Windows® 7 Secrets®

Chapter 18. Using Tablet PCs and Ultra-Mobile PCs

In This Chapter

• Using and configuring Tablet PC features

• Entering handwritten text with the Tablet PC Input Panel

• Using Flicks and other gestures

• Controlling your computer with speech recognition

• Understanding Tablet PC–related changes to the Windows shell

• Working with Ultra-Mobile PCs

During the life cycle of Windows XP, Microsoft shipped two versions of that OS that were targeted specifically at Tablet PCs, a different kind of mobile computer based on notebooks that added digitized screens and pens for a more natural style of interaction. Tablet PCs flopped, but Microsoft's software was, for once, widely heralded for its high quality. With Windows Vista and Windows 7, the Tablet PC capabilities have been made available on a far wider range of PCs than was the case with XP, and Microsoft has lifted the restrictions on how users acquire these capabilities. It's now possible to get Tablet PC functionality in all mainstream versions of Windows 7, and on a wide range of hardware types, including unique, tiny mobile devices called Ultra-Mobile PCs, or UMPCs.

A Short History of the Tablet PC

In mid-2002, Microsoft released the first version of Windows XP that was specifically targeted at a new generation of pen-based notebook computers called Tablet PCs. Logically named Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, this software wasn't, of course, the first to try to combine pens (or, really, styluses) with PCs. Indeed, as long ago as the late 1980s, innovative ...