Tablet Edition on Desktop by upgrade
I want to install Windows XP Tablet Edition on my desktop for development. Is there any way I can upgrade or convert from my existing Windows XP? I have 40-50 applications installed and it will take, on past experience, at least three days to re-build if I have to wipe my hard disk.
Other options are to use Virtual PC or create another bootable partition, but neither of those seems ideal.
Thanks for any hints or suggestions.
Julian
Yes there is... I did it by mistake one day. I went to repair a normal XP installation on my desktop and grabbed the XPTE CD instead. The repair went fine and I ended up with XPTE on my desktop. It worked out nice because I frequently access my desktop remotely with my tablet and having the tablet features available was great. Your milage may vary so do it at your own risk, but it worked for me.
juga,
I did it on purpose. [^]
Using the MSDN Subscription, I can develop and test some Tablet functionality on a desktop, however, your recogntion results will be limited and vary. And is always recommended to test and deploy to Tablets before distribution.
Hope this helps,
Thanks for that info. Just to confirm, by "repair", do you mean boot from the Tablet Edition OS CD and choose the repair option?
If Tablet edition works on a desktop (and apparently a lot of Tablet development in Microsoft is done on desktops with graphics tablets attached) you wonder why we need two different versions at all. Tablet functionality could be another option under add/remove Windows components.
Julian
Northern Rebel: Are you saying that when you access your desktop from your Tablet PC, that it behaves exactly like a Tablet PC, that is letting you use Journal, the TIP, etc.?
Have you upgraded to SP2, and if so, does it retain the Tablet PC functionality or does it revert to standard XP?
Assuming the answers are yes, since I synch the data files on my desktop and Tablet PC, doesn't this mean that when I am working at my home/home office, I can in effect upgrade my TC1000 from its Transmeta 1GHz processor to the 2.4GHz processor of my desktop simply by using Remote Desktop?
If so, this would certainly extend the life of my TC1000!
--Jim
Juga...
Yes that is what I ment by repair. Sorry if I wasn't clear before.
Jimgay...
As fswitz said you only get limited recongnition and no pressure features. I can't comment on SP2, but it should retain the XPTE features. I later did a fresh install with the right windows CD. It was a real mistake.
To your other question... I have used radmin (www.radmin.com) for my remote administration purposes since I connect from multiple OSes. I have used an old Mitsubishi AmityVP (AMD133mhz- about a P75) to connect to my XP system via my network and its just like running my XP desktop in person. There is very little overhead on the host PC.
Northern Rebel…
I didn’t make my question clear, so I ran a little test to prove or disprove my premise. Unfortunately, I disproved my premise which was whether or not a 2.4GHz desktop would run my TPC applications across a remote desktop connection anywhere close to or even better than natively on my anemic TC1000.
The answer is clearly not, but not for the reasons I imagined. Remote desktop only samples the pen input and sends the sampled result to the remote machine as if it were mouse position data. It does not send the full data stream from the digitizer (so pressure information is lost). Therefore, the result on the desktop is only a poor approximation of the pen motion on the remote Tablet screen. This is why the recognition is poor. The recognition software works the same on the desktop as on the tablet, but the input is poor. So…garbage in, garbage out.
I ran the test using OneNote. The handwritten input was barely readable. No, let me correct that…it was only readable sometimes. Other times it was completely unreadable, even by me. For example, the word “that” was a vertical line, a horizontal line and a little bump on the end.
What is needed for what I want is to change the Remote Desktop application to pass the full digitizer raw data stream (with continuous position and pressure data) to the remote PC. That would appear to me to be very doable, but unfortunately, except for a few Tablet PC people who hacked the TPC OS onto their desktop running over a high speed connection, this functionality would not be of any use to anybody. Maybe once the TPC and XP OSs are merged, and people start commonly connecting one Tablet PC to another remotely, Microsoft will actually implement this capability. Unfortunately, during our lifetime, I am afraid we are going to have to be content with the little morsels that Microsoft throws our way. Besides, the reason the sampled pen position data is being passed is probably dictated by the need to support the < 56K dialup and cellular connections which I think will be around for as far into the future as I can see.
Anyway, I am still interested in whether or not there is any unique and/or useful capability gained by running Remote Desktop from a tablet PC to a desktop PC running the Tablet PC Edition OS (other than basic software testing for developers). It appears to me the answer is: No, there isn’t. Am I right?
Hopefully not,
Jim
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