Vista Tablet Input on non-tablet PC

If you install software for an alternate input device, such as a slate or electronic whiteboard, Vista may helpfully decide that you are using a Tablet PC, and enable certain features that are irrelevant to the fact that you may just be using a normal desktop or laptop that doesn’t have the alternate device connected all the time.

I installed the Promethean Activboard software on my desktop, and since then, Vista gives me an onscreen keyboard at logon, and it also gave me the Tablet PC Input Panel, which sat on the edge of my desktop and got in the way whenever the mouse accidentally went over it.

Whilst I haven’t yet figured out how to get rid of the different logon screen, the Input Panel can be turned off in Control Panel –> Administrative Tools –> Services. Find the service named “Tablet PC Input Service”, stop the service and change its startup setting to Manual.

Windows Live Mail and Gmail

Back here I dissed WLM quite badly. Since then, WLM has had another update and is not quite so bad at handling Gmail IMAP accounts. In fact, it works better although there are still some minor issues. The big improvement over Thunderbird is that TB keeps prompting me to re-enter my password for each of my Gmail accounts, over and over, every time it checks for new messages (10 minutes). The main issue that WLM still has with Gmail IMAP is the [Gmail] and similar “pseudo folders” that it can’t quite work out how to handle, as they aren’t normal mail folders that WLM can recognise.

WLM also has a nice feature of being able to log into a Hotmail account that I have and let me see the messages for that on my desktop, without having to go to the website to log in. (Chch Polytech has switched students’ mail over to Hotmail)

Brickbat: RSS feeds still don’t update automatically. I’ve got one PC at home running XP, and one at work running Vista, and they both have this problem.

Classroom AV 4: Activboard Mounting / more Cable Terminations

A few articles back I talked a little about the Promethean Activboard and our chosen method of hanging it. Promethean supplies these with a kit of parts that include brackets designed to hang the board directly on the wall. Because most of our classrooms already had whiteboard tracks installed, we decided to make a custom track mounting frame for the Activboard instead.

In this picture at the right centre you can see the grey metal hook bracket which is part of the original Activboard kit, as is the grey metal bracket at lower left. The frame hangs on track wheels just as the original whiteboard panels do. The frame uses angle aluminium to reduce flex plus the cross bracing shown. It would be useful to fit a stop on the track itself to prevent having to recalibrate each time the board is slid into place.

This photo shows the Activboard mounted on its frame in a new classroom. It looks only a little different from the normal sliding panel. The cables will be enclosed in spiral tubing called “Easy Wrap” and attached to the wall on the right hand side so that the tubing stretches out and drops back as the board moves on the track.

This picture shows the cable faceplates in their actual mounting situation on a wooden wall. The speaker terminal plate got mounted on a low profile mount block because of the bolts and terminals that would have required additional drilling of the wall, this just saved a bit of work without making it too obtrusive. The main change to the VGA/video connector plate is a clamp to hold the video cable to the plate. I anticipated before that this would prove necessary and so it has. The bolthead that you can see aligned with the mounting hole is where the clamp bolts to the faceplate. Once I had got that in and resoldered the video cable to its socket for the third or fourth time, it all came together very smoothly.

Panasonic TZ Series vs Canon SX

Consumer’s Institute in NZ reviews digital cameras regularly and have just issued their latest report. Basically from their POV the competition for the top P&S spot is down to Panasonic and Canon, and I agree. I’ve compared the Canon and Panasonic offerings for some time and I would continue to choose Canon first time every time. Although Panasonic was first off the block with the TZ1 ultrazoom compact, Canon after a couple of false starts (the weird TX1 for example) eventually responded with the SX100, with the probability of an update this year. I took a few moments to check out the SX100 against the latest Lumix TZ4/TZ5 models. My choice for all four digitals so far has been Canon and would remain so in this particular segment, the SX100 being preferred for the following reasons:

1. Uses AA batteries; you aren’t tied to proprietary expensive power solutions.
2. Uses standard USB cable; don’t need an expensive proprietary cable (Panasonic uses a special one with the A/V signal pins added to it)
3. More exposure control options on the SX100. It has a full range of manual settings just like the S5, in fact this camera is really just a scaled down S5 in features. Panasonic has a few scene type settings, more like my A460 which is much cheaper.

I’ll credit the TZ4/TZ5 Lumixes with HD video, battery metering and some other useful features. With the inbuilt lithium power source, you do have the advantage of having less bits and a charger supplied with the camera. Lithium may be more predictable than some NiMH solutions. However my experience of AA cameras has been that I have got out of more than one sticky situation by carrying a set of Energizer Lithiums along with my usual sets of rechargeables. You can get a choice of charger as well and right now I have one that can plug into a USB port or car in addition to the mains. The latest advances into low leakage NiMH cells shows a very promising trend of improving their capacity and retention which in my experience in the first six months of this year is going a long way towards lithium-like performance in an economical package.

Would I buy an SX100? Yes – if I didn’t already have the preference of the A460 / S1 combination. The SX100 is just a little too bulky compared to the A460, yet lower featured than the current S series models. My current choices suit me well as the basic A460 can still do a lot of things when I carry it with me everywhere and is cheap enough to be updated every couple of years. The SX100 is a great camera if you can compromise enough or don’t need the extra performance of the S series.

Portable Appliance Testing (PAT)

In April 2005 the NZ Ministry of Education issued an advisory notice to schools encouraging them to carry out electrical testing of portable appliances. The suggested means for doing this is a Portable Appliance Tester (PAT). This work can be carried out by a competent person – who could be a suitably trained staff member in a school, not necessarily someone holding an electrical certificate. The legal requirement for schools to carry out this testing basically comes from Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) and the MOE guidelines cite the specifications of AS/NZS 3760:2003 as the basis of the testing procedures to be followed.

I’ve started looking at PAT checks at our site and have noted some things already which may not be too obvious. One is that modern laptops, for some reason, are earthed and should therefore be tested as Class 1 appliances. When we took our first delivery of TELA laptops several years ago, they all used a 2 core mains lead and plug into the mains power adapter, meaning they were double insulated, as you would generally expect for a plastic cased device that runs from both battery and mains power. The latest Toshiba and HP laptops, however, all use a 3 core lead with 3 pin plug and socket fitted. When I put these on the Class 1 test, they all proved that a metal connection on the laptop case (such as the VGA connector screws) is electrically connected to the earth pin on the mains plug. Why the manufacturers have changed from double insulation to earthing, I don’t know, but if a laptop doesn’t have the double insulated symbol on its power supply then it must be considered earthed and tested as a Class 1 appliance.

Secondly, the laptop, both physically and electrically, consists of three parts: the mains cord, power adapter and laptop itself. The test is carried out using an earth connection onto the laptop with the mains cord plugged into the PAT, and then stickers are applied to each of the three parts, otherwise how can you be sure which part the sticker applies to (as all three parts are separable and interchangeable with other people’s laptops)?

Thirdly, and this is relevant to the above, the retest interval for flexible cords, like the power cord and the adapter, is less than the laptop itself. The laptop can possibly be given a retest interval marked at 3 – 5 years. The power cord and adapter, perhaps just 12 months. You may, however, need to connect all three parts together to do any retest just as I did with my original tests. The trickiness of this is to know which part actually failed if the tester shows such a result.