedControl = form

    End Sub
    Public Sub Packets(ByVal s As RealTimeStylus, _
    ByVal data As PluginData.PacketsData) _
    Implements IStylusSyncPlugin.Packets
        Dim g As Graphics = _
           Me.attachedControl.CreateGraphics()
        Dim packetCounter As Integer
        For packetCounter = 0 To _
        data.Count - data.PacketPropertyCount _
        Step data.PacketPropertyCount
            Dim iX As Integer
            Dim iY As Integer
            Dim iPressure As Integer = 10
            iX = g.DpiX * data(packetCounter) / 2540
            iY = g.DpiY * data(packetCounter + 1) / 2540

            If data.PacketPropertyCount > 2 Then
                iPressure = data(packetCounter + 2)
            End If
            Console.WriteLine("P: " & iPressure & ", LP: " & iLastPressure)
            If iPressure < iLastPressure Then
                g.Clear(Form.DefaultBackColor)
            End If
            g.FillEllipse(Brushes.Black, _
                iX - iPressure, iY - iPressure, _
                iPressure * 2, iPressure * 2)
            iLastPressure = iPressure

        Next
    End Sub

    Public Sub StylusDown(ByVal sender As RealTimeStylus, _
    ByVal data As PluginData.StylusDownData) _
    Implements IStylusSyncPlugin.StylusDown
        Console.WriteLine("Stylus Down")
    End Sub

    Public Sub StylusUp(ByVal sender As RealTimeStylus, _
    ByVal data As PluginData.StylusUpData) _
    Implements IStylusSyncPlugin.StylusUp
        Console.WriteLine("Stylus Up")
        Dim g As Graphics = _
           Me.attachedControl.CreateGraphics()
        g.Clear(Form.DefaultBackColor)

    End Sub

    Public Sub CustomStylusDataAdded( _
    ByVal sender As RealTimeStylus, _
    ByVal data As PluginData.CustomStylusData) _
    Implements IStylusSyncPlugin.CustomStylusDataAdded
    End Sub

    Public Sub [Error](ByVal sender As RealTimeStylus, _
    ByVal data As PluginData.ErrorData) _
    Implements IStylusSyncPlugin.Error
    End Sub

    Public Sub InAirPackets(ByVal sender As RealTimeStylus, _
    ByVal data As PluginData.InAirPacketsData) _
    Implements IStylusSyncPlugin.InAirPackets
    End Sub
    Public Sub RealTimeStylusDisabled( _
ByVal sender As RealTimeStylus, _
ByVal data As PluginData.RealTimeStylusDisabledData) _
Implements IStylusSyncPlugin.RealTimeStylusDisabled
    End Sub
    Public Sub RealTimeStylusEnabled( _
ByVal sender As RealTimeStylus, _
ByVal data As PluginData.RealTimeStylusEnabledData) _
Implements IStylusSyncPlugin.RealTimeStylusEnabled
    End Sub

    Public Sub StylusButtonDown( _
    ByVal sender As RealTimeStylus, _
    ByVal data As PluginData.StylusButtonDownData) _
    Implements IStylusSyncPlugin.StylusButtonDown
    End Sub

    Public Sub StylusButtonUp(ByVal sender As RealTimeStylus, _
    ByVal data As PluginData.StylusButtonUpData) _
    Implements IStylusSyncPlugin.StylusButtonUp
    End Sub
    Public Sub StylusInRange(ByVal sender As RealTimeStylus, _
ByVal data As PluginData.StylusInRangeData) _
Implements IStylusSyncPlugin.StylusInRange
    End Sub

    Public Sub StylusOutOfRange(ByVal sender As RealTimeStylus, _
    ByVal data As PluginData.StylusOutOfRangeData) _
    Implements IStylusSyncPlugin.StylusOutOfRange
    End Sub
    Public Sub SystemGesture(ByVal sender As RealTimeStylus, _
ByVal data As PluginData.SystemGestureData) _
Implements IStylusSyncPlugin.SystemGesture
    End Sub
    Public Sub TabletAdded(ByVal sender As RealTimeStylus, _
ByVal data As PluginData.TabletAddedData) _
Implements IStylusSyncPlugin.TabletAdded
    End Sub

    Public Sub TabletRemoved(ByVal sender As RealTimeStylus, _
    ByVal data As PluginData.TabletRemovedData) _
    Implements IStylusSyncPlugin.TabletRemoved
    End Sub
End Class

In the data interest mask I state that I am interested in StylusDown, StylusUp and Packets events.   This means that every time the stylus comes into contact with the screen or is lifted from the screen the StylusDown and StylusUp subroutines respectively will run.  I use the Stylus up event to clear the drawing so that when you lift the pen you get a clean slate ('scuse the pun).

The workhorse is the packets subroutine. A packet is generated every time there is new data to send.  This will include at least an x and y coordinate and may include a pressure level.  What this routine does is convert the X and Y coordinates to screen coordinates (the digitizer has a much higher resolution than the display), and if there is a pressure level it converts that to the radius and draws a circle on the attached control (which is the main form you see when you run the app.

The other subroutines are just stubs that could be used if you edited the data interest mask.

On the main form I just use the load event to instantiate a RealTimeStylus object then add the SimpleStylus plugin in the class above and pass it the form itself as the attached control.  Here's the code for the main form.

Imports Microsoft.StylusInput

Public Class Form1
    Inherits System.Windows.Forms.Form
    Private rts As RealTimeStylus

    Private Sub Form1_Load _
             (ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) _
             Handles MyBase.Load
        Me.rts = New RealTimeStylus(Me)
        Dim plugIn As New SimpleStylus(Me)
        Me.rts.SyncPluginCollection.Add(plugIn)
        Me.rts.Enabled = True
    End Sub
End Class

And that is really all there is to it.  Pretty cool that you can get access to such low-level information so fast, eh?

One of the cool thingsabout active digitizersis that they arepressure aware. Thedigitizers in most Tablet PCs can detect256 levels of pressure,whereas some of theeternal ones artists usecan detect 512.

While I was at TechEd Australia I had a cool sideline conversation with a chap from Wacom. My colleague Lee was with me at the time and be asked this guy if they had any little utils that could be used to show off pressure awareness in tablets. The answer was no, but we all agreed that it was a cool idea. I foolishly opined that it would be easy to make one, hence volunteering.

I'm still tinkering and will release code soon, but I'm using the real the stylus API to detect the pressure levels and render a circle where the radius is relative to file pressure applied.

Still a bit rough but the Gif below might give you an idea of what it looks like.

I've finally gotten around to applying the two performance & compatibility patches that were recently released.

The patches are:

Compatibility and reliability update - KB938194

Performance and reliability update - KB938979

These were released while I was a TechEd Australia, but I have learned from past experience never to patch just before you present! So I put them on mg LS800 on Friday and my Acer notebook on Saturday. So far everything has been peachy so I'll do the media centre soon, too.

The new version of OmniPass for Windows Vista seems to have a few issues with IE7.  My friend Lee identified this issue and - having just rebuilt my LS800 I installed OmniPass to see if I could reproduce the issue.  I can, and not just with IE.

When secureapp.exe (the OmniPass tray icon application) is running then whenever IE has the focus iexplore.exe hammers the processor.  The same thing happens with Windows Live Writer and Feed Deamon - when they have the focus then they hammer the CPU.  If secureapp.exe is not running then they don't.

With both apps running, but with IE minimised task manager looks something like this:

The CPU is pretty idle at 13% and secureapp is there, but idle.

Maximising IE cause the CPU to get hammered until IE is minimised again.  It looks like this:

If you kill off the secureapp.exe process after you log in then this does not happen.  The down side is that you cannot store application passwords in OmniPass and authenticate with fingerprints without this process running.  You can, however, still log on and unlock you machine using fingerprints without the secureapp.exe process running.

In Windows Defender you can prevent the secureapp.exe process from running at start up, which will save you killing it off manually.  In the Control Panel click on the Change startup programs link under Programs.

In the Windows Defender dialog click on the Show for all users button to enable the disabled controls.

Once you have confirmed for UAC that you want to allow this you will be able to select the Softex OmniPass item and then click the disable button.

With a Windows Mobile 5 device, once it was paired with your Tablet you could create a dial up connection on your computer that would connect to the Internet via whatever data protocol your device uses (e.g. EVDO, GPRS or HSDPA).

With Windows Mobile 6 you can still connect to the Internet using your SmartPhone as a modem, but the process is slightly different and requires you to complete steps on both the device and on your tablet.  The following steps outline the process.  This assumes you have already paired your phone with the tablet.

1) On the Windows Mobile 6 device select Internet Connection Sharing

2) Next click the Connect button.  This establishes the connection to the Internet and readies the device to accept a connection from your tablet.

Now that the mobile device is ready to accept the connection you need to go to the tablet to establish the connection. 

3) On the tablet right click the Bluetooth icon in the system tray and select join a personal area network.

4) In the Bluetooth Personal Area Network Devices dialog select your phone in the Access Points area and then click connect.

Viola - you are online!

After getting my LS800 back I started the long process of rebuilding.

Today I layered on more apps including:

• Zune software
• Windows Mobile Device Centre
• Techsmith SnagIt
• Techsmith Camtasia Studio

Still more to go...

Like I posted yesterday every Vista form that does not wilt not resize and fit into 600 pixels wide is a failure.

Here's another I stumbled across today.

 Both this one and yesterday's dialog are forms in control panel applets that only apply to Tablets. What's with that?

One thing that really irks me is some bits of Vista just don't fit on a 800x600 screen in portrait mode.

See how the right side of the dialog is off the screen?

This is just poor design. The minimum supported resolution for Vista is 800x600. Vista includes tablet functionality. Tablet screens rotate.

If you are building Vista apps assume that screen resolutions will vary and make sure they are still readable at 600 wide. Good design would have the above form resize.

In the process of installing all my software and I just came across something strange.  

Vista popped up one of its little problems and solutions dialog and informed me that there were new solutions for some of the issues found on my computer.  Clicking through I see three new solutions listed - which are all driver updates.  These included the Authentic AES2501 Finger Print reader, the Infinion TPM and the Motion Button Driver.  Since I knew I did not have a driver for the fingerprint reader yet I click on that to view the solution.  What I got was this message saying that I need to install the driver from the manufacturer's website.

Why is this weird?  Well clicking on the link takes me to a page on HP's website, not Authentic's.  On that page there is a driver for the fingerprint reader, but it also relies on HP's security suite, so I'm not going to grab it.  But very stange...

