I’ve been using my TabletKiosk eo for almost one month, and I have some tips to share:

• To stand the eo on your desk, try a wire mesh business card holder from Office Depot. It’s the perfect size and feels pretty stable. If you’d like a little more stability or you want to protect your eo from scratches, you can put little pieces of plastic, non-adhesive, gripping material between the eo and the holder. The material is sold as ‘Grips’ at Best Buy.
• Since UMPCs have such a wide screen, unlock your taskbar and move it to the right or left side of the screen, freeing up valuable vertical pixels. Also, since you probably won’t be running many apps, consider resizing the now vertical toolbar to be super thin. You should still be able to see all the icons.
• Use Synergy, VNC or XP’s built-in Remote Assistance app to control your eo from your primary computer when you have both on your desk.
• JKK and Chippy are using a CD case to hold their eo. I couldn’t find one I liked until this weekend. Case Logic makes a really nice case whose zipper is not recessed and has smooth, rounded corners. I had to remove 3 plastic rivets with wire cutters, but it was worth the effort. I found it at Best Buy.
• I’ve been using the Brando USB 2 IDE/SATA cable a lot with the eo for accessing DVDs and CDs (using an old internal CD/DVD drive) and for backing the eo up to an extra hard drive.
• Balloon Tips must go.
• Just like any other Windows machine, you should install Spybot Search and Destroy, Adaware, and some form of Virus protection (I’ve been using AVG Free Edition).

So, Windows XP for Tablet PCs has a control panel for editing what it calls the ‘Tablet Buttons’.

On the eo, these buttons default to Right Mouse Button, Left Mouse Button, Up Cursor, Down Cursor, Left Cursor, Right Cursor, Enter, Launch “ProgramLauncher.exe”, Hide/Show TIP, Page Up, Page Down, Settings, Resolution, Volume Up, Volume Down.

I want to have a variety of configurations for these buttons. For instance, I might want the volume buttons to be space and backspace when doing a lot of editing. At work, I like to have one of the buttons mapped to OneNote for easy access to that app.

My thought was that I could make the changes in the control panel for my first configuration, export that portion of the registry, make the changes for the second configuration, refresh regedit, export again, and so on. Then, I could double click on the reg files I created to switch to the appropriate configuration.

That works, to an extent. The registry entries are easy to export. The reg files correctly update the registry when double clicked. Opening the control panel shows that the changes are listed. Unfortunately, the driver has cached the settings and won’t refresh how it uses the buttons unless you make a change in the TabletButtons control panel and hit OK or Apply.

The settings are stored in a binary key in the registry at this location: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\TabletPC\ButtonMaps

Also, you can restart drivers with devcon.exe from Microsoft, but the button driver won’t process disable or restart requests. ACPI\AmtekLifeStylePCButtons is the driver id for use with devcon.

Richard hasn’t made any more progress on the OrigamiCar application, but he has some tips on using an eo in your car.

He doesn’t like using MS Streets and Trips in the car, and I have to agree. It’s a very clumsy interface to use while also steering, etc.  I may try the iNav iGuidance product he mentions.

Here is an email from Martin at TabletKiosk.  Thanks, Martin, for keeping the heat on Amtek for us!!

Hello John,

We will be sending out a notification later today to all recipients of the initial unit. The repair is hardware based and will require the unit being sent back to our offices for update (we have identified a set of defective cords / capacitors on the initial production run causing the high power drain). This repair will also effect the delivery of on-order systems slightly – we have some units that will ship next week that have the new suppliers components installed, and we are working diligently with our supplier to meet current demand, however some orders may be delayed a week or two while we transition to this new source for these components.

On a side note for your information we will also offer a 25% discount off any eo accessory to these first users to try and help compensate for the frustration this issue has caused.

-Martin