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Here is the thread describing my troubles, with some more info and better links.
http://www.tabletpcbuzz.com/showthread.php?38208-double-trouble-double-brick
It is called a "crisis recovery disk". Now that you have the magic words, googling should be easy.

Lots of excellent note-taking software, including things like MathJournal for specialty-usages (mathematics), or Corel Grafigo for diagramming (v1 is still freely available from Archive.org --- http://www.tabletpcbuzz.com/showthread.php?35645-Corel-Grafigo-1.0-(corelgrafigo.exe) ).

I use a mixture of Evernote (collect web clippings), AutoDesk Sketchbook (draw bitmaps), FutureWave SmartSketch (the program which grew up to be Flash --- Flash still has the nifty note-book organization option last I checked --- I use it for quick vector sketches) and InftyReader (for math, freely available from http://www.inftyreader.org/ ) as well as WinTeXShell (for actual writing using LaTeX which is where I collect everything else).

William

Who says they don't? In 2004 tablet PC's were a 1.2 billion dollar market:

http://www.tabletpcbuzz.com/showthread.php?36005-Tablet-PC-Market-To-Exceed-5-Billion-in-2009

Just because they don't have as much Buzz as apple doesn't mean people haven't been secretly buying Tablet machines running XP/Vista/7 since the dawn of the platform in 2004.

I've read a number of books to my kids using my Fujitsu Stylistic and have several GBs of ebooks and texts on it. The kids like it, and it's very convenient (no wondering where the book is, or what place I was at since the reader (I use ybook (.txt) and mu-book (.html) and the Adobe (formerly Glassbook) eBook Reader (.pdf))

Take a look at sites like http://www.tabletpcbuzz.com/ and you'll find lots of people using tablets for lots of reading and studying.

And look at John Mark Ockerbloom's Online books page for an exhaustive list of what's freely available.

It's unfortunate that innovative things like Corbis' Leonardo CD-ROM w/ its cool translating, mirror-imaging magnifying glass didn't stay the course for when tablets became available (reading the Codex Leceister from this on a tablet is an amazing experience). For a glowing review see: http://www.businessweek.com/1996/49/b350428.htm c.f. http://www.mmi.unimaas.nl/people/Veltman/articles/ leonardo/Review%20Leonardo%20da%20Vinci.html for a more even-handed review (it's not a perfect experience, and I really wish it wasn't hard-coded to run in 640 x 480)

Voyager had the right idea with their ``Expanded Books'' it's just that they were a couple of years early.

William
(who really needs to find the time to get his wife's copy of _The Manhole_ running in a Mac emulator on his tablet)

I love pen computing, (see my website, or my posts to places like http://www.tabletpcbuzz.com/forum/active.asp ) and while I find a graphics tablet an indispensable tool for doing digital work, and really love doing quick sketches w/ tools like Ambient Design's ArtRage ( http://www.ambientdesign.com/artrage.html ), I simply don't believe that work done in this fashion, even as a ``gicl\'e'' fine art print is going to have the same vitality and glittering appearance as work done by a master.

Microphotography (can't recall the specific magnifications and my book on this is at home) shows that a master's brushwork has the ink particles more evenly dispersed than that of a novice, and w/ practice one can get a far wider, and subtler gradation of colour than the 256 grey values PostScript will allow --- how does one do ``Po'mo'' techiniques where one paints a light area, allows it to dry and then paints in a darker value over it? The result is _quite_ different from immediately painting w/o waiting.

William

The Cintiqs have the same digitizer technology as Intuos tablets --- Tablet PC systems use Wacom UD technology I think it is, so no tilt, rotation &c. They're also available in larger sizes than Tablet PCs, w/ higher resolution and have a wider viewing angle than most Tablets.

Also, when one replaces a Tablet PC to update the processor, one has to get an all new unit --- a Cintiq can be left on one's desk, and the CPU replaced.

There was a very interesting overview and cost-benefit analysis contrasting the twain at http://www.tabletpcbuzz.com/ in the forums there a while back.

William

Something similar happened to me and others with the HP support forums. See the following thread: http://tabletpcbuzz.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=2 1659&whichpage=3
In particular (since that site can not take much trafic)
---- citing relevant parts of the thread on tabletpcbuzz:
Hmm. My efforts turned out to be futile, since HP removed all my complaints about the loud fan from the support forums. Maybe I was a bit intrusive after few days, when both technical support couldn't help, and my complaints remained unanswered, but they could have kept at least one thread about the issue open, or answer me a straight, but clear "don't even try, we will never ever resolve this problem for you"...
---
I think this is really bad behaviour on HP's part.
I also posted on the HP thread that stevetooth opened. The thread indeed seems gone.
HP have full contact information for each person on the thread, since you have to sign up to post - including serial number of the TC1100. So they know they deal with customers, and have a phone number+address+email for each.
And yet they delete the thread - the don't mark it as resolved, which is an option, it is all gone.
---- Then, a second thread, is also removed:
Why has the thread at HP been removed????

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/bizsuppo rt/questionanswer.do?threadId=809256
---- (end of cite)

Finally, the following thread survived at the HP site:
http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/bizsuppo rt/questionanswer.do?threadId=812063

I'm mentioning this mainly because I think it is bad behavior on HPs part, and people should know...

