Operational Issues, including Device Specific Notes

Desktop Development Environment

Latest development (by Glenn) is mainly using an older Alienware machine (now Dell). It is a 64-bit AMD Athlon machine, but the dual-boot operating systems are 32-bit, namely Win 7 Pro and Win 8.1 (Full version, Glenn's purchase). 32-bits are used because of, for instance, 64-bit Win8.1 install-hang problems with this early 64-bit mobo. Hard drive is now SSD. Landscape-mode monitor is a 21" Dell 2-finger touchscreen (model SX2210T), which uses 2-bezel-camera technology to locate touchpoints.

Drawbacks

When using TP8 picture cropping... if fingers used instead of mouse, can sometimes be very sluggish to respond. This might be because the processor, tho fast, is single-core, so may be bogged down with background tasks (not necessarily related to TP8).

When taking photo. Built-in Dell front-facing camera does not auto-mirror during video preview, so its difficult to position head in shot. (Win8 drivers for this early touchscreen monitor are lacking.) This is unlike the Surface Pro 2, which does auto-mirror.

Tablet Testing Environment

During 2013, testing was conducted using a Samsung Slate 7, with the original operating system replaced by Win 8.0 Pro (or was it Enterprise?). TP8 was run under the VS2012 debugger, and installed by USB transfer.

By April, 2014, this Samsung Slate was reformatted for Win7, and used as an additional TP7 station.

Beginning in 2014 and currently, a Surface Pro 2 is the main deployed testing tool.

###Drawbacks of Surface Pro 2 The Surface Pro 2 was tested during April, 2013, using the Win 8.0/VS 2012 version that incorporated the listed bug fixes through the end of February. (See the Items list for software issues.) TP7 (production version) was also installed and runnable under the Win 8 desktop.

A problem with having both TP7 and TP8 active is that they conflict for use of the webcam. Sometimes the Task Manager had to be used explicitly kill TP8 so that TP7 could be used.

Problems in using TP7 on the Surface Pro 2 are -

• on tablets, TP7 works best in portrait mode, so that the popup keyboard doesn't block the form fields, and there's even some minimal room for the second webcam window that TP7 (unlike TP8) uses.
• when holding the Surface Pro 2 in portrait mode, it's far too easy to accidentally hit the Home button on the bezel, throwing the use out of desktop mode and into Modern UI. There is evidently no software fix for this with 8.1 (there was a hack for 8.0). A piece of masking tape over the button helps a little.
• Another TP7 portrait-mode problem: the webcam window can be resized smaller to make room for the virtual keyboard, but then some of the helpful webcam window controls (such as rotate, flip) disappear.