In part 1, I explained why Windows Tablet PC users don’t have a very user friendly experience when inputting text into Java Swing applications. I presented a prototype solution to the issue that had some problems. Since then, I’ve:

• worked out some bugs
• added support for JTextAreas
• come up with a way to enable floating TIP on all JTextComponents in a Swing application
• updated the demo application
• decided to release some source code in case anyone want’s to critically review it

Adding JTextArea Support

In part 1,
the test applet only had text fields. I avoided text areas because they are often wrapped inside JScrollPanes/JViewports and this complicates things. I generalize the solution in this part so the demo and sources show that this is supported.

Use of the JFloatingPane

In my first attempt, I added the native TextField to the parent of the JTextField that had focus. This was necessary to ensure that the TextField was considered visible and would behave like a real TextField. But it had the bad side effect of potentially messing up the layout of the Container holding the JTextFields.

I remedied the problem by searching for the JRootPane parent of the JTextComponent, adding the native TextField to the back of the JLayeredPane.DEFAULT_LAYER layer so it will be visible but not interfere with the layout of the Swing text component’s Container.

Enabling for all JTextComponents in An App

In my first cut at the application, I explicitly installed FocusListeners on all Swing text components for which I wanted to enable the floating TIP. That is manageable in a small application, but fails to take care of text components in common dialogs like the JFileDialog.

I toyed with the idea of using byte code modification to, at runtime, inject code into the look and feel or into the Swing JTextComponent class itself to register the the FocusListener. But with a little research I found another [simpler] way be listen for all focus events on JTextComponents.

If your code is running in a JVM without a restrictive SecurityManager, you can add an AWTEventListener to the AWT event dispatcher that will receive all events of interest. The apps I’m working on are delivered with signed code and aren’t restricted. Further, since I ultimately plan to implement this Swing-Tablet workaround as a signed JRE extension to install only on Tablet PCs JREs, I’m content not to address the problem of running in a locked down applet.

I’m using the following code to listen for focus gained/lost events on all JTextComponents.

import java.awt.AWTEvent;
import java.awt.Toolkit;
import java.awt.event.AWTEventListener;
import java.awt.event.FocusEvent;
import javax.swing.text.JTextComponent;

...

Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().addAWTEventListener(
   new AWTEventListener()
   {
      public void eventDispatched(AWTEvent event)
      {
         FocusEvent fe = (FocusEvent)event;
         if(fe.getComponent() instanceof JTextComponent)
         {
            if(event.getID() == FocusEvent.FOCUS_GAINED)
               /*tell swing-tablet code to start workaround on JTextComponent that just got focus*/;
            else if(event.getID() == FocusEvent.FOCUS_LOST)
               /*tell swing-tablet code to stop workaround on JTextComponent that just lost focus*/;
         }
      }
   },
   AWTEvent.FOCUS_EVENT_MASK);

Since this code will only be run when running on a Windows system that has the floating TIP, it shouldn’t affect performance on other systems. Further, this approach does not seem to have any perceived performance impact on the applications I’ve tested it in.

The Updated Demo

The demo can be run in two ways.

1. Java Web Start Application	or	2.Executable Jar
If you have Java Web Start installed, just click the “Launch” icon below. If your browser is not Java WebStart enabled, get it here.		Download the following file, save it, then double click it. SOTPCDemo-2007-04-25.jar If it does not start when you double click it, then open a command prompt and run java -jar SOTPCDemo-2007-04-25.jar from the directory where you saved it.

You should expect to see an application that looks like this.

When putting focus on swing text fields or areas the floating TIP button should appear near the cursor and move with it as you type with a keyboard if you have one attached.

If you have trouble running this demo or if it doesn’t work as advertised, please let me know.

The Source

You can download the sources (bundled with the compiled jar) here:

  SOTPCDemo-2007-04-25.zip

The code is provided as is via the The MIT License. I plan to maintain it, so please work with me if you have suggestions or enhancements.

Coming up in Part 3

• Probably some bug fixes as I get feedback
• Providing Swing analog to Window’s right-click context menu that provides Copy/Cut/Paste/Select All/Delete menu items
• Installing it as a JRE extension so that all Swing apps on your Tablet PC will become floating TIP enabled. I’m not sure exactly how I’ll achieve this, but I’ll figure something out.

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I became a Tablet PC user this past summer when I acquired a TabletKiosk i7210 eo (an Ultra Mobile PC) running Windows XP Tablet Edition. My primary job is as a Java developer and I have done a fair amount of development using Java’s Swing windowing toolkit.

I very quickly learned that apps written using this windowing toolkit don’t work like regular windows apps on a tablet PC. They don’t offer access to the floating text entry window (Floating TIP) forcing the user to enter text via the text input panel at the bottom of the screen, a more cumbersome method of entry.

