Dustin Hubbard - Demo of Tablet PC Experience Pack

Posted By: The Channel 9 Team | Apr 9th, 2005 @ 12:17 AM | 82,556 Views | 24 Comments
Hey, Adam Curry, the Tablet PC Team released earlier this week the Experience Pack.

I tell ya if Steve Jobs had this he'd have the Mac fans eating out of his hands. Check out the UI in this video we shot of Dustin Hubbard, group manager on the Tablet PC Mobile Platform team.

The demo starts at about four minutes into the video, and here's a video Table of Contents:

4:10 Energy Blue Theme and Skinned Media Player (designed for pen input)

4:59 Ink Art (new version of Art Rage, drawing program designed for pen usage).

8:44 Ink Crossword Puzzle.

10:55 Ink Desktop (turns wallpaper into inkable surface).

13:18 Media Transfer to take videos/audios from home or Office PC with you.

18:40 New snipping tool (a must have for Tablet PC users).

A previous thread on this topic was posted here on Channel 9 which got quite a bit of discussion.
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#Apr 9th, 2005 @ 9:28 AM
schrepfler
schrepfler
CMB

Does anyone think that Tablet support should be allowed for the "normal" XP editions? I have a Wacom board and I would love to be able to use it under my desktop system. Am I the only one?
At least installing the Tablet SDK should add that kind of support.

#Apr 9th, 2005 @ 10:08 AM
FyinsFlip
FyinsFlip
I do.  I too have a Wacom board and would love to use these features...
#Apr 9th, 2005 @ 1:53 PM
MisterDonut
MisterDonut
The Disco Godfather
Mister Scoble, sir, please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the reason that the tablet SDK / exp pack / etc. is limited to the Tablet PC edition is because Microsoft can't really support all the different combination of platforms which might have "hacked" tablet functionality in it. Kinda like Apple, who can roll out OS's really quick and develop much faster for a handful of hardware configurations, where as the possibility for Windows and *nix platforms are much more plentiful. Much more testing is need, I'd think.

#Apr 9th, 2005 @ 2:26 PM
schrepfler
schrepfler
CMB
I belive that the PC evolution has proven that the number of different platforms has never been a negative factor in developing a common api for devices, if that was the case we'd have different drivers for each mouse and keyboard that we buy. I'd be more betting that MS is trying to target consumers at the top of the spending pyramid forgetting that there are a lot more possible adopters below. It's time to put the tablet back in all houses again (as I had one on an Apple IIe Wink
#Apr 10th, 2005 @ 8:20 AM
ezu
ezu

Can we expect a version of the cool Experience Pack on other than english version of the OS?

I've reinstalled my system with the italian version of XP TPC 2005... even now i've my system speaking my language, i can't access to the faboluos ink art tool that i love (i've use it on another pc with english version of the OS).

Waiting to can install it on my system...

#Apr 10th, 2005 @ 10:32 AM
rhm
rhm
That media player skin is horrible. We're supposed to be impressed at that the buttons are bigger and easier to hit with the pen, but look at all the screen area that is wasted chrome on that skin. The buttons could have been twice the size without taking up any more screen space or the overall size of the player could have been smaller with the same size buttons. Another example of a skin that was designed by a graphic designer than never used the product.

The Inkart application is very cool and I get that it has a tablet optimized user interface, but as far as the actual painting functionality is concerned, Metacreations Painter has been doing all that since the mid-'90s.

The snipping tool looks really useful though. I am so getting a tablet PC when I've got some spare cash. Then I'll probably waste all my time writing stuff for it Smiley

by the way, is Dustin's table really slow? I notice there's a lot of lag between the pen and cursor locations. Maybe the digitizer causes it, but I've got a Wacom tablet for my desktop PC and that doesn't have any noticeable lag at all.
#Apr 10th, 2005 @ 2:26 PM
TheAsher
TheAsher
Just A Guy
Robert....
I wonder why Dell & IBM which are two of the three important laptop vendors don't have a tablet PC out yet.....

IMHO, The fact that Dell and IBM don't have a tablet PC is one of the major reason that the digitizer is not a part of every laptop...
#Apr 11th, 2005 @ 2:37 AM
Invader Zim
Invader Zim
Invader Zim

I would like to know why the Energy Blue VS has not been made available for XP Pro/Home?

#Apr 11th, 2005 @ 12:16 PM
DanielRieck
DanielRieck
At least installing the Tablet SDK should add that kind of support.

I think it does, to some degree. You can develop Tablet applications on a regular desktop, you don't even need any kind of pen device. Of course, testing the application is no fun when you have to write with the mouse. And since the handwriting recognition engine is missing, you can't test it all.

I don't know about the Wacom boards, what's their native resolution for the pen? The Tablets' is several times higher than the screen.

Are they pressure-sensitive? Can they check the 'ID' of the pen so an application can assign different styles to different users working at the same time?

The Tablet PC supports all this - check out the .NET Show episode about Tablets.

I agree it would be cool if regular desktops had this functionality, but for what? Tablets are designed to be carried around, and to use them when you can sit down and type or use the mouse. They're very useful to take notes in meetings, but I wouldn't want to have to work with them all day, because I can type way faster than I can write.

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