Chris - thanks for the response. It's great to know there is somewhere where users can be heard and gain responses and insights.

That said, I have tried your suggestion of dragging the Taksbar to the side. In my original post, I lamented on the inability to set menus so that they would open to the left. Even dragging the Taskbar to the right side still keeps many of the sub-menus appearing to the right, and therefore under my hand. Tool tips as well always appear slightly below and to the right of the icon - again, exactly the wrong place for a right-hander.

As a right-hander, I'd ideally like the "flop" the current arrangement of the Taskbar by placing the Start button in the far right lower corner, and having an option to force menus to open to the left whenever possible. It's a lot easier to slightly extend the pen in your hand to the left (as a righty), than to have to move your hand entirely to read the menus and then make your selection. I find that being forced to move my hand also causes the sub-menus that appear to sometimes close because the cursor moves off them, forcing me to go back and open the menu again.

I realize that these are partly the impressions of a novice (to the tablet world at least) user. I know I'll get more comfortable with it over time. But I've laso had a computer of one sort or another for about 20 years now, so this isn't my first time to the rodeo.

Somewhere in the dungeons of MS, someone knows all this already. I just hope they're listening and working on making these type of things adjustable to user preferences. The Tablet brings in a whole new set of user issues - these have been some that are annoying me so far.

Rich




"Chris H." wrote:

> Rich, so little pop-up things can be turned off completely if you wish but I
> think you'll get used to them after a while. As for the tooltips popping
> up, it depends on how you approach them and where they're located. While
> you're getting adjusted, if you haven't played much with Windows XP Pro
> before, there are things you can do to make the system very accommodating.
> One of the things I do on my Tablet is unlock the Taskbar and then drag it
> to the left side of the screen (Landscape or Portrait) so it is out of my
> way most of the time. I'm right-handed, and having it on the left while
> using Auto Hide means it doesn't open until I approach it.
>
> Since you've installed the Tablet PC Edition 2005 (the superset which is all
> Tablet) with XP Service Pack 2 RC2, you should play with the Options in the
> new Tablet Input Panel, too. If you undock it, you'll have a little
> "floating TIP" which will appear for you when you're in a text entry point.
> From there, you'll have three options for entering information - Writing
> Pad, Character Pad and Onscreen Keyboard.
>
> Most of all, enjoy your new machine!
> --
> Chris H.
> Microsoft Windows MVP/Tablet PC
> Tablet Creations - http://nicecreations.us/
> Associate Expert
> Expert Zone - www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone
>
>
> "Rich" <Rich@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:315F2768-D33C-48E3-ABA7-BB2A70B52299@microsoft.com...
> >I might not have chosen the best place to post this issue/question, but
> >this discussion seems similar enough to my question that I'll risk a little
> >a bit of harassment to spin this in a slightly different direction.
> >
> > I've had my tablet for a whole 5 days now - a Motion M1400 - and I am
> > really excited to incorporate it into my work habits. I've installed the
> > latest SR2 beta, with which I imediately appreciated the improvements in
> > the OS.
> >
> > But like the the thread originator, I do find it frustrating to have
> > things under my hand that I have to constantly move to see. In my case,
> > I'm right-handed, but the menus that constantly open to the right
> > (immediately under my hand) or the tool tips (I think that's what they're
> > called - the little identifiers that appear when you hover over an icon)
> > that always appear below and to the right of the cusor ARE DRIVING ME
> > NUTS!
> >
> > Ok, not quite nuts. but it is certainly annoying.
> >
> > Isn't there a way to move the Start button to the right-hand side of the
> > screen, and have all menus open to the left? (I've tried putting the
> > whole bar on the right-hand side of the screen, but I still have menus
> > that want to open to the right) Same with the tool tips - anyway to
> > control their position when they appear? Upper left for righties and
> > upper left for lefties would be preferrable to what we have today?
> >
> > Isn't that controllable in the OS?
>
>
>