The Floating TIP

When running a normal Windows app on a tablet PC and you put focus in a text field/area/panel that doesn’t offer ink-based text entry support (most apps don’t), a small button will appear hovering near the cursor. This button is used to open the floating Tablet Input Panel (TIP) which lets Tablet PC users enter text in a variety of ways without the use of a physical keyboard.

For instance, here is the floating TIP button on the start run text entry field:

When clicked, the floating TIP appears near where the button used to be and the user can enter text via the on-screen keyboard or via a couple methods of handwriting.

Java Swing Text Entry – A 3rd rate experience

Anytime you have to enter text on a tablet PC using something other than “inking,” many tablet PC users consider it a second rate experience having to use the floating TIP. Well when a text field isn’t recognized by Windows at all, you have to use the non-floating TIP at the bottom of the screen, what I’d consider to be a third rate experience.

Here are the issues:

Issue #1 – Accessing the TIP Button is Not Always Convenient

First you click in the field you want to enter positioning the caret where you want to insert text or selecting text you want to delete or over type. Next you find the TIP button on the Windows task bar next to the Start button.

Since the UMPC is using a rather smallish touch screen, I’m limited to 1024×600 resolution. So I have configured the task bar to not stay on top of other windows so that I can get that last little bit of screen space. It is very common for one or more windows to be covering up the task bar. So I’ve got to minimize or move windows to see the task bar. Alternatively, I mapped one of the hardware buttons to the Start menu so I can pop it open just to bring the entire start bar to the front.

Issue #2 – Non-floating TIP wastes space

When you click the TIP button, it opens an onscreen menu that’s takes up 15-25% of your screen and forces all applications that are visible to shrink to fit in the area above it. This wastes space while it is visible. And if you’re using an app where all text entry needs to be done via the non-floating TIP, you basically end up keeping it open most of the time.

Worse however, is when you close the TIP panel, Windows doesn’t always resize your windows to the sizes they were before the TIP was opened. It seems it will do it properly for the window that had focus when you opened the TIP if that same window has focus when you close the TIP. But all other windows remained shortened. And it never resizes Java applications to their pre-TIP sizes, at least for me.

But Why is Java Swing Broken?

Java Swing is broken because it doesn’t use “native” components. Instead it paints all components you see in the user interface. However, a Tablet PC only provides the floating TIP button support for native Windows fields.

For similar reasons, Java Swing is not the only windowing system that’s broken. Firefox, a cross platform browser, is afflicted with a similar problem, I presume, because they’re not using standard Windows text edit controls. There is an add-on called GeckoTIP that adds floating TIP support for Firefox users on Tablet PCs.

Also, apps built on the cross platform GTK+ toolkit are also broken. I use GAIM (recently renamed Pigin IM) as an IM client. It uses GTK+ for it’s windowing. On my tablet, I have to use the non-floating TIP method to send messages.

So the problem is in the way that these windowing libraries are implemented. But trying to be cross platform and do their own rendering, they lose the benefit of the floating TIP on Windows Tablet PCs.

Why Hasn’t Sun Fixed Java?

Honestly, I don’t know. I’ll speculate that there are a few factors:

1. The tablet PC community is still relatively small. It’s not gotten the large corporate evangelism that it’s members feel it should have. And frankly, using a keyboard-less tablet for general computing is a bit daunting to most computer users who have enough trouble making their software do what they want while using the familiar keyboard.
2. Tablet PC users simply haven’t complained enough. If you search Sun’s Java bug database for “tablet pc” sorted by relevance it, seems that people haven’t filed all that many bugs regarding input methods issues specific to Tablet PC.s
3. Sun doesn’t care about tablet PC users. For the bugs that were filed, there is been little or no response by Sun. As some of the non-Sun employee comments reveal, this isn’t necessarily about Tablet PCs. Some of the tablet input features are important for PDAs and smartphones sporting touch screens.

Regardless of why, history has shown that it’s not going to to get fixed anytime soon.

(FWIW, in my research, I found a comment here speculating that Java 6 was using off screen peers for all Swing text components and that might fix add native floating TIP support for Swing apps. But I experimented with the Java 6 betas and with the Java 1.6.0_01 release and it doesn’t magically add floating TIP support to Swing applications)

My Efforts

I recently started a new Java project that’s a Swing application that I expect to use on my UMPC a lot. So the lack of floating tip became very annoying and motivated me to pursue fixing the problem.

The “offscreen’ peer approach described in the comment referenced earlier gave me a good starting idea. I experimented with it and came up with the following.