Hello Kettle?  This is Pot...  You're black!

When I read comments by Acer president Gianfranco Lanci stating that the PC industry is 'disappointed' with Vista I openly scoffed. 

I have worked with Vista since about November 2005.  Given how long partner organisations - including OEMs - had access to prerelease code before it shipped I was pretty disappointed with the availability of drivers and supporting applications when Vista shipped.

In fact around about launch time I was one of the group of MVPs and bloggers that received an Acer Ferrari to test Vista on.  A beautiful 64-bit laptop.  One of issues I have with that device is that the driver support is crap and the all the supporting applications (such as the Voice Call Manager) are 32-bit.  Hey Acer - is your software mature?  Get your own house in order before attacking other. 

In truth I think much of the onus for Vista's initial luke warm reception lies with the hardware vendors.  There has been quite poor support for existing models - I point to the likes of the Motion's still absent driver for the SD card reader on the LS800 (hello?  it has been 7 months since you guys updated your KB article?!?!) and the madness of vendors like Creative charging for Vista driver.  The cynic in me thinks that most vendors are more interested in trying to get you to buy new hardware than in supporting the user base they have.  I think this is short sighted and basically sends your customer out to market again with a negative impression of your products.

The last couple of weeks have been a bit intense.  I had a major customer presentation that ate about a week.  And I have about a million unread feeds.  Here are some links that are worth looking at that I've just caught up with.

On GottabeMobile.com

• Warner Crocker points to a cool add-inthat makes sending to OneNote mobile a bit easier.
• Warner also reviews his first week with the Lenovo X61
• Motion Computing get FCC approval for HSDPA in the LE1700.  I understand this is also underway in Australia.
• Please don't wear a OQO Model 02 on your belt.  Here here.
• Demo of touch screen pen flicks.  I love pen flicks...
• Creative charging for Vista drivers!  Dispicable - my advice is vote with your feet and buy something else.
• Interactive Whiteboards vs. Tablet PCs
• Hugo gets his hands on the Raon Everun
• Frank Garcia becomes a tablet MVP, as does Matt Faulkner.  Great stuff guys!
• MS are going to address a flaw in ReadyBoost in SP1 for Vista.
• Dell to release a UMPC?

On jkontherun.com

• Beautiful beer girls with Tablets.  Am I dreaming?  Actually - if I was dreaming it would not be an American beer!
• Samsung are getting ready to release a 64GB SSD - now we are talking!
• Tweak OneNote for a little bit more battery life.  Who'd of thunk it...
• Read your feeds faster on a UMPC - I need to be doing this!
• Touchscreens with hover are on the brink - using projected capacitive touch.  In other words it can tell when your finger is almost touching the screen - how cool!
• Intel and MS teaming up on a new slate platform called the "Edy Personal Computer" platform - will be watching to see where this goes.
• Use your smartphone as a bluetooth webcam.  Groovy Baby (sorry - Austin Powers is on in the back ground.  Britney Speirs just exploded.  Good job...

That's about half my unread items.  I'm off to bed...

Woe is me!  My much loved little LS800 is down and out.  After using it for a couple of days with its 2GB RAM upgrade I grabbed it off the desk and headed out. On the train on the way into work I pulled it out of my bag and flicked the switch.  The power light came on and nothing else happened.  Uh-oh.  We have a problem. 

Naturally because the RAM had just been upgraded I suspected the new RAM as the issue.  I swapped out the new RAM and replaced the old, but to no avail. 

When I opened the LS800 to swap back the RAM there were some indications that make me think the unit may have gotten very hot.  I think that this is the root cause of the problem.  While I can't prove it I have a theory about what happened. 

I have my tablets configured to sleep when I hit the power button.  On occasion since upgrading to Vista the LS has failed to sleep properly when I hit the switch.  When this happens you need to force the unit off by holding the switch down.  When in this insomniac state the unit will not go into shutdown to protect itself if it gets to hot.  I know this as I had this happen to me once before when I flicked the power switch and chucked the LS800 into my bag to change location.  When I pulled it out again it was in this hung state and stinking hot.

The other time the LS gets hot is when it is on power.  This is where I think I went wrong.  It was late and I was tired.  I'd been running off battery for several hours so the charge level was low.  I flicked the switch to send the LS to sleep, plugged in the power and went to bed.  I left the LS flat on the desk, not propped up as I would if I was leaving it plugged in and on.  I don't recall watching it to make sure it did actually sleep.

While I don't believe that putting 2GB of RAM in the LS800 caused the issue I hasten to point out that I don't believe a 2GB upgrade to the LS800 is not supported or recommended by Motion.  It is certainly not supported by me - so if you are looking at that upgrade be aware that it is at your own risk.

I'm hoping to get the LS800 fixed, but in the interim I'm using my Samsung Q1P as my main tablet.  This is an interesting and very different experience and I am sure I'll have much to blog about from this unintentional experiment.

I stopped by to see Hugo Ortega on the way home this afternoon to help him restore a Vista Complete PC backup onto one of his many devices.

While I was there I caught the bug that has been afflicting Hugo recently and cracked open my LS800 and put in a 2GB DIMM just to see what would happen.  What happened is it just worked like a charm.  Since I was unwilling to then part with said RAM I told Hugo to get TegaTech to invoice me for it.

Now the LS800 is running really well.  It really needs a rebuild as I have been installing and uninstalling a bunch of software I have been evaluating recently and much of that has been pre-release.  However even in it's sub-optimal and in need of a rebuild state it is noticeably faster now. 

Hugo snapped a sneaky snap of my beautiful LS with her clothes off - which he is going to send me later to post.  I'm sure it will end up on his blog as well.

Yesterday I posted about entering text with the Tablet Input Panel. Once you have mastered text entry with the TIPI recommend you look of some of the options you can tweak to change the way the TIP works. The TIP is actually quite flexible and you can adjust it to suit how you work.

To get started click on the Tools drop down in the TIP's menu bar and select Options, as shown below.

This will bring up the options dialog, which will be similar to the one shown sow. I'm gathering screenshots on Vista. for the most port the options available on XP are the same, but there may be some that are missing in XP Tablet Edition.

One of the important things to note we is the Restore button in the Restore default settings area. Don't be afraid to experiment as you can always get back to the original settings.

On the Settings tab you can tweak where the TIP icon appears. you can also change the insert buttons behavior so that hovering the point over the insert button will insert the current text (without tapping the button). I find this a great time saver but I do know other people who find it annoying.

The AutoComplete function is only available in Vista. It is on by default and I, personally, would leave it that way. I posted about autocomplete a while ago in this post.

On the Opening tab you can control how you launch the TIP.

Similar to tweaking the insert buttons you configure the tip to launch when you point at the TIP tab or the TIP icon.

On machines with lower end graphics you might want to consider clearing the checkbox that says Show the Input Panel sliding open from the tab.

Also, if you find the TIP tab gets in the way of what you are working on then you can clear the Show the Input Panel tab when the per is out of range checkbox.

Lastly on the Writing Pad and Character Pad tabs I like reducing the thickness of the ink to Extra Fine Point, which gives me more room when writing in the TIP.

There are more settings there that I have not covered. Experiment to find the settings that work best for you.

 if you one running Vista ultimate on a system that supports Dreamscene then you need eye candy! Checkout Background Motion. Darryl Burling provides more info...

What is it?

Backgroundmotion.com is two things. 

Firstly it is a community website to allow you to share backgrounds and background video for the DreamScene features of Windows Vista Ultimate.

Secondly it is a great example of a modern web application built on .Net 2.0.  When I say example, I also mean sample - the source code for the site is available on codeplex for you to download and pull it apart. 

There is also a "Code" tab on the site to help you get up and running with the source code.  The developer section of the site includes sample code, short introduction videos and resources to lower the bar to use these technologies.

Technologies used

One of the things that the guys did was to build in all the latest technologies and making the code available means that you can go and see how they did it.  Specifically, the technologies and tools they used include:

• .Net Framework 2.0
• .Net Framework 3.0
• ASP.Net 2.0
• ASP.Net AJAX 1.0
• Silverlight
• NUnit
• LINQ (May CTP)
• Web Client Software Factory (Composite Web Block)
• Lucene.Net
• RSS Toolkit (which was extended for the solution)
• Virtual Earth
• Sidebar Gadgets

Background Motion - now live!

Very cool. Well done guys!

While I was at TechEd in Orlando I sat in on a great session by  Dr Neil Roodyn on developing sidebar gadgets.  In his session Dr Neil reminded us all that SideBar gadgets are just mini HTML applications.  I had the thought that now that we have Siverlight with great ink support we could probably knock together some pretty cool gadgets that leverage Silverlight to provide ink functionality.

Now Gavin Gear not only confirms that this is so - he provides and example.  Pretty cool.

In this post, I’ll show you how to use Silverlight to create an inkable surface on a sidebar gadget.

Here’s the example running on my desktop:

 

Check out the full post here.

At TechEd, as you might imagine, there is a lot of wireless noise. There is the conference wi-fi, but there are also a bunch of ad-hoc or computer to computer networks with remarkably similar names. In the wireless list infrastructure and ad-hoc networks have different icons.

You have to question the motives of people trying to fists for wi-fi users like that. while I know better than to go connecting to ad-hoc networks willy nilly, I wanted to remove the risk of accidentally connecting to one with the same name.

In Vista you can, via the command line, filter the list of available wireless networks. To filter out ad-hoc networks run the following from a command line (running as admin, all on one line)

netsh wlan add filter permission=denyall networktype=adhoc

to reverse this again run the following:

netsh wlan del filter permission=denyall networktype=adhoc

I'm trying out a Vodafone 3G Connect HSDPA modem for work. I found the 32-bit Vista driver on the Vodafone Australia website. Install under Vista took ages, but it was well worth it. I'm browsing my feeds and so far it has not missed a beat. Very cool. I'll do a proper speed test later today but for browsing at least it is quite snappy.

My friend Lee's long wait is almost over - his new LS800 is on the way.  He asked me today what he should do with his new tablet when he gets it.  There are tons of things you can do with your tablet and discovering those things is one of the joys of tablet ownership. 

That said here are 10 tips - things you can do with your new tablet to get you started.

