To start I must admit I am not as experienced as James in Tablet computing.. But I am a 30 year microcomputer & PC veteran having been formally schooled in the art in 1978.

I am not learn-ed in Tableting like he. Partly because 3 Tablet implementations I own and many tried to date fail to work or fail to demonstrate a productive computing environment.

To be quick off the mark I concur, after a few days of testing the Hilton Virtual Mouse is more a work around then a fix to what ails Windows Pen computing.

As to the details……

I own Averatec , OQO, & HP TX1120/1220 PC’s and HP IPAQ’s all with Pen hardware. All are basically dysfunctional with either OS/Driver bugs, weak implementations, slow response or other problems. Going back in time my first PC job at HP was with the HP150 Touchscreen PC in 1980. It won few hearts & minds in the PC industry. Or at least if failed to win critical market share.

That said I can tell there is much to learn from you and from ongoing experimentation with Tablet, Pen & Slate products.

After 12 years of happy work with Handheld PC’s & HP Pamtops I’ve found myself stuck with Touch & Pen ‘malware’ for the past 4 years now..

As to your write up of Hiltons Touch Pointer “virtual mouse” it is far from perfect. I agree.

But nor is a Pen & Windows interface that does not inform users that when they touch the screen they are committing to two actions at once. IE Moving the Pointer to that location & Pressing the Left Click button. This flaw is A serious strike against XP Pen computing in my opinion.

Pen use as one shot Point & Click does not make pen computing backward compatible with defacto Windows pointer & mouse techniques, nor with any software that expect Mouse & Click as the Human Interaction norm.

The best example is the Windows Desktop GUI itself. Millions of experienced XP/Vista users who are Pen or Touch neophytes have no or obscure feed back telling them the Left Mouse button is depressed as soon as they touch the screen on their desktop. There are many screen areas in Windows and in Windows system applications that have nill visual result from left mouse clicking. And if you drag from those points the pointer moves but does not interact in context. In this lies a fundamental flaw in Pen software for both XP & Vista. Even Vista Touch/Stylus training does not inform users touching the screen causes a left Click.

Hiltons Pointer scheme with a pen makes sense as an legacy aid or crossover tool for Mouse users. But lacks the convenience potential of a Pen as you point out. I concur it is more a crossover aid than good UI.

Also I believe an XP style display pointer when touch/pen manipulated must cue users with the implied left click state. Like the force & audible feedback of a Mouse button. It needs to include both visual and audible clues as to the button state. Visual left click feedback could be as easy as changing the color of the left half of a pointer to visually cue users.

As to Pen interaction, for now I believe a successful passive Pen implementation must come with an actual button. At least as a user option. Either a Pen or Display bezel programmable button and or Dual touch implemented as a Left mouse button.

I say this Primarily because our legacy GUI industry expects that type of interaction. Without Dual touch or a Pen based button, this implies two handed interaction. At least for some software such as CAD or paint software or for legacy games programs.

To make hover work cleanly discrete move & click functions are also needed. Hover does not work as you depict in my TX1120 Vista SP1 Tablet with Touch Pen. In applications tested the first item hovered over failed to render any hint. I’ve found Hover to fail on other Touch products I’ve tested also.

In terms of moving to true Windows pen computing. I believe the big problem lies in a lack of hardware context sensitivity in System & Application software. Most does not go far enough to discriminate between Mouse & Pen user interfaces. And in the case of passive pens, the operational difference between pens and mice are huge.

To conclude I believe, Windows XP/Vista Tablet, it’s related hardware and most derivatives of tableting have won few hearts & minds to date in the Personal computing world, including mine. Most of the products & implementations to date look more like Malware then functional implementations of the Pen or Slate computing dream. Thanks to the iPhone Touch Products are beginning to win consumers pocketbooks but I fear they’ll be ill sold.

To date many hearts & minds are lost pursuing this dream.. Give them a beer or some whisky.. But many many many remain untried as well.

Lets hope industry does a better job of implementation crossing over from legacy windows computing to screen interactive computing. They must properly support & fix what they sell too!!! There is much to beware of and much work to do.

Cam Rawlinson AScT
Victoria BC
Canada

I should add as of this date Hilton’s Virtual Mouse Pointer , and the Touch Tab Control Panel are NOT available on my 2007 TX1120 or 1220 Touch Tablets. Even his concept is nothing but a dream.

Cheers

The palm rejection as demoed in the video is actually a combination of hardware and software – you still get hover becuase you the screen still used electromagnetic technology. This is different than how the Fujitsu p1610 works. The p1610 is only a touch system with palm rejection, but does not offer any hover capability and does not work with an electromagnetic pen.

It looks like a stopgap measure to provide fine control of an interface that wasn’t built for touch. This is where gestures come into play; instead of having a bunch of small buttons, assign them to natural gestures.

As far as the hover capability, you could always use pressure sensing for that.