The Approach

Basically:

• Add a javax.swing.JTextField to the UI
• Create a native java.awt.TextField and when the Swing field gets focus, add the native field as a sibling component to the Swing field, give the focus to the native field, and make it 1×1. This is enough to make it considered visible, but on Windows, the native field is actually not visible at this size. Doing this makes the floating TIP button appear near the native field.
• Forward all keyboard events from the native text field to the Swing field so that what you type into the native field is reflected in the Swing field
• As the state of the Swing field are updated (text, caret position, selection start/end), update the native field so that it’s state is in sync with the Swing field. This way if you do a copy or cut on it, it will contain the selection of the Swing field
• As the caret moves in the Swing field, move the native field to the location of the caret so that the floating TIP button follows the caret
• Disable the native field’s focus traversal keys. Instead intercept the keystrokes and check them against the Swing fields registered focus traversal keys. If encountered, transfer focus back to the Swing field, make the native field non-focusable, and request transfer of focus in the appropriate direction

It sounds intricate, but really isn’t all that bad. More importantly, it can all be done via event listeners. So there is no need to create special subclasses of the default Swing JTextComponents to modify the classes via code injection or some other form of bytecode modifciation. The real benefit is that you don’t have to change your UI to use differerent components that don’t behave like the default ones.

One other benefit is that it doesn’t use any native code. So it won’t have any special deployment needs.

Does it Work?

So far it does for me. And I asked for testing assistance over here at the Origami Project forums and a couple people reported that it worked and one reported that it didn’t.
Also I’ve encountered a few issues where passing special keystrokes such as Ctrl-Shift-End/Ctrl-Shift-Home doesn’t work. But I think I’m on the right track and can probably get it working more reliably.

Thus, I’m not confident enough today to say “I have a Solution!” But I am pretty confident that if I can find some testers to help me work out the kinks, that I will be able to reach that point.

Running the Tests

Do you want to help me test it out? I hope so. If you

• Have a tablet PC
• Are running Windows XP Tablet edition or Vista
• Have Java 1.2 or higher installed in your web browser
• And currently see the floating TIP button when you run native Windows apps

then run the test applet by opening this page.

What to expect

You should see an applet that looks like the following screen captures but without the frame and close button. There will be three fields.

1) The first is a native java.awt.TextField. When it receives focus, you should see the floating TIP button appear. A right click will bring up the Windows popup menu that contains Copy, Cut and Paste plus a few other possible menu items.

2) The second is a plain Swing javax.swing.JTextField. When it get’s focus, the floating TIP button will not appear, and to enter text without a keyboard, you’ll have to use the TIP from the task bar.

3) The third field is a Swing java.swing.JTextField that I augmented per the approach described above. If all goes well, when you put focus on it, the floating TIP button should appear nearby the caret. Try entering or editing text via the floating TIP.

I intentionally didn’t implement support for opening the Windows popup menu on this field because in most apps you probably don’t want a native menu appearing in your non-native look and feel driven application. At some point, I will implement a right-click context menu to provide Copy, Cut, and Paste actions. However, I will probably not implement specification of the input scope as this would definitely require a native call to Windows.

Give me Feedback, Please

Whether or not it works as expected, please let me know by submitting a comment below or but sending me a message.

If it works, I’d like to know, just to know.

If it doesn’t work, tell me more about what OS, Java implementation, and hardware you are using plus as detailed a description of what you are actually observing. It you try it, it doesn’t work, and you don’t tell me, then I can’t try to fix it.

Next Steps

If I can get some good feedback and work out the problems so that it reliably works, then I’ll pursue a generic method for floating-TIP enabling Swing applications…and do a Part 2 for this article. The approach will likely involve some sort of wrapping of the look and feel in use in order to get access to each JTextComponent as it couples itself with it’s UI.

If I can devise something reasonable, then I expect to publish the source and binaries so that the tablet community can, at least, explicitly floating-TIP enable their Swing apps.

I do acknowledge that after reaching that point, it’d be good to somehow transparently enable floating TIP for all Java Swing apps on tablets without having to change them them. I simply can’t imagine how to do this without resorting to native code or petitioning an RFE to the Java implementation. But I don’t want to get ahead of myself just yet.

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If you’re somewhat tech savvy, you may periodically look into the long list of processes that is running on your Windows PC. Google them by their “image name” or the name of the executable that’s running and you often can find entries in windows process databases like
this one, this one, this one, this one, etc. that describe the process as

   It is a legitimate program, but it isn't required.

After receiving my replacement eo from TabletKiosk recently to correct an issue
with the usability of the TouchStyk I found that it had a whole bunch of processes running that I didn’t recognize. One of them, igfxpers.exe, was described as “legitimate, but not required.” So in an effort to reclaim resources that “unnecessary” background programs are using, I removed the string entry for it it from my registry’s

   \HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

key without much thought. Only after about half a day, I discovered that it really was doing something useful and should be running.

