Imagine that - me with a list on the videos? ;)

Actually, I'm copying Chris Coulter's list that he keeps over on our whatisnew.com.

• What did you learn from building the Tablet PC? - "Robert Williams is an executive on the Tablet PC team, and since the Tablet PC has been on the market about 18 months now, we wondered what he's learned from the process of building a new product."

• Where did the idea for the Tablet PC come from? - “Robert Williams is an exec on the Tablet PC team. So, we thought we'd ask him for his version of the influences (and influencers) that brought about the Tablet PC.”

• What is a Tablet PC doing when someone writes on the screen? - “Peter Loforte, general manager of the Tablet PC group, discusses what technically is happening when you put your pen on the digitizer, and what API’s are available for developers to use.”

• What are you most proud of in the Tablet PC code you’ve written? - “David Winkler is the developer who built much of the new user interface for Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005. He’s a bit shy, as you can see, but we think it’s important to get you to know him cause his work simply rocks. If you use a Tablet PC, you’re using David’s code. So, we wondered, what he was most proud of inside his code?”

• What’s cool about the upcoming Tablet PC software? - “Peter Loforte, general manager of the Tablet PC team, shows us what is cool about the upcoming Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005 software update (code-named “Lonestar”) This is a free update and will automatically come with the upcoming Windows XP Service Pack 2.”

• Is the Tablet PC technology good enough for using the pen only? - “One of the questions the Tablet PC team gets a lot is "is it really ready to use with only a pen?" Robert Williams is the executive in charge of working with OEM partners. He does a lot of market research, and gathers feedback from OEMs and customers and knows just how hard it is to get people to give up the keyboard, and talks about some of those challenges here.”

• New Tablet PC powertoy under development - “Susan Cameron, group product manager, for the Tablet PC group, shows off a yet-to-be-released PowerToy for the Tablet PC that converts all the fonts used on the desktop to your own handwriting -- she also shows off why the Tablet PC is better for people who are left handed.”

• What language/tool did you use to write the Tablet PC’s drivers? - “Michael Tsang is a software design engineer on the Tablet PC team. What does that mean? He's the guy who wrote the driver software for the digitizer. He also wrote the software that handles what happens when you push on the buttons on the Tablet PC (like the ones that make your page scroll up or down).”

• What is the most suprising thing you’ve seen a Tablet PC used for? - “Hot tubs? Coffee holders? Burt Parker is the OEM Product Manager on the Tablet PC team and he shares the most interesting things he’s seen a Tablet PC used for.”

• When is battery life going to get better on Tablet PCs? - “Today’s Tablet PCs get about three hours of battery life. We wondered when, or if, that’ll improve. Burt Parker works with OEMs on just this issue and his answers are encouraging.”

• The Tablet PC has changed my life - “It’s not often that you get a general manager at Microsoft to admit that he brings his computer to bed. But that’s not the only way the Tablet PC has changed his life, in this video he explains how the form factor of the Tablet PC has enabled him to use a computer in places and ways that he never was able to before.”

• How does Tablet PC’s digitizer work? - “Michael Tsang is the guy who writes the drivers for the Tablet PC’s digitizer, so if there’s one guy who really knows how it works, it’s him.”

• On the Tablet PC how can I get my cursor to match up with my pen? - “On our Tablet PCs we noticed that sometimes our cursor gets out of alignment with the tip of our pen. So, we asked the guy who designed the software for the digitizer [Michael Tsang] why that happens, how he tried to correct for it in software, and how we can calibrate the system to make it better. Interesting factoid that we learned: even the magnetic field from the hard drive’s heads can mess things up.”

• Overview of the Tablet PC Platform for Developers - “Want to learn more about how to develop for the Tablet PC? Well this presentation by Arin Goldberg covers the features of the Tablet PC including Tablet PC 2005 and the SDK 1.7 from a developer’s point of view.” Requires a high speed internet connection. Video runtime: 2 hours 38 minutes. Video courtesy of Microsoft, produced with Producer 2003.

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-- Lora Heiny

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