1. Install Vista
   There is a lot to love in Windows Vista if you are a tablet or mobile user.  The Snipping Tool (which is available for XP tablet users in the free Tablet Experience Pack from Microsoft), Pen Flicks, multiple selections in Windows Explorer, Internet Explorer's panning tool, autocomplete for URLs and email addresses, an updated Tablet Input Panel and handwriting personalisation make Vista a compelling offering for tablet users.  You can read more about all of these in this post I did way back in April last year, during the beta.  There are some more mobile friendly features outlined here as well.
2. Make a Mind Map
   Mind mapping is a great way to plan things out or get your creative juices flowing.  I use Mind Jet's MindManager 6 - but there is a new version coming out soon, so that will be well worth checking out.  If you are running it on a small screen tablet, check out my optimization tips.
3. Ink on a PDF.  Tablet users delight in freaking people out.  A great way to do that is to return a PDF form that has been emailed to you by emailing it back within minutes all filled out.  I use PDF Annotator to do this.  Apart from being very efficient it is good fun.
4. Take some notes.  Note taking is where a tablet comes into its own.  If you have OneNote installed you can use that, but if not all tablets (Vista or XP) come with Windows Journal.
5. Do some drawing.  Drawing is great on a tablet.  For the best tablet experience you want something that is aware of the different pressure levels that are reported by an active digitizer.  My favorite is NZ grown ArtRage - even my daughter loves it.  Another good option is the free photo editor Paint.NET.
6. Read a book.  In slate mode a tablet makes a great platform for reading eBooks.  I've used both Microsoft's Reader and Palm Digital Media's eReader and they are both good.
7. Ink in Word - You can use ink in Word to markup documents or to insert ink comments.  If you are using Word as your editor in Outlook 2003 or if you are using Outlook 2007 then you can also ink email messages.
8. Ink on PowerPoint Slides - Another great way to show off in front of the ink challenged masses.  More on that here.
9. Ink Instant Messages - If you use Windows Live Messenger then you can chat in ink.  Great if you happen to be having an IM conversation while on the train (I've done that!)
10. Most importantly of all - Have fun!

Not for show on any of the stands but when I saw Hugo he gave me a quick look at the OQO 02.

The unit he was sporting had the extended battery fitted and this gives it ~5 hours battery life. The display is a bright, clear and readable 5" with 800x480 native resolution.  It was the model with the 1.5GHz processor and was running Windows XP Tablet Edition.  The same unit is also available with Windows Vista pre-installed.

The slide out thumb board is quite usable.

Another cool feature is the two scroll bars on the edge of the screen.

Dragging on these will scroll the active window.

Quite a functional little device.

One of the cool things about Vista is that if you are running Home Premium, Business, Enterprise or Ultimate then the tablet features are there, all you need is a Digitizer to turn them on.

Wacom has an awesome stand at CeBIT Australia that has an excellent range of external tablets you can connect to you standard PC or laptop to pen enable them.  Developers - This is a great way to ink enable your development machine so you can start writing those ink enabled applications. *hint*

These range from small USB tablets...

...to a massive 23" digitizer monitor that would be awesome for the professional artists and media types.

Very cool - though I would not recommend reading with in bed with that tablet!

The other one I think would be very cool to play with is the Bluetooth digitizer. 

No wires and the stylus just stores in the back of the unit. 

Would be great with a Vista based Media Centre PC.

Walking the floor at CeBIT Australia I dropped into the Motion Computing stand.  There is a lot of interest in the Motion range.  The C5 is drawing considerable interest.

However one of the coolest things on the stand - IMO - is easy to miss and you really need to play with it for 5 minutes to really get in touch with the unique experience that is WriteTouch.

On the stand is one of the new LE1700 units equipped with the WriteTouch option.  This is Motion Computing's answer to the dual mode touch and active digitizer model and it works very well.  If you are attending CeBIT Australia, then make sure you drop in and check this out.

Before WriteTouch there were basically two ways that touch and digitizer have been implemented together.  The first is to turn the touch screen on and off based on the proximity of the pen.  If the pen is in range then touch is disabled.  If the pen is out of range then touch comes on.  This is also known as the soft switch approach.

The second approach to this problem that emerged was a hard switch approach.  In this model there is a hardware button on the device that toggles touch on and off. 

WriteTouch is a combination of these two approaches and could best be described as a hard switch on, soft switch off.  What I mean is that touch is disabled completely if the pen is in range, hence the soft off.  However you have to proactively enable touch when the pen is out of range.  The difference is that there is no button to enable touch.  You simply double tap the screen with your finger and touch is enabled.  This gives you the ease of use of the soft approach without the accidental screen clicks that you sometimes get with the hard approach.  Very, very cool.

There are some other differences between the WriteTouch tablets and other touch enabled tablets I have used in the past.  These differences stem from the fact that it is not a resistive touch screen - it is capacitive touch.  A resistive touch screen responds to pressure and therefore needs to be a little spongy so there is give - i.e. something to press.  The capacitive touch screen, however, recognizes your finger as a finger because it is conductive.  This means that the Capacitive screen does not need to be spongy and the WriteTouch Le1700 has a writing feel just like any of the other Motion slates.  Another side effect of this is that you have to use the fleshy part of your finger, not your fingernail or a ballpoint pen. 

Overall I was very impressed by the WriteTouch LE1700 and look forward to getting one to play with for a bit longer in the near future.

I've just finished a short video showing three text entry options for UMPC's in action.

The video shows:

• The TIP's onscreen keyboard
• The TIP's writing pad
• Dial keys

Check it out.

These are not the only ways to entertext on a UMPC, but are three of the biggies.

One of the toys I picked up while in the US recently is a Samsung Q1P that has been provided for evaluation.

Physically the Q1P is looks pretty much identical to the Q1 and the Q1B.  The shiny black finish gives the unit a smart, sophisticated look and the Q1P will look right at home your lounge.  Here's a quick tour of the exterior.

Across the top you of the unit you will find...

A) The power switch

B) The Windows Security button (a recessed button that sends Ctrl-Alt-Delete - you need to use the stylus to press it)

C) A Compact Flash Slot covered by a dust flap, rather than a removable insert

D) RJ-45 network port.  This is also covered by an attached dust cover.

On the left side there is a mini AV output, a USB port headphone jack, volume control and a lock switch.  The lock switch disables the touch screen and the hardware buttons so you can't do anything by accident.

On the right side of the unit there power input, a second USB port and a VGA connector under a dist cover.

On the front left below the screen there are four indicator lights.  Left to right they are drive activity, network, charge indicator and power indicator.  There are also two microphones on the front bezel.

There are hardware buttons and controls on the front of the unit on both the left and right of the screen.

On the left there is a directional control and a resolution zooming button.

The directional control basically emulates the directional keys on a standard keyboard.  Pressing the zooming button toggles between the native resolution (800x480), emulated 800x600 and emulated 1024x600.  When zooming to a resolution higher than the native resolution, there is naturally some loss of fidelity in the image, but it is handy for dialogs that don't fit into a screen 480 pixels high.

On the Right there is a control that looks like a D-pad, but is actually four programmable buttons.  These are called the User Buttons and Samsung provides a utility to create and switch between profiles that assigns different actions to each of the buttons.

Below the User Buttons are an Enter button and a button that brings up the menu utility provided by Samsung.

One of the fantastic design features of the Samsung UMPCs is the integrated stands.  When not in use these sit flush with the back of the unit.

The larger of the two stands props the unit upright.

The smaller stand props the unit up at quite a shallow angle, for better on table viewing.

The initial impression is that the Q1P is a little heavier than it looks like it should weigh, but there is a lot in the package to account for that.  The petit size belies the power in the package.  The Q1P boasts a 60GB hard drive, 1GB of RAM and a 1GHz Intel Pentium M processor.  That is more than enough to run Windows Vista, and in fact that is just what I am doing. 

More on using the Q1P and the general Vista-gami experience coming soon.

Among the things in my backlog of "things I should be blogging about but have not had the time" are a couple of new gadgets that I have acquired of late.

First up is a Zune that I purchased while in the US recently. 

So far I am quite happy with it - apart from the absolute debacle of trying to install the software on my tablet while I was in Seattle.  Both my "Documents" and "Pictures" folders were offline copies of a network drive.  This is not something that the Zune software could cope with - it would error out with an error with words to the effect that the drive was invalid. 

Being a long time media centre user who has never owned an iPod I find the interface exceptionally easy to use.  I have yet to "squirt" anyone yet as I only know one other person with a Zune in Wellington.

The other device I picked up is a Samsung Q1P that has been provided for evaluation (of hardware and software).  This is running Windows Vista Ultimate and has a bunch of evaluation software - much of which is of little use to me outside the US unfortunately.  This warrants a whole series of posts but suffice to say for now that I am having a pretty good Vista-gami experience on the Q1P at the moment.

Connecting to an external monitor is one of the things that I just find easier to do in Vista than I did in XP.  As with many things there is more than one way to achieve the same result, but this is how I typically do it.

1. Physically connect the monitor/projector to the machine.
2. Launch the Mobility Center by pressing Windows Key+X (or pressing the hardware button on my tablet that I have assigned to this task).
3. Click on the Connect Display button in the External Display area of the Mobility Center.
   
4. In the Display Settings dialog, right click on the second display and then click Attached.
   
5. Click Apply and if things appear on the second screen as expected then confirm that you want to keep these new settings.  By default this will extend the desktop onto the second screen.
6. Adjust the resolution of the second monitor to you desired setting.
7. Adjust the position of the second monitor relative to the first (right, left, above or below) to reflect the actual physical position as well as possible.
8. Click Apply and if you can still see everything on both monitors (and it looks good) confirm that you want to keep the new settings.  If you can't see anything then just do nothing and the settings should revert after 15 seconds.

That's it.  Vista has some other smarts (particularly for newer projectors) where it can remember a particular display and change into presentation mode auto-magically, but I'll cover those off in a future post.

One of the common beliefs I encounter from people who have not used a tablet is that the OS will never be able to decipher their particular brand of handwriting because it is not neat or consistent enough.

My usual response is to show some of my handwritten notes and demonstrate how they have been correctly recognized and are searchable in OneNote.

However, while at the MVP Global Summit in Redmond recently I decided to dispel this myth once and for all with a little help from some of my fellow Tablet MVPs. I opened a new page in OneNote and passed my LS800 around. What follows are actual handwriting samples from some tablet MVPs. These are all very heavy tablet users and all report very high levels of accurate recognition, especially in Windows Vista.

Here's mine:

Marc Orchant:

Frank la Vigne:

Trevor Claiborne of The Student Tablet PC:

James Kendrick:

Honorary Tablet MVP Charlie Russel:

Gotta Be Mobile's Rob Bushway (nicely put Rob!) :

Also from Gotta Be Mobile, Dennis Rice:

WNewquay:

Hugo Ortega:

Linda Epstein:

As you can see even those with great penmanship have inconsistencies and chickenscratchers (like me and JK) can still experience a high level of successful handwriting recognition. Hopefully this shows that your handwriting is not a barrier to realizing the amazing benefits of using a Tablet PC.

Since putting Vista on the LS800 I've had a couple of issues that have been every so slightly spoiling my Vista goodness.  One of those issues is that the SD Card Reader on the LS800 does not work.  This is a real shame as I would love to throw a 2 GB SD card in there full time and use it for ReadyBoost to make the machine run a little faster (not that it is that bad, but any gain is good.)

However, Motion are aware of and working on this problem.  Here is the related article in their Knowledge Base.  Good to see Motion are on the case

Note you can subscribe to the feed for the LS800 related kb articles. 

I've had a fantastic time meeting up with some most of my fellow tablet MVPs over the last couple of days.  I've been jamming as much as I can into the time here in Seattle and have not had a chance to blog about it much.

Fortunately Hugo is doing a great job of this - having already posted a video from one of the early meet-ups and the unscheduled dinner we had last night.  The official event was a regional dinner, which I hated to miss.  I need a clone...

That said the dinner with the other Tablet MVPs and some other key players in the tabletscape was a definite highlight of my trip so far.  The conversation was intense, interesting and - not surprisingly - extremely pen and touch centric.  Oops - forgot to mention that the food (and wine - hic!) were excellent.

Big shout out to GottaBeMobile.com and JK on the Run who picked up the tab for dinner.  That was both unexpected and much appreciated.

Tonight the fun just keeps on coming - we are all off to Boeing Field to the Museum of Flight for the Big Party.  Should be a great night.

Engadget has details of the new Samsung Q2 UMPC.  This looks like a very cool device.  One of the nifty features is the split QWERTY thumboard, which looks very cool.

And check out the picture on Engadget - is that 3D Flip?  Looks like it is probably a photo shop mockup to me - but I can't wait for more info on the internals to emerge.

Among the details that Engadget have released:

"...7-inch touchscreen, 1GB of RAM, and 60GB hard drive..."

"...the Q2 will sport an unknown Intel (not Via) CPU running Vista Home Premium, a 1,024 x 600 WSVGA resolution (no 800 x 600 here), two digital cameras (1.3 megapixel for "photography" and 0.3 megapixel for videoconferencing), and a fingerprint scanner..."

And much more!  Check out the full post and pictures here.

I had a question arrive from a blog reader via email today asking if I could point to a concise summary of the benefits of Vista over Windows XP Tablet Edition on a Tablet PC.  I've been blogging about the pros (and cons) of Vista for a while now, but I think that this would be a good time to summarize the key benefits of Vista over Windows XP for Tablet users.

One of the key things to remember is that when all is said and done Tablet PCs are a member of a larger family of computers - Mobile PCs.  As such many of the benefits of Vista on a Tablet apply to the broader category of Mobile PCs as well.

Mobile PC Benefits:

There is a lot in Vista for mobile users.  In essence these can be grouped into these broad headings.

• Security: This is a big one and is at the top of the list for a reason.  The world has changed since XP released.  Users are much more mobile, and this can expose organizations to significant risk.  The Internet is full of malware, hackers and viruses.  It is inherently dirty and untrustworthy... and is an essential business tool.
• Ease of use:  To be an effective mobile user with XP you need to be something of a power user.  Vista is just makes it easier to be a mobile user.
• Efficiency: Less down time.  Has to be a good thing.

Let me expand on these three topics.

Security

Bit locker - As previously mentioned more and more people are taking their computing mobile - both at work and in their personal lives.  For businesses this presents a very real risk.  Every time a machine leaves the office it is at risk of being lost, stolen or falling into the wrong hands in some other way.  With an unencrypted machine it is trivial to retrieve data off it when you have physical access.  BitLocker provides whole volume encryption and therefore provides protection for the data on the machine even if a "bad person" has physical access to it.  As with all security measures there are some best practices and caveats around this, but on the whole BitLocker is a good thing for Mobile PCs.

Boot file integrity checking - How many of us knew the term "Root Kit" when XP shipped?  OK - I probably did, but I am a geek.  Root Kits are a very real problem.  Put simply the way they work is they either replace or shim a critical system file so that they can alter what that system file returns and therefore what is displayed.  For instance, some root kits target the system driver that read the disk and provide info to - for example - Windows Explorer.  If you try to browse the directory that the root kit resides in, it will remove itself from the list of files in the directory and thereby become invisible. Boot file integrity checking stores a hash of the key system files and checks each one at start-up.  If a core system file has been replaced or modified then the machine won't boot until you restore the correct version of the system file using the recovery tools on the Vista DVD.

Firewall - Bi-directional and configurable by Group Policy.  At last!

UAC - The much maligned User Access Control (UAC) addresses a very real problem.  Things are not always what they seem.  In Vista, by default, even if you are logged on as an admin (not the admin - that is different) every action you perform or program you run will happen in the context of an unprivileged user.  If you run something that needs more rights it will ask you if you want to do this.  Here's a scenario.  You need to convert a file from one type to another.  You Google it, find a util and down load it.  You try to use it to convert your file and it returns an error message that does not mean much to you, so you download the next one on the list and use that to convert your file.  Meanwhile, the first app you tried, between you clicking on the "Convert Now" button and the error message tries to disable the firewall, installs a key logger, starts sending your info to some dodgy site out on the web and writes something to the registry to ensure that the key logger et al will start up every time any user logs onto the machine.  In XP if you are local admin that will work and lots of laptop users out there are running as local admin because they had to in order to be able to do simple things like change the timezone.  In Vista UAC will see the request to do something that requires admin rights and either prompt for consent or credentials, depending on how it has been configured.   If you download a simple utility and it wants admin rights to run - here's a tip.  Click Cancel.  UAC is intrusive - but it addresses a very real problem and is therefore a necessary evil.

Protected Mode IE - Lots of the bad things to which out machines are exposed come in via the browser.  In Vista IE7 runs with less privileges than a standard user.  This does not apply to IE7 on XP, because there were some architectural changes required to make it work.  Much like the UAC scenario above, this protects users form ActiveX controls and scripts on sites they visit running with elevated privileges and doing bad things to your PC.

There are lots of other security enhancements, but for my money those are the big ones.

Ease of Use

Mobility Center - To be a really effective Mobile User in Windows XP you had to be a bit of a power user.  You needed to know to go to Network Connections to configure and join wireless networks, power options to tweak power settings, a tab on the property page of a network file to configure Offline Files, a control panel applet to configure tablet buttons and screen rotation and Display settings to attach a second monitor.  In Vista all this and more is pulled into the Mobility Center, which you can access quickly by pressing Windows Key + X.  You can also configure one of your tablet's hardware buttons to show or hide the mobility center.  Check out my Mobility Centre Drill Down.

Backup - Mobile users who are away from the office for days or weeks on end could potentially lose a lot of data if they have a hardware failure.  Using the native tools in XP to back up data was a bit lame and for the most part people would use 3rd party tools (which cost money) or not bother (which could end up costing a lot more!)  In Vista the backup tool has been completely rewritten and is very easy to use.  With minimal instruction most users could back up their files onto removable media.  There is also a very cool Complete PC backup feature that I have blogged about here and posted a video of here.

Offline files - If you tried to use offline files in XP you probably ditched it pretty fast and tried some other method.  The main complaints were poor performance when online and the fact that certain file types were skipped.  Even when it was working fine it was way too chatty and this would confuse users.  In Vista offline files work really, really well.  Firstly it is less chatty so you hardly notice it is there.  There have been some changes that make it work much better as well.  For one thing all reads are serviced from the local cache when you are online.  This improves the connected experience considerably.  Writes still go to the server copy when online as that is considered the master copy.  Also if a file is changed on the client while offline then only the changes (not the whole file) are synced back to the server when you reconnect.  This change has made it possible to include all file types as well, as the file types that were excluded (such as Access databases) were excluded because they were large an changed often - hence making them expensive to sync.  The cached copy is also encrypted by default, even if you are not using BitLocker - so your local data will have some protection.

Efficiency

Reduced Start time - From a cold boot Vista presents a usable interface to the user faster than XP does...  But...

Sleep mode - Who needs to do cold starts?  Vista supports a new power state called sleep that is really cool.  Unlike XP's standby a computer in Sleep will consume very little power.  Also if it does start to run low on power when in sleep it is awake enough to know this and will write everything in memory to disk and hibernate.  From a user point of view you get a machine that will resume very quickly without going flat or setting your laptop bag on fire.

Again there is plenty more to love in Vista - I've just hit one some key ones for Mobile users.

Tablet PC Goodness

In addition to the general Mobile PC benefits above there are a few others that are specific to Tablet PCs.

Learning handwriting - the handwriting recognition engine in Vista rocks.  It can learn.  You can train it.  In XP, it trains you.  After using a Vista tablet for a few weeks (assuming you use it as a tablet and write on it from time to time) your handwriting recognition will be much higher.  If you spend 15 minutes to do the training sessions it will go through the roof.  I actually thought the recognition in XP was pretty good, but Vista blows it away.

Pen Flicks - pen flicks allow you to use a quick pen gesture to do simple tasks like:

• Scroll up and down
• Navigate forward and back in the browser history
• Copy
• Paste
• Delete
• Undo

These are very handy and a great time saver.  You can also customize them if you like to make them really work for you.

Snipping tool - This use to be available as an add-on in the experience pack, but it is bundled in with Vista.  a great little tool.

Better TIP -  The Tablet Input Panel has been reworked.  It now docks on the side of the screen (you can choose which side) and hides away nicely.  You can also use the stylus eraser in the TIP if your stylus has one.

AutoComplete - Common pain points for people using the pen to enter text in XP were the Browser address bar and the To: field in the mail client.  These both support a new autocomplete feature where by as you start to write the recognition result is compared to you history (in the browser) and recent recipients (in Outlook).  Possible matches are displayed above the TIP.  If you see the one you want you click on it and it will be inserted and navigated to (for the browser anyway).  No need to then press enter.  Very efficient.

The above tablet points were all covered in a bit more detail in this post I did way back in April last year!

Before heading away to Seattle I wanted to rebuild my trusty LS800.  I've recently had some stability issues and wanted a clean start.  I don't think you should read too much into the "stability issues" statement...  When Vista released many of the drivers and applications installed were still in beta.  As the final versions have become available I've removed the betas and installed the final versions.  Doing this for one or who drivers and apps may not present much of a problem, but doing it for a host is a recipe for disaster!

The other reason I wanted a rebuild is I still have a couple of outstanding issues and I wanted to see if a clean build with the released Motion drivers fixed the faults.  Will keep you posted.

I deploed Vista Ultimate and Office 2007 Ultimate using Microsoft's new deployment tool, BDD 2007.  Man that is slick!

Since then I have manually layered on:

• Live Messenger.
• Daemon Tools
• Windows Live Writer
• Feed Demon
• eReader
• Flash
• Java
• Acrobat Reader

I still have lots to put on and I'll get to those over the next few days.  Things I have to have include:

• TechSmith SnagIt 
• TechSmith Camtasia Studio
• MindJet MindManager
• Tablet Enhancements for Outlook
• PDF Annotator

So much to do - so little time...

One of the features I love in Outlook 2007 is the ability to preview certain file types inside of Outlook.  However I have been mildly frustrated that there was no ability to preview PDF files as I get heaps of them.

However Tim Heuer and Foxit Software have collaborated to create a PDF Preview handler.  The handler will allow you to preview PDF files both in Outlook 2007 and in Windows Explorer (in both cases on Vista only).  Best of all it is free!

Kudos to Tim and Foxit for creating and releasing this previewer.

Hat tip to Warner over at GBM

For those of you who are moving your computing life over to Vista there is a featrue that may get you over the hump if one or two of your apps don't run on Vista.

Run it in compatibility mode.  This feature has been around since XP.  My limited experience with XP was that running an app in compat mode rarely made it work  In Vista I've had better success, but I suspect it still depends on WHY it is failing.

So if you have an app that does not run properly under Vista (even if it is an installer) try this:

1. Right-click the executable and select Properties
2. Click the Compatibility tab
3. Check the "Run this program in compatibility mode for:" checkbox.
4. In the dropdown select an OS that you know it worked on.  you can choose from Windows 95, Windows 98/ME, Windows NT4.0 SP 5, Windows 2000, Windows XP SP2 or WIndows 2003 SP1. (the default is Windows XP SP 2 and will probably work for many apps).
5. Do Not be tempted to check the "Run this program as an administrator" checkbox as a matter of course.  If running in compatibility mode does not work you may want to try running as admin, but any time you run a program as admin where you don't need to you weaken the security of your system.  You can always try this latter if compatibiltiy mode alone does not resolve the problem.
6. Click OK.

That's it.  Cross your fingers and your toes, poke your tounge out at just the right angle and then double click the icon to run the application.

Motion Computing have just announced the release of the Motion C5 - a new tablet PC designed specifically for teh Health Care industry.

From the product brochure:

The Motion C5 was designed based on input from thousands of clinicians to simplify workflow and
improve efficiency. It is the first mobile clinical assistant that integrates technology from Intel® Health.
A convergence of technologies in the C5 allows you to do everything you normally do during your
shift such as administer medication, record clinical notes and take pictures using one single device.
With Intel® Centrino® mobile technology and high-speed wireless connectivity, the C5 integrates key
functions that clinicians require to be productive during the course of the day.

The C5 includes some really innovative features and options including:

• Integrated camera
• Integrated RFID
• Integrated barcode reader
• View Anywhere screen
• Integreated moulded handle
• Semi-rugged, sealed case (so it can be wiped down with disinfectant)

The camera, RFID and barcode reader could really enable some cool end-to-end solutions that streamline the data capture and start off automated workflow.

Off the specs the unit looks quite capable:

Processor/Cache

• Intel® Centrino® mobile technology with the Intel® Core Solo
  Processor U1400 (2MB of L2 cache, 1.20GHz, 533MHz FSB)

Operating Systems

• Windows Vista™ Business
  Microsoft® Windows® XP Tablet PC Edition

Chipset

• Intel 945GM

Display

• 10.4" XGA TFT LCD (1024 x 768)
• View Anywhere® option
• Intel Display Power Saving Technology (DPST)
  

System Memory

• DDR2 533MHz SDRAM memory
• Base configuration of 512MB
• Upgradeable to maximum 1.5GB

System Storage

• 1.8" Hard Disk Drive (HDD) with 30GB or 60GB capacity
• PCI bus master enhanced IDE
• Supports Ultra ATA 66/100

Communications

• Integrated Intel® PRO/Wireless a/b/g network connection
• Optional Atheros 802.11 a/b/g card available
• Integrated Bluetooth®

Dimensions

• 10.0" x 10.0" x .95" (256mm x 256mm x 24.3mm)

Weight

• 3.1 lbs.

Battery

• Lithium-ion standard battery with 40WHr capacity

Preliminary specifications. Subject to change.
Weight represents approximate system weight measured with a 40WHr battery. Actual system weight may vary depending on component and manufacturing variability.

I love Motion Computing.  I think they have the coolest slates on the market.  However sometimes they do things that baffle me, and this is one of those times.

If you have recently purchased a Motion Computing LS800 or LE1600 with Windows XP Tablet Edition pre-installed - or indeed purchase one today - one of the applications installed will be the Omnipass suite, which enables the fingerprint reader hardware.  Without Omnipass (or some equivilant applicaiton) you cannot use the fingerprint reader in Windows XP Tablet Edition.

However if you then go and install Windows Vista on that tablet and download all the drivers for it you will find that the Omnipass download is a 30 day trial.  If you want to use the fingerprint reader in Windows Vista it will cost you.  From Motion's Vista Upgrade Guide document:

Softex’s OmniPass version 5.0 for Vista is a major release that includes new features and is available to Motion customer’s as a downloadable, free 30 day trial at http://www.motioncomputing.com/support/driver_download.asp. Motion has negotiated a reduced price for our customers for the fully licensed version of OmniPass. In the free downloaded OmniPass application, there is an option to purchase at the lower, negotiated price. OmniPass is a required application to use the biometric finger printer reader/security software. Note: You will not be able to import your profiles or information into the trial version. You will be able to import your profiles and information into the fully licensed OmniPass 5.0.

And how much is it?  The special reduced price for Motion customers is US$24.99  On checking the Softex site retail price from their store for OmniPass Client Edition 5 is US$49.00, so the discount is about 50%

I could be wrong - and if I am I would welcome comment from Motion - but I suspect Motion had a choice.

1. Absorb this cost by coming to an arrangement that would allow all existing Motion Tablet owners to upgrade for free.  They know how many they sold, they could come to some arrangement I'm sure.  It would not be hard to have the software vendor in question produce a version that is tied to Motion hardware.
2. Pass this cost on to their exisitng customers.

The problem is that by choosing the latter course Motion Computing have sent a message to their customers - if you buy our product today it may or may not work with the version of the OS tomorrow.  Don't they care about repeat business?  This is an especially bitter pill because the fingerprint reader was for a long time one of the features that set the Motion slates apart from their competition. 

Now that other vendors have cought up and integrated fingerprint readers into their units as well Motion risks falling behind again by effectively disabling this feature in any existing Motion slates that move to Vista. 

How do other vendors compare?  I work with several vendors and I know for a fact that HP, Toshiba and Lenovo all have Vista versions of thier fingerprint software available as a free download.  In my opinion this is how it should be.  I think it a shame that Motion have not seen fit to follow suit.

One of the major limitations of the Acer that Microsoft and AMD sent me is that it is not a tablet.  I previously blogged about using an external Wacom graphics tablet to enable the pen and ink features in Vista.  However, truth be told, using an external graphics tablet, while better than nothing certainly does not make the Ferrari a Tablet PC.  It is simply not as easy and natural to write off to one side and have the ink appear on the screen in front of you.

So while you can add tablet functionality to an ink challenged mobile PC it does not a tablet make...

...But there is hope yet for the Ferrari to redeem itself.  If it can't be a tablet, then the next best thing is for it to do is to empower real tablets by being used to develop tablet applications.  Here's how to go about setting up a Vista machine to develop tablet applications.

Step 1.  Ink enable your Vista development machine by adding a Wacom graphics tablet as I described here.  You can develop tablet apps without any pen functionality, but it is really hard to get a feel for how your application feels when you are emulating ink with a mouse.

Step 2. Install your development environment.  I am using Visual Studio 2005 Professional, but you could equally use one of the express editions.

Step 3. If you are installing Visual Studio 2005 or one of the Express Editions then install the appropriate version of Service Pack 1.

Step 4. Install the Windows Vista SDK.  According to Gavin Gear...

This option does not install the InkAnalysis binaries, but exposes the Winforms, COM, and WPF InkAnalysis binaries – this allows you to use InkAnalysis with the Windows Presentation Framework!

 Step 5. Install the Ink Analysis binaries.  Gavin's step 4 gives you two options to achieve this, I went for B because I like command lines.  Make sure you run the following as administrator.  Also note that I've replaced the dashes (-i) in Gavin's example below with foreward slashes (/i).

Option b: Manually install the InkAnalysis binaries:

Open a Windows SDK cmd shell from Start->Programs->Microsoft Windows SDK->CMD Shell

Run the following commands:

cd %ProgramFiles%\Reference Assemblies\Microsoft\Tablet PC\v1.7

gacutil /i iacore.dll

gacutil /i microsoft.ink.analysis.dll

cd %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0\Bin

gacutil /i ialoader.dll

regsvr32 iacom.dll

And you're good to go!  Gavin also provides a couple of good articles for getting started with Ink Analysis in WPF.  Check out:

Tablet PC: Getting started with InkAnalysis in WPF

Shape recognition with the Tablet PC Platform InkAnalysis API

Yesterday I picked up a Portege R400 from Toshiba for review.  I unboxed the unit and found that it had Windows Vista Business pre-installed.  This innovative new convertible from Toshiba has drawn some flack from some because it lacks some features people have come to expect from Mobile PCs.  And this is in fact a valid criticism.  There is no 6-in-one card reader.  There are only two USB ports and no FireWire.  There is no integrated optical drive. 

On the other hand there is a lot to like in this tablet.  The R400 is far and away the most slate like convertable I have ever handled.  It is light and thin and this makes it very comfortable to use in slate mode.  It is also the quietest Core Duo device I have yet seen.

In addition it has a very innovative hinge design that completely eliminates the floppy head that some convertables suffer from.  I also suspect that the new hinge design has eliminated a lot of weight from the swivel.  On either end of the bottom edge of the screen there is a foot - for want of a better term - that seats into a plastic guide.  The screen will only rotate when it is roughly at right angles.  The rest of the time there is no side-to-side play at all.    Here is a close-up of the foot on the right.

The innovation does not stop there.  The R400 also sports integrated EVDO - which is not activated on my demo unit.  Indeed I know that Telecom New Zealand requires that any EVDO device used on the Telecom network be certified and I don't know if this has been done yet on the module in the R400.  For my American readers - there is a link in one of the utilities that takes you to the Verizon site to activate the EVDO.

In addition the R400 sports a Windows SideShow enabled LCD display on the front bezel that supports something that Toshiba call "Active Notifications".  This display is extremely hard to photograph, so sorry if it is a little blurry.

You may not have heard of Active Notifications before, but it is not actually not a new thing.  Active Notifications uses Exchange DirectPush, which is the same technology that enables push email delivery to Windows Mobile 5.0 devices.  The net effect is that you can recieve notifications of new emails on the SideShow display, even if your tablet is in Sleep mode.  That is very, very cool. 

The other cool feature of the R400 is the wireless port replicator, which alas - I don't have for this review.  What I do have is the tablet itself, so lets go for a wee tour of that.

On the front bezel, in addition to SideShow display, there is (left to right) the pen, an array of indicator lights (power in, power state, battery state, aux. battery state, disk activity, Wi-Fi activity and cellular state), a microphone, the SideShow, three buttons for use with the SideShow display and a Wi-Fi hardware switch.

On the right there is a PCMCIA slot, the volume control, headphones and microphone jack.  Thw two jacks are right at the back and, if the R400 port replicator lacks audio output like the M400 port replicator does then I much prefer the new placement.

The back of the device includes two USB ports, ethernet, power and a vent.

On the left there is a lock slot, VGA output and the edge of the pen, so you can push it out the front.

The stylus is quite compact and includes the traditional right click button on the barrel and an eraser on the top.

In slate mode, as I said, the R400 really feels good, for a convertable.  The hardware buttons available in slate mode include a power button - which has a lock switch so you can store the tablet in slate mode without risking it turning on in your bag.  There is also a joystick directional control that can be pressed in to send "enter".  The next three buttons are Esc/rotate, Windows security and an email button.

There is also a finger print reader.  In slate mode the screen is offset (in portrait) so you can adjust the orientation based on your handedness and still have an edge that is comfortable to hold.  Since I am right handed I put the buttons (which are on the edge you would hold) on the left.

Over all this is a really nice convertable.  While I think that some of the criticisms that have been made are valid (the lack of an SD card slot in particular) the R400 looks great and has a nice feel to it.  Performance is snappy and it rates a respectable 3.1 on the Vista Perfromance Rating. 

I am very excited by the innovative features such as the hinge design, the wireless port replicator and the SideShow display that is powered by DirectPush.

I just wandered down to Toshiba and collect a brand new R400 to review.  It's Friday today, Tuesday is a holiday and like most people I'm taking Monday as well, so I've got the R400 'till Wednesday.  I've not had time to really look at it, but it has Vista Business pre-installed.  More later...

Check out the great Vista Video Competition that is running over at Geekzone.  Submit a 15-30 second video showing what you love about Vista and you could win some great prizes like a Zune media player or a copy of Vista Ultimate.

This competition is sponsored by Microsoft New Zealand and Geekzone.

Please note that entry is restricted to residents of New Zealand.  Check out the rest of the Terms and Conditions here.

Microsoft have released Vista versions of a couple of good downloads for the Tablet PC.  Firstly there is the Experience Pack:

Media Transfer
Copy or stream media files from your home computer to your Tablet PC, so that you can enjoy your favorite music, videos, or pictures wherever you go.
Ink Crossword
Solve crosswords on your Tablet PC using your tablet pen. Twelve puzzles come with Ink Crossword. You can also download a free daily puzzle and purchase more puzzle packs online.
Equation Writer
Easily add mathematical expressions to your papers. Handwrite a math equation, and then convert it into a neatly typewritten image to paste into a report or a presentation.
Ink Flash Cards
Create flash cards to help you learn facts or study for an exam. Handwrite a question on the front of a card and put an answer on the back. Draw, insert graphics, and add text, too.

Also available is an updated version of Ink Desktop:

If you have a Tablet PC, you’ll love using Ink Desktop. It’s like having a portable dry-erase board on your screen all of the time. Whenever you want, you can jot down a phone number, directions, or top priorities for the day.

Source: Tablet PC downloads for Vista.
Originally published on Thu, 01 Feb 2007 08:43:46 GMT by Colin Walker

Motion Computing have released drivers for the LE1600 and the LS800 slates.  You can get them here.

Strangely the place holder page they put up a couple of days ago that says that Vista Drivers are Coming Soon is also still up - so if you have been checking that URL to see if the drivers were there yet (like I was) you may have missed the release (like I did!).

While leaving the placeholder page up was not their best work I do have to commend Motion on the detailed upgrading informaiton they provide to help users make the transistion.

You would think that global IT companies would know that the world is in fact round.  It's the 30th of January in some parts of the world.  Were I so inclined I could walk down to Dick Smith's 300 meters down the road and buy Vista.  And yet several hardware manufacturers still don't have dirvers on thier sites.  For shame.

Toshiba and Lenovo both have some drivers available - both Asian companies I might point out.  Fujitsu - a Japanese company - lets the Asian side down though. 

HP and Motion, headquarted in the US, both have variation of a Coming Soon message.  Get it sorted.  IMO drivers should have been available since the end of November when Vista was released to Volume License customers.  Now that it is generally available there is no excuse.

If any OEMs think I am being unfair then by all means you have right of reply - use the comment feature.

Well the countdown is over - as of midnight last night Vista is shipping here in New Zealand.  That's right - due to it's proximity to the international date line New Zealand was the first country in the world where you coiuld buy Vista off the shelf or a machine with Vista pre-installed. 

Here's the countdown gadget from my SideBar this morning...

'nuff said.

The guys over at GBM pointed out that there were now drivers available for the Lenovo X60 tablet PC.  This is good news, but I suspect that this model is not nearly as widely distributed as its predecessor, the X41T Tablet PC.

I did a quick check and it looks like Lenovo have released drivers for quite a few models and the X41T is among them.

I was on the Motion web site today looking for some pictures to plug into a presentation I'm putting together today for a customer.  I noticed that they had given their site a bit of a new look and included a tag that "Motion recommneds Vista Business" to several of the pages.  I thought it would be worth checking to see if they had released Vista drivers.

They haven't but they have added a place holder link to Vista drivers that goes to this page:

http://www.motioncomputing.com/support/driver_download_vista.asp

Great to see - this certainly adds weight to the rumour that Motion will be releasing drivers on the 30th of January to coincide with the Vista launch.

Alas they still have not added an RSS feed to their drivers pages, which I think would be of huge benefit.  This is something I wish all manufacturers would do.

Early adopters of Vista will likely have a few issues locating drivers for their hardware as hardware vendors struggle to catch up.  The situation is worse for those with the 64-bit version of Vista installed for two reasons.

1. 64-bit drivers need to be signed, as Mauricio points out.
2. Because 64-bit machines are still a minority the 64-bit versions of the drivers may take a back seat until 32-bit version are released.

One of the Vista features I was planning to drill into with the Acer Ferrari 1000 that Microsoft and AMD sent me is Media Center.  However the fact that the laptop was shipped with the 64-bit version of the OS has caused me a bit of pain. 

Jay Templeton of Mabode (and currently contracting to MS) kindly loaned me a WinTV PVR USB2 external USB TV Tuner for my investigation of Vista's Media Center.  Unfortunately, while there is a driver on Windows Update, it is 32-bit only.  If you connect the device to a machine with the 32-bit version of Vista installed then it will pull down the driver and all is well.  However if you plug the unit into a 64-bit machine then no driver is found on Windows Update.  Here's the kicker - my 32-bit machines are all running the Business SKU and hence do not have Media Center.

I've found this USB TV Tuner from AVerMedia that has a beta 64-bit Vista driver available for download, so I may need to buy one of those if I am to look at Media Center.

Update: I had a brain fart when typing the name of the tablet I was using.  I can't even call it a typo, it was just a mistake.  The correct model is a Wacom Graphire 4.

In my review of the Acer Ferrari 1000 one of my criticisms of it was that it was not a tablet.  This was only partially tongue-in-cheek.  The fact is that I would not buy a pen and ink challenged computer as my main Mobile PC.  But since I have this one, lets see what we can do about ink enabling a Vista machine that does not have a digitizer.

Full Disclosure:  To do this I am using a Wacom Inspire Graphire 4 graphics tablet that was provided to me gratis by Wacom Australia. 

This graphics tablet is one of several that were provided to selected MVPs for the purpose of demostrating Windows Vista pen functionality to their respective communities.  I have a session prepared for my user group to be presented next time we have a speaker gap.

What you Need

On the computer side you need a Vista Machine that is running one of the following SKUs:

• Windows Vista Home Premium
• Windows Vista Business
• Windows Vista Enterprise
• Windows Vista Ultimate

In other words, not Home Basic or Started as those SKUs don't have the tablet functionality such as the TIP and pen flicks.

In addition you need some hardware to replace the missing digitizer hardware.  This is where the Wacom graphics tablet comes in.

The Process

1. Connect the external tablet to the laptop.  In the case of the tablet I have this is via a USB cable.  At this point the pen will move the mouse pointer, but the position of the pen on the tablet will not relate to the position of the cursor on the screen.
2. Install the Wacom driver and software (Note: I am currently using pre-release software, but I would expect that Wacom will release the drivers in the very near future.)  At this point the position of  the cursor on the screen is relative to the position of the pen on the tablet, but it still acts like a mouse cursor. There is a restart required. 
3. As Vista restarts it must detect the new hardware and enable the Tablet functionality automatically.  You will see the TIP docked on the left.  Pen flicks will now work.  You will be able to use Jounal and if you have OneNote or any other ink enabled apps you will be able to ink directly into them.

If you want to turn it off again...

