Using Tablet PCs and Ultra-Mobile PCs : Using a Tablet PC (part 1) - Configuring Tablet PC Features - Using Tablet PC Settings

1. Configuring Tablet PC Features

Before using your Tablet PC or tablet-equipped PC with a stylus or other pointing device, you should probably take the time to configure the Tablet PC functionality that's built into Windows 7. If you have Tablet hardware, you'll see a few items in the shell that aren't available on non-Tablet hardware, including a handy way to select multiple items with a pen, a few new tray notification icons that appear over time, and the same reordering of Control Panel items that one sees when using Windows 7 with a notebook computer.

Tablet PC features are configured via the Control Panel, through two separate locations, Tablet PC Settings and Pen and Touch, both of which are available in Hardware and Sound.

1.1. Using Tablet PC Settings

We are going to take a look at Tablet PC Settings first. (You can also access the settings directly by typing tablet pc settings in Start Menu Search.) This window, shown in Figure 1, includes two tabs that help you configure the system for tablet use.

Figure 1. The Tablet PC Settings window is an important first stop for any tablet user.

In the Display tab, you configure which screen is used for both pen (stylus) and touch controls. This interface is extremely simple: just click the Setup button and then tap the screen that will be used for these functions. (You'll see a display like the one shown in Figure 2 in each connected display.)

Figure 2. Here's a quick way to ID the pen and touch screen.

You can also configure the Tablet PC display's calibration, which lines up pen pushes with onscreen objects, ensuring that the pen hits the screen on target. Anyone who's used a Pocket PC will recognize this tool, shown in Figure 3. You launch the tool by clicking the Calibrate button.

Figure 3. The Digitizer Calibration Tool helps you configure your pen for accuracy.

At the bottom of the Display tab is an innocuous little link titled Go to orientation. Clicking this reveals the window shown in Figure 4, where you change the order in which the screen orientation changes (primary landscape, secondary portrait, secondary landscape, and primary portrait) when you press the hardware-based screen orientation button that is found on many Tablet PCs.

Consider a typical slate-style Tablet PC device, on which the display takes up most of the surface of the front of the device. On such a machine, you could conceivably view the screen in any of the four configuration options, depending on how you're holding it. The primary landscape and primary portrait modes are the two modes that you'll use most often, based on the button layout on the device, your left- or right-handedness, and the ways that feel most comfortable to you. The secondary portrait and secondary landscape modes are less frequently used modes.

Figure 4. Here, you configure which views the system chooses when you push your Tablet's screen orientation button.

Most users will likely just need two screen orientation types, especially if they're using a convertible laptop-style Tablet PC. In normal laptop mode on such a device, when the user is accessing the system through the keyboard and mouse, the screen would be in a horizontal view. This would be primary landscape. But when the screen is rotated so that the system is accessed like a tablet, using the stylus, this would be primary portrait (or perhaps secondary portrait depending on the user and the layout of the device's hardware controls). In this case, you might want to configure primary landscape for the first and third locations in the orientation sequence and primary portrait for positions two and four.

In the Other tab, shown in Figure 5, you configure the Tablet PC for right- or left-handed use, and configure Pen and touch and Tablet PC Input Panel (TIP) options.

Figure 5. The Other tab provides access to other important Tablet PC-related options.