I run my eo most of the time at a scaled 1024×600 display resolution. When you do this, the desktop resolution is set to 1024×600 and the touch screen display is told, somehow, to scale all rendering as well as all touch input. If you take a fresh-from-the-vendor UMPC that uses Intel’s 915GMS video chipset and is running at a scaled resolution and shut it down or standby/hibernate it, you might notice that during the shutdown process, the display resolution drops back down to the screen’s native resolution of 800×480 (that’s native for the 2006-era UMPCs with 7 inch touch screens). When you restart the UMPC, the screen will be in the 800×480 resolution and you will have to adjust the display back up to the scaled resolution. Apparently UMPCs, or maybe it’s just the eo i72xx series UMPCs can’t remember the last used display resolution and restart with that setting.

Well, if you kill the igfxpers.exe process and remove it from your registry’s …\Run key, the automatic dropping of the display resolution does not happen as the UMPC shuts down. What you will find when you restart is that when you touch the screen anywhere but in the top left corner, the mouse moves to the right and below where you touch.

This is because the touch screen is showing a native 800×480 pixels of resolution, but the desktop/login screen size is larger. You effectively have a portal view into the unscaled desktop/login screen and have to pan around until you readjust the display scale settings.

Here’s an depiction of what I’m describing (not to scale):

For example, if you touch the screen at the native position of [100,100] and your display resolution is 1024×600, then the touch screen is scaling the touch position to [128,125] (math explained: 100*ScaledWidth/NativeWidth => 100*1024/800 = 128, and 100*ScaledHeight/NativeHeight => 100*600/480 = 125).

When this happens it’s REALLY hard to enter a password via the touch screen. You have to resort to using your UMPCs mouse stick or joypad and the mouse buttons to enter your password on the on screen keyboard or hook up a USB keyboard to enter your password and then readjust your display resolution after getting back into Windows.

Incidentally, if your system crashes or otherwise suffers an unclean power down and the screen resolution isn’t dropped, you will see this same effect.

Summary

Don’t always trust the “legitimate, but not required” diagnoses in those process databases. I don’t know what else igfxpers.exe might do, but it is definitely important if you run your Intel 915 video based UMPC at a scaled display resolution.

And if you ever do disable one of these mysterious looking processes, keep a record that you did it. I got lucky and discovered the side effect pretty quickly. Had it been a week or so, I might not have correlated the removal of igfxpers.exe from the registry and the symptom I was seeing.

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In the UMPC realm, a number of people have commented about their wifi connections periodically disconnecting. Apparently, owners of the Asus R2H and some owners of Samsung Q1s have had a lot of problems with their wireless connections periodically dropping. I’ve had my TabletKiosk eo i7210 for almost 4 months now and have noticed occasionally that the wifi connection would drop and reconnect occasionally. It never seemed to cause any inconveniences to me, so I ignored it. But when I read DanDar3′s story on the issue and how he upgraded the Intel drivers in his UMPC and improved his situation, I decided to look into the issue further.

It turned out that I was only seeing wifi disconnects when my eo was docked on it’s docking cradle in my home office. When it’s there it gets power and is connected over the Marvel Yukon LAN connection in the cradle which is blazing fast and great for copying videos and other large files to my eo from the other machines on my LAN. When the eo wasn’t on the cradle, it didn’t seem to be disconnecting the wifi at all.

I was able confirm this by observing it over the part of the day today both on and off of the cradle, and checking the System events in the Windows Event Viewer application. What I found is that, when the eo’s on the cradle, it would disconnect almost exactly every 10 minutes and then reconnect within about 5-30 seconds.

For kicks, I upgraded all the Intel drivers that were available in the version 8.1.1.1010 executable found at Intel’s driver download site. After a reboot, I was seeing the same behavior. So the driver update didn’t make the wifi disconnect problem go away.

After a little more googling around, I found a number of sites that said that the Window’s Wireless Zero Configuration service is responsble for the problem; that it will periodically, every 10 minutes actually, scan for stronger network signals to see if it can get a better connection. In doing so, it will often cause your wifi connection to be dropped and reconnected.

So I disabled the zero configuration service and configured the adapter using Winbond UI and service. Voila, the periodic disconnects went away!

But I was still intrigued by why, when using Window’s Wireless Zero Configuration to manage the wireless adapter, it would only drop the connection when the eo is on its cradle. So I spend a few hours with the zero configuration service running, enabling, disabling adapters in different orders, rebooting with the eo on the cradle then off of the cradle, removing and replugging in the hard-wired LAN cable and gathering my observations.

My Observations

My eo will only experience periodic drops/reconnects under the following conditions:

• Window’s Wireless Zero Configuration service is used to manage the wireless adapter, AND
• it is on the cradle, AND
• the cradle’s LAN cable is connected, AND
• the cradle’s LAN adapter is enabled prior to the wireless LAN adapter

The last item on the list is the important one. When your network adapters are enabled and you boot with the eo on the cradle, the cradle’s LAN is always enabled first (apparently). However, if you reboot the system off of the cradle, the wireless adapter is enabled first; and then if you put it on the cradle, you don’t experience disconnects.

