SurfaceProBro.com is LIVE!

Okay, ladies & gentlemen… I’ve come out of my blogging hiatus to confirm the rumors that you’ve been hearing on the streets and in the dark alley ways. Yes, it’s true – SURFACEPROBRO.COM is now live! I’ve saved your little fingers about a dozen keystrokes – you’re welcome!

Latest Update brings awesome Ink Reminders to Windows 10

O. M. G.  Ink Reminders in the new Win10 update (Threshold 2) are awesome…

From the Cortana menu, start up an ink note and let her know when you want to be reminded…

How awesome is it to see your handwritten note as a reminder!…

Can it be even more awesome. Uhhh… yes. Cortana reads my handwriting…

Fragile Links in OneNote

While Links are a great way to set pointers for jumping to different areas of your page, and works nice on your Surface when using your fingers to click, drag & zoom around your page. But be wary of their fragile nature when moving your Page to a different location in your notebooks…

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office_2010-onenote/is-there-a-way-to-move-a-page-to-a-different/52d0ef08-0238-40c2-8b75-2c15e70306bf

Ways & Whys to Lasso in OneNote

One feature often under-utilized in OneNote is the Lasso tool. On the Surface Pro, there are a few different ways to execute this feature since you have mouse, pen, and touch as options. See my video below for a demo, but here are the details:

The Ways

OneNote Desktop: Pen, Finger, or the Lasso Select button in the Draw toolbar. You can use the mouse to lasso or just select things with a basic square selector, but lasso is more precise (curves can go around other objects)

OneNote Modern UI app: Pen or Finger – no Lasso Select button (although Lasso options will show in the radial menu after you lasso something).

iStylus??? Gimme a break…

With all the rumors and rumblings about a stylus being a part of the next iPad, it becomes even more important to understand why the Windows pen experience is so much more than a “stylus”. Here are a few old posts of mine discussing some of the differentiators. Namely:

• stylus vs [active digitzer] pen
• finger markings vs digital ink
• palm rejection

PowerPoint, Pen Inking and Surface Pro 3 [VIDEO]

PowerPoint, and the entire Office suite for that matter, is fully pen-enabled:

As a result, I’ve enjoyed using the pen and a tablet PC to do quick layouts for my SharePoint presentations. In fact, I’ve been doing this since back in the Windows XP days, and this new video (below) represents a reboot of my old video, which was done on a Windows XP Toshiba hybrid tablet PC. It had a flawless pen experience, but sadly no touch. Not to mention that it weighed 70 million pounds. : )

Anyway, check it out and lemme know what you think:

BTW – if you’re wondering about the video I inserted into a slide, that can be found here.

People who use the Surface Pro pen are smarter than everyone else

Okay, that might not be true. ; ) But I noticed several articles pop up this week talking about the awesome benefits of note-taking, especially handwritten notes. And this is where the Surface Pro plus OneNote really shines. I myself probably have a decade worth of handwritten notes in OneNote, because I’ve been using a pen and Windows tablets since my old Windows XP Toshiba days. : )

I packaged them in a hashtag (#SurfaceProPlusOneNote), but here they are for your convenience: