Tablet handwriting entry in Vista - not very good

[noetus]

I use pen input on my X61 tablet quite a lot, with Vista's handwriting recognition. I seem to have a couple of problems:

(1) Whenever I hover the pen over an area that accepts text entry, an icon appears for the handwriting recognition box (or whatever it is called). Selecting it is supposed to make the handwriting recognition box pop out so you can input text. However, often pressing the icon does nothing, or the icon flashes, or makes it simply disappears, and the handwriting recognition box never appears. On Windows components, including IE, it works better (but still not satisfactorily), while on 3rd part apps (e.g. Firefox) it works hardly at all. Sometimes if I tap it furiously the box will appear, but usually it doesn't. Normally I just select the box manually (by selecting it at the side of the screen) rather than go through the bother and hassle of "will it, won't it?" which defeats the whole purpose of having this feature.

Vista should really have the ability to just let you write directly on any area of the screen that accepts text, rather than having to go through the clunky interface of the handwriting recognition box popping out anyway.

(2) Often when I've used the handwriting recognition box to enter some text, it turns out that Vista has "forgotten" where the text cursor focus was, and pressing "Insert" simply makes the text I've painstakingly entered disappear - it doesn't appear where it was supposed to, or anywhere. Again, this is worse on 3rd party apps (I almost feel a conspiracy!) but IE, etc, is not immune either. It's aggravating, because I have to re-write & convert the text manually all over again. I never know when it is going to work or not. It seriously affects the usability of pen input on the tablet for me.

At the very least, if Vista has lost the text input cursor focus, rather than making the converted text simply disappear, which is just idiotic, it should come up with an error and an option to select the proper text cursor focus, so that you don't lose what you already converted. I notice that the problem seems worse if I have had to "correct" a wrongly-converted letter or two in the handwriting recognition box - that always seems to make Vista forget where the text input cursor is, and my text disappears when I select 'Insert'. A slight workaround is to select the text input focus manually with the pen WITHOUT using 'Insert' once there's some text there ready, but it is still really aggravating - especially when I forget to do this.

I also use an Apple Mac for work and I have to say, Apple would never allow these sorts of imperfections into a release version of their OS. Vista tablet entry is just hideous. Unless this is some strange quirk of my particular machine.

Incidentally, as well as these bug fixes, a feature I'd like to see implemented on the handwriting recognition is a button which simply says, "Last text entered". Or even better, a button which allows you to review the last 5 or 10 or whatever pieces of text you converted. I often find myself having to convert the very same text a second or even a third time (e.g. for search boxes on the Internet) and having an active stack of previous entries would be very useful and make the tedium of pen entry a little easier to bear. It would also help as a workaround to problem (2).

Also, why does drawing a 'O' with a stroke through it NOT produce a zero? The only way I can reliably produce a zero (rather than the letter 'o') is by selecting the 'num' mini-keypad. It's unbelievable. That is a very basic problem.

While I'm on a roll here, the page up/page down gesture is hopeless to the point of being unusable. Instead of a nice smooth gradated scroll movement like on the iPhone's/iTune's cover flow, it jerks the page up or down a full screen (that's when it recognizes the gesture at all) in a sudden, awkward movement. This interrupts the reading flow - since NOTHING remains of the previous screen, it's really disconcerting - you have to wait until you've completely read the entire screen, then jerk the whole thing down all at once (which takes a moment), then move your eyes to the top of the page - you totally lose the ability to track the text with your eyes comfortably.

Microsoft, are you listening?

[Trekk69]

Good read.
I agree with you on your points regarding the handwriting involvement with Vista and other applications, many of the same issues plague me/ would like to see addressed, maybe with an SP2, or specific 'Tablet service pack upgrade"