A glitch in the latest version of Microsoft's Tablet PC software is causing significant performance problems for those running the new operating system, the company has confirmed.
The bug is in the redesigned virtual ink input menu in Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005, released last year. Over time, the panel that handles pen input eats up more and more of a system's resources, choking off computing power needed for other programs.
A Microsoft representative said late Tuesday that the company is aware of the issue, which appears to affect all machines running the latest version of the Tablet OS. The representative said Microsoft hopes to have a fix soon. However, the company did not offer a specific time frame for a solution.
Until a fix is ready, Microsoft is advising those running the OS to reboot their machines daily. The Microsoft representative said that most users already reboot daily and said those who do so are unlikely to notice any performance problems.
The feature in question, known as the Tablet Input Panel, or TIP, was overhauled in the latest version of the tablet software, in an effort to improve pen input from within existing programs. Windows XP Tablet PC has all the functions of standard Windows XP, with the added option of enabling people to use a digital pen to input text, draw graphics or move the cursor.
The revamped input panel and improved overall handwriting recognition were two of the main features Microsoft touted when it launched the affected version of Windows XP Tablet PC. The update, code-named Lonestar, was released last autumn alongside Windows XP Service Pack 2.
The memory problem was reported late last month by enthusiast site Tablet PC Talk. The site noted that the program starts out using about 10MB of memory, but that usage can swell to more than 150MB after a couple weeks' continuous use.
Talkback
Reboot once a day - "even if you don't have to"? LUXURY!
Got to get me one of those! Maybe we should all migrate to Tablet OS now and benefit from this resilience.
Surely this is no problem as at least one reboot a working day on XP Regular is the norm.
I would like to meet any corporate user who has had any Microsoft OS run without crashing, hanging or becoming unusably unresponsive within a full working day. To be fair I suppose this has to include Outlook/MSX, which seems to cause a number of these hangs.
A daily reboot is part of a normal Microsoft working day. As is a total reformat and rebuild once a year at Xmas to clear out all the evil junk the OS leaves lying around and Systemworks doesn't get rid of.
I think you are making too much fuss about this.
If it was a Mac app then you could complain standards were being lowered. Not with Windows - yet.
The Tablet patch was not available today when I tried to download it at 0600 EST.
I have a fujitsu T4010D with 512Mb of memory and it spends it's life paging memory from the disk. The pen has become useless as every stroke brings the harddisk to life.
I am investing in more memory to solve the problem.