I simulated this theory without reboots by disabling both adapters, restarting the Wireless Zero Configuration service, enabling the wireless adapter first, and then the cradle’s LAN adapter, and saw no more disconnecting. Do the same no-reboot experiment but enable the cradle’s LAN adapter before the wireless adapter and the disconnecting starts up again!

My Conclusions

I can only speculate that when Window’s Wireless Zero Configuration service sees the wired LAN adapter start first, it feels that the wired LAN is the primary adapter and it’s safe to periodically disconnect your wifi while looking for a stronger network signal. And that if the wireless adapter is started first, it’s opting not to do this periodic scan. At least on my eo i7210.

I decided to just avoid the issue altogether from now on by disabling Wireless Zero Configuration and using the Winbond configuration utility.

How does this relate to the wifi problems on the R2H and Q1? I really don’t know. If you have one, do the experiments and let me know what you find out.

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I recently mounted a TabletKiosk eo i7210 in my Hummer H2. I quickly realized that when using it at night, it would be very handy when I’m not actively using it to turn off the display without turning the machine off or putting it in standby/hibernate. With the screen dimmed all the way, it is still bright enough to reduce visibility out on the road and is also annoying to anyone who might be trying to sleep in back like my son.

What occurred to me was something ridiculously and naively simple. Put a shortcut to the “Blank” XP screensaver on the desktop or start bar quick launch tray. This screen saver is typically stored at:

   C:\Windows\System32\scrnsave.scr

Then whenever I want to “turn off” the screen, tap/click that shortcut and voila, the screen goes blank.

I could have also created an “Driving at Night” power scheme that would turn off the display after just a minute. But then you have to wait a minute instead of getting instant gratification. I prefer the blank-screen saver-as-a-monitor-off-switch approach.

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Summary: Mounting of a TabletKiosk oe i7210 UMPC in a HUMMER H2

In Part 1, I mention how Ram Mounts was the only mounting com ponent vendor (at the time) to have a UMPC holder that was sized well enough to hold the TabletKiosk eo i7210. Given that, I decided I’d go with an all Ram Mounts based solution to mount the eo in my HUMMER H2.

This is the full list of requirements I had in mind when planning this mount. Some were missing from my first post.

1. allow for quick insertion/removal of the UMPC into vehicle
2. don’t obscure air vents
3. don’t obscure shifter or cup holders
4. don’t obscure center console stereo, climate controls, transfer case, e-locker, and traction control buttons
5. don’t encroach on passenger space
6. securely hold it in offroad driving situations
7. position at convenient location for use by driver, i.e. don’t have to stretch or bend to reach or read it
8. allow for repositioning for use by passenger
9. minimize visible impact to vehicle – while I own the H2 and don’t plan to get rid of it until it dies, I’d prefer not to mar parts of the dash that are in plain view

This is a pretty healthy list of requirements. I decided that, to fulfill them, I had to use some sort of mounting arm that’s attached near the floor in a carpeted area where holes are out of sight, where the arm can be adjusted after installation, and the eo sits in a cradle at the end of that arm. It probably wasn’t going to be the cheapest or most turnkey solution.

Ram Mount Components

I did some measuring and decided to start with the following components that I ordered from expressmounts.com.

• (A) holder for LS800 tablet
• (B) 2.5″ base with 1.5″ ball – mounts on back of tablet holder
• (C) 7.88″ arm for 1.5″ balls – quick adjustability arm between balls (B) and (D)
• (D) 1.5″ ball with 0.5″ NPT threaded hole – to connect to lower end of arm (C) and top of pipe (E)
• (E) 12″ long powdercoated pipe with 0.5″ NPT threaded ends – to provide rise up from floor
• (F) 2.5″ base with 0.5″ NPT threaded hole – to mount pipe into side of console near the floor

When they’re all connected as described in the list above, they look like this. The cradle will bolt onto the upper-left end, and the plate on the lower right will be fastened into the side of the console between the driver and passenger seat.

Out With the Old

This is a picture of what I’m replacing. It’s a Creative Zen Touch mounted up near the 2 o’clock position on the steering wheel. I mounted it with an Arkon generic PDA cradle, bolted to an angle bracket that is bolted to the dash using one of the trim bolts that holds the bezel on the center console.
The an audio cable snakes down into the center console around knee level and then back up in the center console to an AUX input module that’s resting on top of the head unit.

Once I get the UMPC mount I’ll route the AUX input cable up it’s mounting arm and remove the PDA cradle.

