5. Additional Tips And Tricks

As with any good electronic device, a Tablet PC’s feature list only takes you so far. There are a few little nuggets not shown in the owner’s manual that just make Tablet PC operation a little bit more fun.

First of all, depending on your model, you may be able to use the back of your stylus as an eraser. On certain versions of XP or Vista, you may need to turn the option on first by going to Control Panel > Hardware > Tablet and Pen Settings, but in most operating systems, this is turned on by default. It’s not mentioned in my owner’s manual, so I never even thought of using the back as an eraser, but it comes in really handy in the rare case that I should make a mistake.

If you don’t have a Tablet PC/stylus that enables this, the second best thing is one of the greatest parts of note-taking on a tablet. If you scratch out a word, shape, or anything else that has a definable structure to it, Windows will erase it for you. If only this could have happened in real life for me when all I had was a pen during my calculus midterm...

Finally, my last point seems really obvious, but it took me months to think of it on my own. Make sure that if you want to use the stylus a lot, you increase your screen resolution to make it easier to tap on individual icons. I also suggest moving the taskbar from the bottom of the screen to the right (or left if you’re left-handed). This just makes everything much more intuitive and easier to navigate.

Conclusion

If you’ve ever thought about a Tablet PC but never really bothered to look into one, you should realize that it is not just about a fancy swivel screen that looks like an obese PDA. There are a myriad of enhancements that Tablet PCs implement, and some of them have nothing to do with the touch-screen. Soccer moms, digital media hounds, students, blue collar employees, and white collar employees alike can all take advantage of the increased functionality that a tablet offers. It’s the true all-in-one notebook, and if you log any significant amount of time with a mobile computer, the Tablet PC market is definitely worth checking out.

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