Add a page down button to the HP 2710p

Some of the things I like to do on the HP 2710p Tablet PC would no doubt be easier to do if HP had included a jog dial or page up/down buttons on the bezel of the screen.  This would especially make working with lots of RSS feeds easier to do in Google Reader since I like to do that in portrait orientation in slate mode.  I have been using the utility MiniScroller to add virtual buttons on-screen but a real hardware button would be even better.  Step in reader Blake Bowen who sent me a simple and free method to add just the right touch and since I’ve started using this I can’t think of an easier way to do this.

The HP 2710p lets you program a few of the hardware buttons to do what you want such as execute a program when the button is pressed.  Blake found that the free hot key utility, AutoHotKey, can be programmed in just the right way.  AutoHotKey is a very full-featured scripting system that is definitely overkill for this simple task but it performs it well so it’s a good solution.  Once you install AutoHotKey you need to edit a simple script to perform a page down:

Send {PgDn}

The easiest way to get this script set up is to let AutoHotKey import the sample script and then edit it to include the single statement above.  Once this is done you just have to open the Q Button utility on the 2710p and point the Info button to this script.  The result is a simple page down button that will work in any program as it sends the page down command to the window with the focus.  It results in an instantaneous page down that works like HP made it that way.  It would be nice to have a page up function too but the HP is short on programmable buttons so for now the page down is A-OK.  Thanks a bunch Blake for sharing this method with those of us lucky enough to be 2710p owners!

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