Archive for 'General Tips' Category

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Tablet PC & UMPC User Meet-up in Las Vegas during CES, Jan 8th

4 December 2007 Posted By: Tracy
Posted in: Other

I’m getting more excited about CES by the day, now that I’m attending for once! I wouldn’t miss this meet-up for anything so you can count me in (along with my tablet-using fiancé who I’ll be dragging along :-D). Leave a message here if you plan on attending, wherever it is, or RSVP on Facebook or below.

Enthusiasts, users, OEMs, ISVs, IHVs are invited to attend the fifth Tablet PC & UMPC Community Gathering. The annual gathering takes place during 2008 International CES. It has been an excellent place for people to share information about new products, tips on existing products, and enjoy meeting people involved in the community.

Adding RAM and the Memory Configurator

5 October 2007 Posted By: Andrew
Posted in: Other

It’s been a pretty hectic last few weeks, a handful of exams and lots of homework.

A couple weeks ago, I added some more RAM to my tablet, Apollo. Apollo originally had 512MB (2x 256MB); a couple years ago I added a gig stick, bringing the total to 1280 (1x 1GB, 1x 256MB). Over the last few months, I was frequently going into my paged memory. So I decided to add another gig of RAM, bringing the total to 2GB (2x 1GB).

Jim Vanides - Tablet PC Tips

5 October 2007 Posted By: Robert
Posted in: News, Tips / Tricks

Jim Vanides, HP’s Worldwide Higher Education Philanthropy’ s Program Manager (wow great title!) is picking up speed with a video series of Tablet PC tips orientated towards educators. He’s already posted one on using a Tablet PC to annotate Powerpoint and his second helping, looking into using MS Journal as a viable alternative to Powerpoint, has just been released.

Sure Jim’s series is aimed more at educators than students but as a student who has to give endless presentations, I find that Jim’s video tips are providing some valuable insights. I’m sure many of you will agree.

Would this idea work as an ink-blogging tool?

29 September 2007 Posted By: Tracy
Posted in: Software Info, Tablet Concepts

OK, I’m not a programmer, but it makes sense to me that this would somehow work.

What if someone created an ink blogging program that (excuse me if I misuse terms) would parse the ink into individual pictures for each word.

Follow me here:

1. The same way the ink post plug-in for Windows Live Writer works, it would pop up a Journal-like window that you can write however much you want.
2. At the bottom of the ink window, it would have two buttons:
   1. one that auto-created the individual images,
   2. and one that quality controlled it first with a window where you could fix the recognition and word spacing.

50 Strategies for Making Yourself Work: How Writers Do It

27 August 2007 Posted By: Tracy
Posted in: Tips / Tricks

While looking through some old links of mine, I stumbled upon some tips from a time when I wanted to be a writer. It’s a hard think to motivate yourself to do work that you don’t really have to do, without a boss watching over and hard daily deadlines. Sound familiar?

50 Strategies for Making Yourself Work

Students should really take these tips to heart. While not 100% applicable, I’d say they’re 90% student ready, and more than just the generic ones the schools hand out like “find a quiet place to study” or “study four hours for every one hour in class.”

LAPTOP Magazine: When It’s Time to Consider a Tablet

23 July 2007 Posted By: Tracy
Posted in: Tablet Concepts

LAPTOP Magazine posted an article for their Back to School special listing five excellent reasons to get a tablet if you’re a student (note their primary source :-P).

Imagine how much more productive you’d be if your handwritten lecture notes had a Google-like search ability, were organized in a completely logical way, and even had audio clips of the lecture built-in. According to Tracy Hooten, a senior at the University of Texas at Austin and the founder of StudentTabletPC.com, those are just a few of the ways Tablet notebooks save students time and alleviate stress. We talked to Tracy about the benefits of a Tablet over a regular notebook and came away with five reasons why you should consider one for yourself…[read more]

Erin summed up my points quite nicely. Thanks, Erin!

Do Tablet PCs absolve you of your ‘clutter nutter’ habits?

5 July 2007 Posted By: Robert
Posted in: Tablet Concepts

CyInSoonerland recently responded to the post I made about my electronic filing system and his comments got me wondering about how much Tablet PCs aid in making one study in a more ‘zen like’ way. No I’m not talking about donning orange robes and shaving one’s head here (although Father Time has prematurely helped me to do the latter for free anyway :o)). More specifically I’m on about whether the use of Tablet PCs has a direct affect on the immediate physical environment that one works and studies in. In other words do Tablet PCs play a significant role in quashing the inner ‘clutter nutter’ causing the user to form a more minimal and simplistic workspace in which to operate in?

The ‘light bulb’ in my head pinged when I saw similarities in the tidiness and simplicity of my studying environment when compared to that of CyInSoonerland’s. Like me, his desk is always clear and he positively hates working in a cluttered environment. Only two smallish similarities I agree but I’ve seen this ‘need to be clear’ in other Tablet PC users too and it makes me think that there may be more to it than just a natural preference for working/studying in a tidy environment. Could it be that the forming of such a minimalist mindset may stem from using a Tablet PC and the significant reduction of paper, books and notepads etc. that should come with it?

OneNote 2007 Tip: Extending Battery Life

24 June 2007 Posted By: William
Posted in: Software, Tips / Tricks

I haven’t had many battery life problems this semester except for every Friday where I had 4 consecutive lectures. 4 hours is a continuous stretch for any tablet taking notes and I struggled in the more writing intensive lectures.

Here is another setting change you can make in OneNote 2007. Tools>Options>Other>Battery Options and you can select a number of different levels from maximum performance to maximum battery life.

Keep in mind though that changing this effects the things that OneNote does in the background to make things more efficient but if that extra 15 minutes is critical for your note taking then give this a try.

If you’re buying a ThinkPad for Fall, buy one early

13 June 2007 Posted By: Tracy
Posted in: Choosing a Tablet PC, General Tips, Hardware

OK, so even without the good reason of many sales events over at Lenovo.com, there’s another reason to buy early if you’re planning on using a shiny new ThinkPad tablet this Fall semester, especially the late Summer semester. Lenovo is slooooooooooooow.

I had the privilege to have lunch with JK from JKOnTheRun on Monday and we were reminiscing about all the many slow launches Lenovo has had. The long shipping delay of the X40T (some people had three months wait time), the similar delay of the X60T, and now, again, a delay of the X61T. You think they’d get the hint by now that it’s not cool to do that, but I guess not.

Creating Video Flash Cards

1 May 2007 Posted By: Frank
Posted in: General Tips, Screencasts, Study Aids

So are you the kind of student that loves using flash cards to review for an exam? Maybe you’ve never put in any thought to writing up a set that would aid you in your studies. Just thinking about carrying a stack of 3×5 index cards everywhere you go seems like something that might make you cringe, I know.

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