In With the New

Mounting the Arm

First, I needed to open up the center console. I wanted to move the audio cable from the left side to the right. But more importantly, I had to place a block of wood behind the plastic console housing to screw the base into. Otherwise, the base would only be held with three screws through some thin plastic. Most of the Ram mount components are light, but the quick adjust arm and the UMPC itself are heavy enough that I wanted a solid base. The green arrows in the following picture show the 1×8 that I fit in there.

Next I screwed the base into the top right side of the center console so that the pipe is oriented straight up. I chose this location to mount the arm because if I ever remove it, the carpeting hides the mounting holes some. If you mount into the plastic dash surfaces and then later opt to remove it, you have very noticable holes and, possibly, a scratched up surface that hasn’t faded as much as the surrounding surface.

The screws go into the wood piece behind the console cover. But this isn’t enough. If I pushed on the pipe toward the driver side of the H2, it still torques the right panel of the console up a bit. So I fashioned up a brace from a spare window blind mounting clip that I had left over from a past project. The brace (circled in yellow in the picture below) is screwed into the floor and into the side of the console below the Ram mount base. This maked the mount much more solid. It does make for one more item that must be unbolted/unscrewed to slide the console out of the way in the event of service. And I might just paint it black to blend in more.

Here’s a view from the rear seat. While I have some removable DVD monitors strapped to the backs of the head rest, the mount is adjustable so that the UMPC could be pointed straight backward for viewing from in back.

And here is the arm from the driver’s side.

Modifying the Holder

The holder for the LS 800 almost works. The only problem with it, is that the clip that holds the top edge of the tablet, sits about an inch away from the tablet since the eo i7210 is about an inch shorter in height.

I tried cutting a piece of closed cell foam to fill the gap, but it neither looked very good nor did it hold the eo i7210 in place well. the foam was just too soft.

So instead, I decided to eliminate the approximately one inch rise in the sliding clip. I started by cutting the sliding clip into two parts:

Next, I found an only storage case that had a thick, fairly rigid, but also slightly smooth flexible plastic. From it, I cut out a rectangular piece to join the two pieces of the sliding clip back together.

Then I drilled holes in the plastic plate and the sliding clip pieces and bolted it all together.
Here’s a view of it.

You can see from the side that it drops the bump that retains the tablet.

Does it work? Yes, the clip does hold the eo i7210 in place.

From the side, you can see that the bump slides down over the front and the bolt heads don’t contact the eo i7210.

And it passes the gravity test.

Next, I retightened the nuts with a little LocTite thread lock instead of using lock washers, since I didn’t want to use any locking washers on the plastic nor did I want to make a trip to the hardware store for nylon locking nuts. And finally I cut off the excess bolt ends with a Dremel leaving a little extra thread to add some cap nuts if I remember to look for some the next time I go to the hardware store. Sadly, while cutting the last bolt, I let it get too hot and it started to melt the plastic plate and the sliding clip. I stopped before it got out of hand, but it doesn’t look as good as it could. My consolation is that in a few months, TabletKiosk should have their car mounting plate/holder on the market and I’ll replace the hacked LS800 holder with one made for the eo i7210.

In the HUMMER H2

Here it is in the HUMMER.

I paid full price for the TabletKiosk-supplied 12V DC power adapter. While it’s pricey, I saved myself the time searching for the right aftermarket adapter and power tip. Their adapter is a well made, compact unit that doesn’t run very hot. The power cord and AUX input cable are zip tied to the arm in a few spots to keep them orderly. It would have been nice to have more cord downstream from the power adapter box so that I could mount that on the console instead of tying it to the arm.

Does it shake at all? Unlike a solution that mounts the UMPC very close to a solid surface, this one puts it on the end of a foot or two of arm. So yes, it does shake a little as I touch the screen. And at speed or over terrais does vibrate some. Not enough to make it unusable however. In the near future, I may pursue bracing the upper end of the pipe on right right side of the dash center console to reduce vibration further. Of course, that will violate requirement #9 above. We’ll see.

What software am I running? Currently, I’m running regular desktop apps such as Thunderbird, iTunes and Windows Media Player and using DeLorme Street Atlas 2006 for mapping. I’ve got a Holux GPSlim 236 bluetooth enabled GPS receiver stashed in the center overhead console bin. I’ll be experimenting with more driving friendly front ends in the future, but will make do with what I’m currently using for now.

I have no plans to wire in a rear view camera. I may also wait a while to figure out if I can pipe video out into the portable DVD player with strap-on-headrest monitors. There’s no video out on the device. There’s an S-video out on the docking cradle, but integrating that into my mounting solution is not something I’m interested in. So this capbility will have to wait.
Also, I don’t have plans to run XM/Sirius or anything like that from the UMPC.

Conclusion

Am I happy with it? Yes.