1. Go to the Control Panel and select the Programs group
2. Under the Programs and Features heading click on Turn Windows features on or off
3. Clear the checkbox for Tablet PC Optional Components and click OK.

 Rob Bushway has posted a fine round-up of all the tablet and UMPC devices he saw at CES and some tabletscape musings.  The short version of the list includes:

• The OQO Model 02  - a stunningly beautiful unit.

• The TabletKiosk Sahara i440 series - a very nice slate to hold and use.

• The Flybook V5i - If they featured palm rejection technology and I didn't already own the P1610, I could see myself owning one. The form factor is perfect and the keyboard is just the right size. Integrating 3G via a sim card is very, very smart.

• The Toshiba R400 - underpowered

• HP TX1000 - HP will sell a lot of these at $1299

• The TabletKiosk eo TuffTab v7112XT - I was surprised how comfortable the eo TuffTab felt to hold.

• The S-XGen - nice pocket pc with integrated keyboard and 8 hour battery life.

• Intel vs Via - Via is making huge strides in the UMPC arena.

• The Medion UMPC - finally a UMPC with a usable slide out keyboard.

• 3G - As Scott Eckert and I talked about in our interview, WWAN is becoming almost a necessity in mobile pc solutions.

• Vista - Needless to say, CES 2007 was mostly about Microsoft and Vista, and how all these new devices can talk to each other through Vista services.

• Motion Computing - a lot has been said about Motion not having any new products to announce at CES.

---

Check out Rob's post for the full list. On that last point - I agree that Motion is probably wise to wait, but don't make us wait too long!  Motion slates are one of my favorite ways to sake my ever present thirst for new tablets...  And it's a long time between drinks. 

 Just after posting my last bit on SideShow I see that fellow Tablet MVP Frank La Vigne has posted about Yahoo! Tech has a write up on Windows Vista SideShow gadgets

These include some nifty little gadgets like gaming keyboards and very smart smartphones. 

There is also talk of remote controls and there is this cool, stick-it-in-your-wallet sized device...

Can you say tip of the ice berg? 

Source: Windows SideShow Steals the Show
Originally published on Fri, 12 Jan 2007 12:49:00 GMT by Frank

Already from CES we have seen a couple of devices with secondary displays supporting Windows Vista SideShow. But not as many as I had hoped.

SideShow first appeared as secondary display on concept laptops and this is still how many people think of it. This week Toshiba announced the first Tablet to be released with an integrated SideShow display, the R400.

 But while that may have been the first we saw of SideShow it is only the tip of the iceberg.  Another concept that appeared this week was the very cool messenger bag from Eleksen.

Other devices are coming.  This article in CoDe magazine from 2005 introduces Windows SideShow and has pictures of concept devices for laptops, keyboards, remotes and more.  I really like the idea of a digital photo frame that connects to your PC via BlueTooth. 

I know there are more cool devices out there that have not yet been announced. I guess some are being held back for the official Vista launch.  I say bring it on and I can't wait to see what manufactures make of it. 

SideShow, in my opinion, may well turn out to be an enabling technology that becomes ubiquitous - much like the mouse wheel.  Before the mouse wheel came along everyone thought the mouse fine as it was.  Now if you you find yourself using a mouse without the wheel you may well find yourself stroking the seam between the buttons when you want to scroll. 

Lots of potential...

If you want to get started developing for SideShow then I previously blogged about an article by Daniel Moth that may be of interest.

I have unpacked the Acer Ferarri that I recieved from Microsoft and AMD.  There is quite a bit in the box to explore.

From left to right we have:

• Soft leather-like cases for the DVD drive and the laptop.
• The box it all came in (background)
• The external DVD writer (with a firewire cable behind it)
• The wireless VoIP phone (standing up next to the laptop)
• Soft leather-like case for the VoIP phone
• The Acer Ferarri 1000 notebook
• Hard plastic case with a polishing cloth inside it (in front of the laptop)
• Bluetooth mouse
• Boxed documentation
• Soft leather-like case for the mouse.
• Extended battery (not pictured)

I'll be doing a full review over the next few days in which I will explore each of these in more detail.  For now I will just provide a few first impressions.

What's on it?

The laptop came with the followign pre-installed.

• Windows Vista Ultimate
• Office 2007 Professional Plus
• Acer drivers and utilities
• CA Antivirus software (well done - I hate recieving review hardware without AV on it)

How's it run?

As you would expect from a 64-bit dual core machine with 2GB of RAM it is very snappy.  And drivers!  Yay!  This is the first mobile PC I've had with Vista on it that had drivers for all the devices in Device Manager.  The only device that did not have a driver pre-installed was the VoIP phone.  When I plugged this into the PCMCIA slot it pulled the driver down from Windows Update without issue.

Initial Impressions?

I have to be honest.  I am not a F1 fan, so the Ferarri logos all over the device and the accessories do nothing for me.  I do like the carbon fiber on the back of the lid though - that looks really cool in person, though it does not photograph well.  I'll try again in daylight without the flash tomorrow.  The unit appears to be well constructed.  It has a solid, well made feel too it without being bulky or heavy.  This is a nice surprise for me as past experience with Acers (and it has been very limited) has been that they either feel flimsy or are sturdy but tend toward the chunky side.  This one is sturdy and sleek.

Glaring Issues?

You mean appart from the complete lack of a digitizer? 

I had hoped that with this being a demo machine sent out to show off the new OS they would have made sure everything worked out of the box.  Unfortunatly not so.  There is one Acer utility configured to run at start-up that crashes almost at once.  The utility is called Voice Communications Manager (VCM).  Unfortunately application compatability will cause a few headaches, especially for the early adopters.  IMO OEMs need to get on the case and release new versions of their supporting software (and drivers) for any device they are badging as Vista Capable.  I'm sure they are waiting for the official launch at the end of this month, but given that Vista is available to volume license customers now I think that is a mistake.

When unboxing the Acer Ferarri 1000 that Microsoft and AMD gave me for Christmas I noticed a distinct lack of recovery media in the box. There was not even XP media. So before I into installing apps and reviewing the Ferarri 1000 and generally breaking things I need to be sure I can get back to a good state.

To do this I am using the CompletePC Backup Feature in Vista. I blogged about how to use this back in August and recorded a video showing the procedure. Check it out here.

This is a handy feature. If you buy a Vista machine and it ships without recovery media, then I recommend creating a CompletePC Backup image before you go too far down the configuration path.

The Acer Ferarri that Microsoft and AMD have sent me has arrived at last after a lengthy delay in customs.

I've already lost it again, just after I closed the front door my daughter Sylvie rushed over and said "Man delivered my 'puter!" and then proceeded to attempted to horsey ride the box!

The first thing I noticed (because it is printed on the box) is that the unit shipped is the Ferarri 1000, not the Ferarri 5000 I was told was coming.  This is a little disappointing as I would have rather had the "desktop replacement" model than the "ultra-portable" model.  The 5000 also has an HDMI interface and an integrated HD-DVD optical drive, which makes it better for one of the things I was going to explore and blog about - Media Centre.

At any rate any exploration and blogging is going to have to wait.  My wife and I are taking Sylvie to Te Papa today so the (now unboxed) Ferarri gets plugged in to charge and gets put aside for later.

Quickly getting to the explorer view of a drive in Vista can be a bit of a pain on a slate. To make it easier configure the computer item to show as a menu in the start menu.

Once this is done you can expand computer within the start menu and click a drive, which will take you straight to the explorer view for that drive.

To do this:

Right click the start button (the pearl) and click properties.

On the Start Menu tab click the Customize button next to the Start Menu item

Then for the computer item

And click ok a couple of times to close the properties dialogs.

As previously blogged I am one of the lucky few who is recieving a shiney new Acer Ferrari 5000 from Microsoft and AMD.  What am I planning to do with it after the review?  Well the options included in the email offering it to me were:

1. Send it back to Microsoft
2. Keep it
3. Give it away

Of these three it was instantly down to options 2 and 3.  The idea of sending it back - to paraphrase Douglas Adams - never even began to speculate about the merest possibilty of crossing my mind.  In the end I have decided at this stage to keep it.  For what it is worth, here are my reasons.

Reason One - I have a need...

• I have a need for another computer in the house.  What use to be the family desktop computer was pressed into service as a server to keep my blog on air when the PC it was running on began showing signs of an imminant drive failure.  We have been wanting a shared computer but financial circumstances at the moment do not permit purchasing another computer at this time.
• I also need a development machine.  Since the loss of my desktop the only machine I have for development is my work provided M400 (the Motion Computing LS800 I use as my main machine if fine for normal use but struggles with Visual Studio).  Developing on a work provided machine is suboptimal because according to the terms of my contract that means that work technically owns the IP, even if I do it in my own time!  This has not been an issue so far as I have not been trying to sell anything I have developed, but I still don't like it.

Reason Two - It creates opportunity...

• I use Vista Business on my LS800.  This is the free copy I was given for participating in the beta program and filing more than one bug.  My work computer also has Vista Business on it.  Being provided with a machine with Vista Ultimate allows me to explore the features that are not in the Business SKU and that gives me more to blog about.  I am interested in exploring Media Centre, for instance, and blogging about integrating that into my mobile life.

Reason Three - I am a gadget geek...

• I have to be honest about it - the Acer looks like a really cool machine "on paper".  It has some nifty features that I can't wait to check out. 

I have no great moral dilemma about keeping this machine.  I will review it, providing a fair and honest review of the hardware and the bits of the OS I am exploring.  I feel no need to only say nice things about either the machine or the OS - that does no favours for anyone.  I will provide feedback and I will - as always - try to provide it in a constructive manner.

I do want to clear up some misconceptions.

• Some of the Acers were sent to selected MVPs.  I'm one of those.  I am not an A-List blogger (my list may be a bit further down the alphabet ;) ).  I am an MVP that happens to blog. 
• I do not make my living (or any significant money for that matter) from my blog.  Every now and then my Google Adsense money lets me buy a new gadget, but by that I mean the headphones, not the iPod!
• I do not consider myself to be a journalist.  I blog my opinion.  Everything on my blog is editorial at best.

As I was Googling around for something I came across this post from Warner Crocker in which he explores the question:  Will Windows Vista ReadyBoost work with SD Cards (and other Flash media) or not?

(He posted this at the beginning of the month - don't know how I missed it then!)

Well the definative answer from one who has tried it with multiple Tablet models is... *drumroll*

Maybe.

