The other day I was helping a friend install the Tablet PC OS on a desktop. What’s that? You didn’t know this was possible? Yep it is. It’s probably the cheapest way to get into Tablet programming.
Here’s what you’ll need:
* A desktop or notebook. Speed doesn’t matter too much, but you’ll want a PC that can run Windows XP comfortably–remember the Tablet PC is simply a superset of Windows XP. In this case we used a 2GHz P4 with an old 20GB drive.
* MSDN subscription. Sorry, the only way to get the Tablet PC OS is via MSDN. It’s a two CD download or available on the DVDs that come with your MSDN discs.
* A digitizing tablet. I don’t know all the digitizers supported, but I’ve had success with Wacom’s tablets. The one we used this last week had a serial connection (yeah, it’s old) and I’ve used newer ones with USB connectors.
To install the OS we used an old 20GB drive. That’s plenty of room for the OS, OneNote and the development environment. Installing the OS is no trickier than installing Windows XP. At first I couldn’t get the machine to boot from the CD, but eventually I realized that the cable to the motherboard was disconnected :-). Unfortunately, it took two hours to figure this out. Ugh.
After we installed the OS we were almost there. One more step though. The digitizer didn’t work immediately after the install. To fix this, we downloaded this Wacom driver. Once you download and install the driver you’ll need one more reboot and then your “Desktop Tablet” will be ready….well, almost.
After a reboot the digitizing tablet should be operational and you can use the pen to control the cursor and handwrite in Journal.
Personally, I find it a bit slower to handwrite using a standalone digitizing tablet. My eye-hand coordination isn’t quite there. I’ve found that it’s very important to arrange the digitizing tablet so that my hand is in a comfortable position and at an angle that’s just right for my body position. Otherwise, I wind up writing at a slanted angle.
Actually, after installing the OS, you’ll want to install SP2 too. For most people you’ll want to visit Windows update. Besides SP2’s must-have security enhancements, the new TIP (Tablet Input Panel) and recognizer are magnitudes better than the first-gen version. Here’s an overview of some of the Tablet-oriented features in SP2.
AMEN, Praise the day! I have been asking all over about this. I do a *lot* of Flash animation on the side and am quite handy with an input tablet for drawing. I actually handwrite with it in OneNote and was miffed that I could not covert the ink to text for searching and the like. Thanks a lot for an awesome post, will try it out on a junker laptop alreay running XP first, and let you know how I make out.