It definitely wasn’t turnkey. I struggled at first to figure out how to mount it solidly without hacking up the dash or console. And since the tablet holder was made for an entirely different model, it took a lot of brainstorming to come up with this solution, not to mention a couple hours of careful cutting and tinkering to get it right. If you don’t have scrap components lying around, don’t have a good set of basic tools, or you just aren’t all that handy (I’m not tremendously handy BTW), this may not be the route to take.

Further, the Ram Mount components, while high quality, are not the most low-budget. I spent just over $100 including shipping to get all the pieces I needed.

Still I had fun doing the project and I love the fact that I didn’t have to compromise my requirements to gain a versatile mount for my TabletKiosk eo i7210.

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Just as I’ve started working on a secure vehicle mounting solution for my eo i7210 using after market mounting components, I learn from an undisclosed source that they have a car mounting plate product that they have not announced yet, but which will be available soon.

I’m pretty confident that the solution isn’t vaporware. I’ve seen numerous CAD renderings of it with an i7210 in it’s embrace and it looks like a real, viable design, not just a mockup.

It will supposedly be available within the next couple months.

By the way, their Universal Mounting Plate product, is intended to be a wall/industrial/medical mounting solution. That product, whose pictures are available at their site right now, is a different one than the car mounting plate I refer to above.

I’ve mentioned in earlier posts that I’ve had a few problems with my new TabletKiosk eo i7210 UMPC. We’ll I’ve had questions via email from a few people about it so I’ll describe some of them.

One of the first things I noticed after getting the device was that if I tried to use the TouchStyk controller to move the mouse, it really only wanted to go to the right and down. Attempts to move it to the left resulted in the mouse moving very slowly or not at all.

After a while looking around for some sort of software configuration options, I discovered that the dish shaped stick on the right side of the i72xx is really just a slip on cover over a rubbery/plastic stick that is mounted in a hole in the front cover of the machine. When I pulled it off, I immediately saw the problem.

In this picture, blurry as it is, you can see that the stick is not centered in the hole.

Unlike the IBM trackpoint red-dot sticks that don’t really move but rather just sence variable pressure upon them, this stick moves like a joystick to register user input. When you put the OE stick cover over it, it doesn’t have enough free play to move left and up. It’s just a simple physical impediment.

A call to TabletKiosk and without any fuss at all, they said they’d swap it out for a replacement when new units became available in a few weeks and issued me an RMA number. They say they won’t leave me without a machine too. So they’ll send out the new unit before requiring the original one come back. You have to like support like that.

I think that when these units came in really late at the end of August, TabletKiosk did a fair amount of due diligence testing, delaying shipment for a couple days, but trying to get them in customers hands as soon as possible. In the process, a little defect like this got overlooked. I don’t fault them for walking that thin line between customer satisfaction and risking some support calls on issues they didn’t have time to identify. The 800-1000 customers that got the units before they suspended shipping due to video driver issues, myself included, are almost certainly all very happy they got their units when they did, defects and all.

In the meantime I’ve simply left the cap off and am using directly. I contemplated not doing the exchange as I could just use it with the cap off, but since TabletKiosk was so helpful, and since it might just be nice to use the TouchStyk with the OE cover on, I’m going to go through with it.

Thanks TabletKiosk for your good support.

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The moment the UMPC platform was unveiled at Microsoft, I immediately knew that I was going to put one of them in my HUMMER H2. My H2 doesn’t have an in-dash nav unit. It’s just a stereo, CD player, tape deck. I’m currently using a Creative Zen Touch to pipe audio into the head unit using an aux input module from Pacific Accessory Corporation that I installed a while ago. I figured, if I’m going to have a UMPC, it’s going to replace my Zen Touch and add every other capability I might want in-vehicle since it’s a complete Windows PC.

Now, one major problem is that there is no mounting system available for the TabletKiosk eo’s yet. TabletKiosk has a “Universal Mounting Plate” spec’ed out, but I don’t know when they’ll be available. I contacted Arkon, Ram Mounts, Panavise, and ProClips and no one had anything specifically made for the i7210, nor were there any generic/univeral holders that looked to be the right dimensions to hold the i7210.

What I did find is that Ram Mounts has a tablet holder for the Motion Computing LS800 (Part #RAM-HOL-MOT3U). The LS800 is 8.95″ wide and 6.7″ tall. The eo i7210 is 8.9″ wide and 5.63″ tall. The widths are nearly identical. The heights aren’t, but I was hoping that the Ram holder could be adjusted smaller or that I could pad the holder or modify it as needed to fit the eo i7210.

So I ordered one of these holders from expressmounts.com and it arrived today.

After opening the box, I discovered that with the mount adjusted to it’s smallest size, the vertical gap from the top of the eo i7210 to the top clip of the holder is about one inch (prior to ordering, I hadn’t been able to obtain this specification from any person or website source).

