Tabletry, Websites, and Python Oh My!

2admin • 2nd Jun 2007 • General Blog • Linux, speedcouncil.org, SSSC, Tablet PC, Ubuntu, Windows Vista

So as some of you already know, I’ve taken the big plunge… Windows Vista on a Tablet PC.

Largely for Jared I decided to write up a few comments on how things are going.

The Good:

• The “Ooooh. Shiny” factor!
  • Everytime I open up the new Tablet Input Panel its like euphoria. Its so shiny! It zooms across my screen at just the right speed. I find myself playing with it often, as a matter of fact. Who needs Solitaire when you have TIP?
  • The Desktop Gadgets, though they may take up CPU cycles and precious RAM, are a great addition as far as i’m concerned. I want my desktop to look good, I want it to be something that, when a non-nerd walks up behind me and takes a look, they emit a tiny squeak of pleasure.
  • The environment menus, taskbar, etc.. appear alot more integrated. And by that, I mean that you find yourself not minding them being there in other applications. In XP I spent weeks playing with methods to change the way things look and I still couldent make things pretty enough that I didnt die a little inside everytime I look at them.
• What, its Practical too?
  • Unlike a few other graphical interfaces out there, Vista’s prettiness is done in such a way that its useful! Albeit theres always the chance that its just because its still new to me – time will tell!
  • I dont think I could use XP again, if only for the lack of Hybrid sleep. That little power button in my Start Menu has become pure gold. No more waiting to put my computer away because its going to sleep, no more missing notes because its booting. Just writing about this feature has a smile on my face.
  • Beyond the prettiness of the Tablet Input Panel, its also fifteen times better at recognizing my handwriting! Plus it gets better as time goes on, since it automagically learns your style. If you don’t want to wait that long, you can also go write sentences and let it learn off of that.
  • Networking on Vista, wired or wireless, is like an orgasm in a box. You dont have to disable things to get online when you go from School to Home, no changing settings for every different network. It just plain works.
  • And despite a few problems, everything on the tablet is working! No Driver issues whatsoever. Hooray!
• Ahead of the game, yea baby!
  • You can get some serious cred for being the only geek on your block running vista… on a TABLET! Of course I’m far from the first person to do this, Jared has all of that cred stashed away in a vault somewhere, but its still worth something, right? Lie to me if thats what it takes, don’t crush me!

The Bad:

• System Woes.
  • Okay. I have a fairly nice tablet: dual core, 1.5gb of RAM, blah blah… Enough to run Vista very well it seems. But there remains the annoying slowdowns from hell. Your working right along and suddenly that window stops. Now, its a good thing that it stopped for a second, because if it didnt it would probably crash. A few moments later your back to work. Game-ending? No. Annoying? Yes.
• Software Woes.
  • Odyssey, the secure wireless authenticator that is used by UofL doesent even think about working in Vista. Luckily, a friend of mine showed me SecureW2. It takes alot of tweaking to get it right, but it finally gets working much better than Odyssey ever did.
  • My beloved Firefox forsakes me. It seemed like the days of Firefox eating up tons of RAM were gone – but then Vista came around. Firefox seems to be about as efficient as an elephant taking the stairwell. Hopefully its just an extension or something I havent canned, or its a bug that they’ll fix ASAP. I refuse to use IE, even if it kills me! Then again, if Firefox keeps freezing and crashing… I might not get an option. *Sad face*
  • Alias Sketchbook, my preferred software tool for doodling and sketching with my tablet, cries when you try to install it in Vista. Heres to hoping for a patch.
  • Cygwin does not <3 Vista. Not sure why just yet.

The Ugly:

• The Start Menu.
  • I could complain for days about the Start Menu. I absolutely love the new organization system in Vista… but who missed the memo about the Start Menu needing some loving too? Its a total pain in the ass to organize, with UAP and Duplications bugs abound. Jared tells me that the ’search’ feature makes it all handy, but I’m far from being sold.
• Gestures:
  • So I was all excited when I heard that Vista was bringing in OS-based Gestures. I never really got into them before because of the bugs in the third-party software, but if its OS-integrated, how bad can they be? Well, to make a long story short, so far they have been absopositutely useless. That isn’t a final opinion, though, because I havent tinkered with them nearly enough methinks.
• Speech:
  • Doesent it sound so awesome to be able to talk to your computer and make it do stuff? Yes, it does. But have I found any practical use for it? Nada. Much like gestures, I suppose, I haven’t given them a fair chance. Maybe someday I’ll get over the fact that me talking to my computer probably wont look that awkward. Go me.

So thats my spiel on Vista. I probably have more, but I’m just plain tired. Very plain tired. I’d like to write about Directors Retreat, Crusade for Children, etc… But just ask me about them if your curious!

I also have Ubuntu installed to make dealing with the website a bit easier (see earlier note about Cygwin woes). Maybe I’ll write about that, since Linux and the Tablet don’t get along well thusfar. Whatever there appears to be interest in!