Yesterday I posted a tip on how to access Vista’s On-Screen Keyboard. If you have the Business, Enterprise, Home Premium, or Ultimate versions of Vista, then you have another option to the On-Screen Keyboard that Vista offers. Called the Tablet PC Input Panel, this program is designed to allow tablet PC users to input information in a few ways, including writing words or characters by hand, or by tapping on an on-screen keyboard. You don’t have to be running a Tablet PC to use it, the functionality is now built into Vista (instead of being a separate version of Windows as XP Tablet PC Edition was).

As usual, there are a few ways to access this keyboard, here are two:

1. The quicker method that requires the use of a keyboard:
   1. Click the Start menu and type Tablet, you’ll see the Tablet PC Input Panel as your first option, simply hit the Enter key to select it, or click it with your mouse.
      
2. A more involved method that’s more useful if you access the On-Screen Keyboard often:
   1. You can also right-click the Start menu and choose Properties.
      
   2. Click the Toolbars tab, and select Tablet PC Input Panel to display a button for the panel in your taskbar (click OK of course).
      
   3. Click on the Tablet PC Input Panel button in your Taskbar
      

Using either method, you should see something that looks like this:

This interface will allow you to write with your pen on a tablet PC, or you can use your mouse on your normal PC (try it, not as easy as it sounds). To switch to the keyboard input, click on the On-Screen Keyboard button in the upper-left-hand corner.

There are a number of options available in the Tools menu’s Options command, though they mostly will only be useful to tablet PC users. One that might be useful to a standard PC user is the option to dock the keyboard to the top or bottom of the screen. These are available in the Tools menu. Here’s the keyboard docked to the bottom of my wide-screen laptop:

I find this keyboard to be more attractive than the standard Vista On-Screen Keyboard (though a bit excessive when docked on a 1920px wide display), and more functional as well with the ability to dock it. In any case, now you have two to choose from, and options to open each with the keyboard or the mouse. If you are interested in other tablet PC options, see Microsoft’s Improve Your Tablet PC Experience with Windows Vista.