Luckily, it is a nearly perfect fit width-wise. The lower corners of the eo are perhaps a bit more rounded than those of the LS800, but it sits nice and snuggly inside the cradle.

I plan to keep this holder and start by padding the gap with a carefully trimmed piece of mini-cell foam. I think I can do that with out interfering with the air vents on the i7210 and without it looking too ugly. If that doesn’t pan out, I will hack up the adjustable top plate and fabricate something to position the retainer clip at the right height and depth.

I’m ordering the remainder of the Ram Mount components later today to mount it in the HUMMER.

Stay tuned. When the components arrive, I will post part 2…installing it all in the H2.

Addendum

I added this because of Fej Nnud’s question. Here’s a slightly better picture of the back of the holder. I initially thought I’d cut up the sliding clip so that it can go an inch lower. It would be easy to cut the lower area scribbled in yellow to allow it to slide down farther. But the body of the holder needs to be cut too on the upper yellowed areas. Unfortunately those areas need to have about an inch cut away which would be below the position where the bolt that holds the sliding arm in place is located. The result would be two very cut up pieces that I couldn’t attach any more.

Continue on to Part 2

Part 2 >

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I was one of the lucky ones who received his eo i72xx series UMPC from TabletKiosk before they indefinitely postponed shipments of the first allocation of machines due to “driver issues.”

This is according to this post on September 13th at origamiproject.com‘s forums.

Thank you for contacting TabletKiosk. We have received your order, however at this moment we have stopped shipping units due to a identified software driver issue. We anticipate we should have this issue resolved within the next 72 hours at which time we will resume shipping these units.

Based on some support requests of my own concerning the video drivers, I believe the driver issue that’s holding up shipments is with the Intel graphics drivers. I’ll follow this post soon with another detailing my issues.

But as of today (Sept-26), it seems that TabletKiosk still hasn’t resumed shipments of the 72xx series models.

As of today (Sept-26) it sounds like TabletKiosk has recently resumed shipments of devices with updated video drivers. A couple people with order numbers at or above ~1000 have either received their machines with updated drivers or received notice of shipment (cite).

While people wait to get these machines I’ll feed the interests of others by reporting that despite the varied issues I’ve had (posts forthcoming on these), I still love my eo. I’m using it all the time in lots of different places. Here’s a list of things I’m using it for now.

Watching TV shows I’ve recorded.

We have a little boy who happens to go to bed right in the timeslot of the few TV shows we like. So I record them via the video capture card on my Mac and my wife an I watch them later in the evening on the eo. For some reason this it’s more enjoyable to snuggle up on the couch and watch via this tiny piece of technology than for to record shows on VHS and watch them on the big screen TV. We’ll see if this odd behavior of ours passes as the novelty of the eo wears off.

OneNote

I’ve installed a copy of OneNote 2007 Beta 2 Technical Refresh and boy is it cool. All I’ll say is that this is saving me from keeping lots of little scraps of paper lying around. We’re in the process of building a house and having a tablet and OneNote months ago would have been an awesome way to manage all the decisions and correspondence. Regardless, OneNote’s open most of the time, using it to record phone calls/coversations, take meeting notes, and collect research for various “projects,” and manage our shopping list all the while sharing notebooks with my other Windows box so that I can get at this information from multiple machines. I like this tool.

GPS + mapping

I bought a copy of DeLorme’s Street Atlas 2006 earlier this summer in anticipation of getting a UMPC.

I also just bought a Holux GPSlim 236 bluetooth GPS receiver on ebay. This is a very nice GPS receiver using the SiRF III chipset which allows it to get a satellite lock very quickly and even in poor overhead cover (inside, under trees, next to buildings. I paired it with the eo very easily and it seems to work with any app that uses NMEA 2.3 protocol over a serial port. Plus I can recharge it’s battery via a USB A-to-mini-B cable right off of the UMPC.

Short story (more on this later) is that Street Atlas 2006 and the Holux receiver work great together and I was able to find some outof the way shops easily on arecent trip out of town using them.

Wardriving

Just for kicks, I installed Netstumbler 0.4 and used it and the Holux GPS receiver to find tons of access points around the small town I live in. I won’t say this is a new hobby for me, but it is very interesting to see how popular 802.11b is now; and how many suckers are running unsecured access points. Too bad only a couple of them are actually open for free public use.

Portable Music Library

My collection of music and audio books recently outgrew the 18GB limit on my Creative Zen Touch player. Now I’m using up about 1/3 of the dinky 60GB drive on the eo for my collection. But at least I don’t have to define special filters to decide what I’m going to keep on the media player I use in my truck.

Browsing/Emailing/IMing from all over my property

Yes, I have used the eo from the toilet. Ewwwww.

There are a lot more fun things I’ve been doing with it. Stay tuned.

For those still waiting for your eo i72xx series orders to be fulfilled, hang in there.

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