I've used my tablet for anything that involves taking notes, jotting down information quickly, or annotating documents. Basically instead of carrying around two or three binders with papers scattered everywhere, I keep everything in my tablet. I also access electronic text books online, print copies to my disk, and take notes there rather than buying the full books.

In my spare time, I use my tablet as a sketchpad, using the free program Artrage http://www.ambient.gen.nz/artrage.html.

So instead of carrying around all my books, all my binders, my laptop and my PDA, I have everything on my tablet.

For more info, check out http://studenttabletpc.blogs.com/the_student_table t_pc/ and http://tabletpcbuzz.com/.

I didn't plagarize /. for karma, if that's what you're insinuating.

I discovered the article in a Tablet PC Buzz.com discussion about a woman trying to get change from a fake $1,000,000 bill at Wal-Mart.

Perhaps refuting charges of recylcling /. comments is good for karma? ;-)

I have an actual Tablet PC that I use every day, the Acer C110. It's a wonderful tool, but it is not designed for use in the sunlight. Heck, it's not even that good when I sit at a conference room with bright lights above the center of the table - sitting at the edge of the table looking down on a horizontal reflective screen reflects the lights overhead... However, I have the ability to prop up my screen with my old PDA, which solves the issue quite nicely. The angle is just enough to avoid the lights. :)

The TabletPC is a wonderful tool. I wouldn't give mine up for anything in the world. Well, maybe something with a greater monetary value that I really wanted, as I would then go and buy myself another TabletPC - they're not in short supply. ;) Anyway, this is not your best forum for TabletPC advice. I suggest you try heading over to TabletPCBuzz and use the forums there, you will find a TON of experts on the TabletPC.

Regardless of that, there's really a couple solutions:

a) If your application is a commercial app, designed to be run by just about anyone that chooses to purchase it, I'd suggest creating a "skins" menu for it, similar to the option within Franklin Covey's tabletplanner 3.0. This will allow your outdoor mostly users to pick a high contrast scheme, whereas the indoor users (or users who avoid using it until they are indoors) will pick a different one. Heck, even allow some form of button mapping to different schemes, mapped by default to your presets that test best under different conditions.

b) If you're targeting a vertical market and intend to design the whole solution, start to finish, I recall someone designed a TabletPC designed specifically for use outdoors. You could work that particular model into your design specs, and test your app out with the PC in question and the best looking/working colors, etc.

I apologize, as I do no recall what the specific model or maker was - I suggest you ask your question in the general forums at TabletPCBuzz. They will be able to provide you with further information.

Best of luck,

-Jack Ash

I have an actual Tablet PC that I use every day, the Acer C110. It's a wonderful tool, but it is not designed for use in the sunlight. Heck, it's not even that good when I sit at a conference room with bright lights above the center of the table - sitting at the edge of the table looking down on a horizontal reflective screen reflects the lights overhead... However, I have the ability to prop up my screen with my old PDA, which solves the issue quite nicely. The angle is just enough to avoid the lights. :)

The TabletPC is a wonderful tool. I wouldn't give mine up for anything in the world. Well, maybe something with a greater monetary value that I really wanted, as I would then go and buy myself another TabletPC - they're not in short supply. ;) Anyway, this is not your best forum for TabletPC advice. I suggest you try heading over to TabletPCBuzz and use the forums there, you will find a TON of experts on the TabletPC.

Regardless of that, there's really a couple solutions:

a) If your application is a commercial app, designed to be run by just about anyone that chooses to purchase it, I'd suggest creating a "skins" menu for it, similar to the option within Franklin Covey's tabletplanner 3.0. This will allow your outdoor mostly users to pick a high contrast scheme, whereas the indoor users (or users who avoid using it until they are indoors) will pick a different one. Heck, even allow some form of button mapping to different schemes, mapped by default to your presets that test best under different conditions.

b) If you're targeting a vertical market and intend to design the whole solution, start to finish, I recall someone designed a TabletPC designed specifically for use outdoors. You could work that particular model into your design specs, and test your app out with the PC in question and the best looking/working colors, etc.

I apologize, as I do no recall what the specific model or maker was - I suggest you ask your question in the general forums at TabletPCBuzz. They will be able to provide you with further information.

Best of luck,

-Jack Ash

A much better place to ask this question would be the forums over at Tablet PC Buzz. It's a great forum for Tablet PCs, and almost all of the people there own one, so you'll get a better representation from them...

I mount my tablet to my dashboard, and when I get where I'm going, I can take it with me. Others are doing the same thing: Some pictures in this thread.

"Even Microsoft has come to understand this: the upcoming Outlook will be quite different."
Ya, but acording to this screenshot... It may be a even WORSE user interface.

Doesn't look any different to me. All they did was put the preview pane to the right of the folder list.

All that really looks that different is the UI theme, and that's because it's from Longhorn.

Compare these screenshots:

Office 2k3 Beta 2 with a more usable layout

Outlook 2002/XP

Not much difference, except for the theme and the handling of the left-bar, with better docking of the folder view.

Simon