In fact it aboslutely will work provided the OS can read from the card fast enough to support ReadyBoost.  Whether or not it can depends on two factors:

1. The speed of the flash reader.
2. The random read speed of the media.

The Reader

I know from experince that all card readers are not created equally.  I have not been able to get any SD Cards to work in a Lenovo X41T - including the ones that work in my Toshiba M400.

The Media

The speed of the media is the other critical factor.  The sad news is those speed ratings on the card don't actually provide a meaningful indicator of wheter they will  work or not.  I have a 120x card that works and my colleague has a 133x that does not - in the same tablet.  The reason for this is the cards are rated using a process that writes a file to the card and then reads it off again - which is of course a sequential read.  When Vista tests the card to see if it is fast enough it performs a random read. ReadyBoost is trying to boost system performance in part by servicing random read requests off the flash card rather than from the page file on disk - so the random read speed is what is important. 

Why the difference you ask?  When I was chatting to a MS guy at TechEd in Boston he told me that some cards have a chunk on "good" flash up the front and cheper, slower flash providing the bulk of the storage.  As such the perform well for the sequential rating test but still are not fast enough to pass the random read test performed by ReadyBoost.

Figuring out what will work

It is hard to know which media is going to work and which isn't - and this will no doubt add to the confusion.  The best advice I can give you is to take your device into the shop and insist you can try before you buy.

To know if your Reader is going to be fast enough you will either need to find a card that you know works in other devices or try to find reference to someone who has made it work.  Here's my results so far with a known good SD Card:

Motion Computing LE1600 - Worked

Lenovo X41T - Too slow

Toshiba M400 - Worked

Motion Computing LS800 - Have not been able to make the SD Card reader work in Vista as of yet :(

The last point I'll add is that it is so worth the effort.  Even on a well speced machine (my M400 has 2GB of RAM) it still makes a noticable difference to the performance of the machine.  Hopefully this post helps clear some confusion instead of adding to it...

If you have been using Windows Vista and you have set up a connection to a wireless network you may have noticed – as I did – the text at the bottom that reads "If you have a USB Flash drive with Network Settings for XXXXXX, insert it now."

This caught my attention the first time I saw it and I had even made a couple of cursory attempts to figure out how to save settings onto a USB key – to no avail. Today I decided to try and figure it out once and for all.

I started out by searching Google and found nothing of much use – though it did lead me to the Windows Vista online help. I searched through the online help and that was not much help at all. So I decided to do it the old fashioned way and have a good hunt around... and I figured it out! Here's how you save Wireless network settings onto a USB Flash drive in Windows Vista. (If you already have the network configured on your Vista machine – delete it before you begin.)

1. Start by right clicking the network icon in the System tray and selecting Connect to a network.
2. In the Connect to a network dialog click on the link down the bottom that reads "Set up a connection or network"
   
3. On the Choose a connection option page click on Set up a wireless router or access point and click Next.
   
4. You then get this welcome screen that tells you what the Wizard is going to do – click Next
   
5. After a short detection process (which for me did not detect anything – YMMV) you are presented with an option to Create wireless network settings and save to a USB Flash drive – click on that and click Next.
   
6. On the network name dialog you need to enter the SSID of you wireless network. Unless you have not yet configured you wireless access point do not just accept the default here – the SSID must match what is configured on your AP.
   
7. After that you need to enter the network pass phrase. Again – the settings entered here need to match those configured on you AP. Enter the key and click next.
   
8. You then get an option to configure sharing – or you can choose not to enable sharing for this connection – you can always change it on the client later.
   
9. You then get a save settings dialog that will allow you to save to a USB key. Insert a USB key and make sure it is selected in the dropdown, then click next.

   

10. On the final screen you get instructions on how to transfer these settings to other machines.

Basically you just insert the USB key into a Windows XP or Windows Vista client machine and – assuming auto run is enabled - you will be prompted to run the Wireless Network Setup Wizard.

The setup Wizard is so easy I did not even bother to screen shot it. There are two dialogs. The first one asks if you want to setup XYZ network. The second confirms that is succeeded. Too easy.

A couple of days ago Kevin Tofel posted about how you can use the CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER keyboard shortcut to launch an app (in this case the command prompt) as an administrator in Windows Vista.

If you are using a slate or you are in Tablet Mode on your convertible you can still elevate quite easily. Simply right click on the program you want to run and select "Run as administrator"

A while ago I blogged that Toshiba had made available Beta Vista drivers on their website.  I just got a tip from a colleage that the drivers have been updated again.  For the M400 there is a new BIOS and updated version of the modem, display and bluetooth drivers.  There are beta Vista drivers available on Toshiba's beta driver website for the following models:

Portege M400

Qosmio G35
G35-AV600, G35-AV610, G35-AV650, G35-AV660

Satellite R15

Satellite U200

Tecra A8 (PTA82U)

Tecra A8 (PTA83U)

Tecra M4

Tecra M5 (PTM50U)

Tecra M5 (PTM51U)

Tecra M6

Tecra M7

Tecra S3

Thanks for the update Toshiba - I wish more vendors were following your lead.

If you are a fellow MSDN subscriber then would you mind not downloading Vista just yet? It is really killing my download speed. I grabbed something from another US site earlier and pulled it down at about 200 KB /s. Vista is coming down at about 20 :(

Update: Now it is down to 4! And only 144 hrs remaining....

When did I switch back to dialup!

If you are looking at deploying Vista into your corporate environment and you have an Active Directory based domain you can now use Group Policy to configure Wreless networking settigns on the clients.  To do this you need to extend the schema to accomidate the additional attributes requried by the policies.

This white paper explans what you can manage and describes the process of extending the schema to support GPO management of Wireless settings.

I have been using speech in Windows Vista and I stumbled across some really cool integration for tablet users. 

Typically if you are dictating a sentence and you need to correct a word that has been misrecognised you say “Correct” followed by incorrect word.  For example I dictated “Sally sells sea shells by the seashore.”  This was recognised as “Sally south sea shells by the seashore.”

Saying “Correct south” displays the correction dialog below:

By saying “2 OK” you can select the correct result.  But tablets are all about flexibility and I found this a bit tedious – so I started looking for another way.  And I found it.  In fact – I found two other ways!

Firstly you can right-click on the word in question.  In the context menu you will be offered first few recognition alternates.  You can click one to select it.  This will work on desktops and pen-challenged laptops as well.

The final method is unique to tablets.  Double-tap the incorrect work and then click on the TIP icon to display the Tablet Input Panel.  When the TIP loads the recognition alternates will appear either above or below the input area, depending on where the TIP is displayed.

This is a great way to work - sitting in a comfortable chair dictating away.  If something is wrong just select it and bring up the TIP to correct it.  Very efficent.

According to this page Toshiba are participating in the Express Upgrade to Vista programme. 

Depending on the SKU you are upgrading from and two you will either pay nothing but a nominal shipping and handling fee or a small sum for the upgrade.

So if you are looking at one of these fine Tablets or notebooks there is no need to wait for Vista.

According to this page Toshiba are participating in the Express Upgrade to Vista programme. 

Depending on the SKU you are upgrading from and two you will either pay nothing but a nominal shipping and handling fee or a small sum for the upgrade.

So if you are looking at one of these fine Tablets or notebooks there is no need to wait for Vista.

In response to my post last night about the Speech Recognition Tutorial in Windows Vista not running at 800x600 Rob Chambers has posted about some of the thinking behind the decision:

“I understand the feedback ... and it was a painful decision to have to make ... but we had to go up to 1024x768 minimum resolution for a bunch of the screens in the Tutorial that Craig didn't show you. We tried doing that in 800x600, but it just didn't work; especially in the "Dictation" and "Working with Windows" sections of the Tutorial.

You see, in the tutorial, we try to make the system look as much like an actual running Windows Vista PC as possible, and also give the user instructions off to the right. We ask them to interactively try things (in a directed manner) so when they're done with the tutorial, they'll have a great idea of how to use WSR in the real world.

We may revisit this decision in the future (for Vista + 1), but for now, you'll have to run the Tutorial on a system that supports 1024x768. However, users can still use the old style Training window on lower resolution screens.”

Firstly I would like to thank Rob for responding at all.  It is good that you are listening at all and that you take the time to respond.  That said I could not disagree more.

Rob claims that a couple of the screens didn’t work at resolutions below 1024x768.  As a user of a small screen tablet I would much rather have to put up with something not quite working visually than have it not work at all.

Typically users who have chosen a device with a small screen and a lower screen resolution have made a conscious decision to give a little bit away visually to get some other benefit small physical size, light weight or both.  We choose to do that.  We live with the applications and websites that don’t layout properly and we scroll left and right as well as up and down to use them.  If it is too unusable then we can choose to go away and dock to do what must be done.  Developers – when you error out below a particular resolution (or don’t take into account that the screen can be oriented in portrait mode) you take that decision away from the mobile user and that is bad!

Rob – that exact same if statement that is used to throw up the error that tells me that my screen resolution is too low could instead be used to change the layout of the form, turn some stuff off or simply enable scroll bars.  Sure it may not look quite as pretty but at least it would work and put the decision with me as to whether or not to go and dock instead.

Developers of the world – use your if statements for good, not evil.

As a final point – don’t forget that it is not just mobile PCs that run at 800x600 either.  My in-laws run their desktop PC at 800x600.  It drives me nuts, but that is how they like it and it is not for me, or any developer, to tell them they are wrong.

Last night I decided to set up speech recognition on my Motion Computing LS800.  The thing with speech recognition is that you should set it up in the same environment that you are planning to use it.  So I settled into a chair in the study and configured the microphone.

Vista asked me if I wanted to run through the speech recognition tutorial.  I have run through this tutorial on another machine before but I know that as you talk your way through the tutorial you are actually completing the first training session.  For this reason I decided to run through the tutorial anyway.

What the?

Microsoft – What were you thinking?!?!

Don’t you think that perhaps small screen devices are exactly the kind of device that would benefit from natural language input like speech?

As I said I have run through this wizard before.  I’ve seen the interface and there is a stack of white space in it.  But don’t take m word for it – I dropped the resolution down to 1024x768 on my Toshiba M400 and kicked off the tutorial.  It runs in a full screen window that you can’t resize.  Here it is.

Now I don’t know about you but I think that this interface has a bit of potential to be trimmed down to fit into a lower resolution screen.  This smacks of form taking priority over function.  Come on guys – get your priorities straight.  I’m logging this as a bug!