Tricking out your HP2710p or why I love Q-menu
November 18, 2007
I believe all the Tablet PCs have all been distributed, but so late into the term that you may not be using them to full benefit waiting for Spring Semester. Unfortunately, the default settings aren’t designed to help you get the most out of the HP Tablet PC (in my opinion) so this message is intended to help you modify the initial settings so you can make your Tablet PC be more convenient for you. I am suggesting that you change two buttons to bring up Q-menu (a very useful HP built-in feature) and one hard to find. And if you really like long battery life read all the way to the end.
I write of the default settings for the two buttons on the surface of your HP2710p that will automatically bring up a window or program on your computer. These two buttons are shown in the pictures and are labeled for HP Information (an ‘I’ in a circle on the side of your tablet) and for presentation (a touch sensitive button that looks like a projector screen at the top of the keyboard).
Figure 1: Presentation button on touch sensitive panel (followed by mute and volume)
Figure 2: HP information center on the left side of your HP2710p (between the wireless and USB port)
If you press the first image in Figure 1 you get the Presentation menu and can quickly connect to a projector or external monitor. You can get to this selection in the Q-menu as well.
If you press the middle button in Figure 2 you get on screen the HP Information Center with two links to HP 3D DriveControl and System Information, both fairly useless for the day to day uses by a teacher.
Q Menu
Let’s replace the functions of the buttons in figure 1 and 2 with Q-menu and then modify Q-menu from its simple look to one that is much more useful.
Find the Q-menu icon in the tray in the right bottom of your screen. It looks like the image in Figure 3. Click on it and you will see the small default Q-menu as shown in Figure 4. Hard to click on those small icons with the pen sometimes isn’t it. If you can’t click it with your pen you may want to recalibrate your pen. By the way you can find that menu through Q-menu as well.
Figure 3: The Q-menu icon
Figure 4: Default Q-menu in the HP2710p
The choice in the small menu for “Presentation On” is what the touch sensitive button in Figure 1 brings up. So if we replace the function of what is in figure 1 you will not lose that choice, you will be just one click away from it and you will have control over the other choices as shown in Figure 4.
The choices on Q-menu are ‘Brightness’ which is also controllable by fn-F9 and fn-F10 on the keyboard (if you aren’t in slate mode), ‘Presentation On’ which you can also get by fn-F7 (if you aren’t in slate mode), ‘Portrait-Primary’ and ‘Landscape-Primary’ for choice of screen orientation (also available by using the point of your pen pressed into the hole labeled by two arrows in a circle on the edge of the screen by the hinge) and ‘Tablet PC settings’ where you can calibrate your pen, choose whether you are right or left handed, and other options.
Ok time for a digression – as you write with your pen you may discover that you accidently press that button on the side too much as you hold it and the right click menus come up when you think you are just trying to write or choose regular (or left-) clicks. If you choose ‘Tablet PC Settings’ and choose the ‘Pen Options’ tab in the window that comes up on your screen you might want to consider un-checking the “Use pen button to right-click.” This disables the button on the side and you can click it to your hearts content and never interfere with your writing. To get a right click you can just press and hold the pen tip to the screen and the right-click menu will appear.
Ok, back to the Q-menu. Click on the icon (Figure 3) and when the menu comes up choose ‘HP Quick Launch Buttons.’ The programmable buttons tab should appear first and change the settings from ‘Presentation’ to ‘Q Menu’ and from ‘HP Info Center’ to ‘Q Menu’ and press Apply. (If you selected OK you will have to bring the Q menu back up, but now you can do so from either the touch sensitive button of Figure 1 or the info button of Figure 2.
With the Q Menu back up and having selected HP Quick Launch Buttons, now chose the ‘Q Menu’ tab and you are presented with a lot of choces as to what to include on the Q-menu. You can change these at any time. My current Q-menu looks like the one in Figure 5.
Figure 5: My Q-menu Settings
Whether in slate of not I find these controls so useful that they are the difference between liking and loving my HP2710p. In slate mode you can control mute and volume so easily. You can select whether you want to use only the Tablet PC display (Internal Display) or only a second monitor (External Display) or a projector (Dual Display) or a second monitor on your desk (Extended Display). A click on ‘Presentation On (or Off) will take you through the presentation configuration menu.
Power Options, ALS and Battery Life
The capture screen and capture window work very well and I used them to put these figures together. Power Options can allow you to tweak your Tablet PC to give longer battery life. Try the max battery settings, but configure your presentations to ignore this setting while presentation is on.
And speaking of long battery life the greatest aid to that is the choice of ‘Toggle ALS.’ ALS stands for Automatic Light Sensor. This light sensor is on the screen just about ¾ of an inch from the left edge of the hinge. It measures the amount of light and will dim the screen in low light situations and brighten it in bright light situations. Compared to setting brightness to 100% this will save you lots of battery since next to the DVD, the screen is the hardest on the battery life.
This setting is annoying at first, but try to get used to it because the rewards in battery life are great. On a recent trip to Savannah I pulled the Tablet PC out with the extended battery on and ALS set to on (planes have very dim lighting) and after turning it on I noticed the battery indicator indicating 11.5 hours of battery life. Use 100% brightness or compute in very bright light and this falls to about 6-7 hours.
Depending on how you hold the tablet (especially in slate mode) and whether you are right or left handed, you might find that you are often covering the light sensor and the screen dims too much to easily read it. If this happens, either try to learn to hold the tablet a bit differently or use the secondary portrait and secondary landscape settings to put the sensor on the other side of the image.
One last thing – it’s a feature and not a bug, but it can bug you anyway
Does your Tablet PC change orientation automatically when you lay the screen down into slate mode whether you want it to or not? For example it is annoying for the tablet to rotate to portrait when you want to connect to a projector in slate mode so you can write better. Here is the solution. Bring up Q-menu, select ‘HP Quick Launch Buttons’ and then the preferences tab. Uncheck ‘enable automatic mode change.’ That’s it! Problem solved and you can use Q-menu to select your orientation or the hole on the side of the screen.
Join in the discussion
Let me know how useful this has been. I decided to post this after discussions with members of the ITL Technology in Learning Research team and we hope this is some service. This will be distributed on the UA-dig email list and feel free to reply and offer your own comments, suggestions and questions on the use of a Tablet PC. I will also post this to the UA-dig webpage (http://gozips.uakron.edu/~myers/uadig/ ) and will also post it to my personal blog (http://learnecon.blogspot.com/ ) where I often write about technology use and have written about Tablet PCs a lot.
So again, join in the discussion. Tell us how you are intending to use the Tablet PC in your courses and share your successes and your frustrations.
Steve Myers
Economics