Tablet thickness is not an issue; the weight is

Having used several different tablets for many months now, I have realized what nonsense striving for the thinnest possible gadget is. Sure, as an engineering feat, it is a worthwhile challenge, but it's not necessarily what suits our anatomy best. In fact, the thicker the gadget is, the better if fits in the hands and feels closer to a physical book or any other tool we humans use.

When you read a thick book (300+ pages) in bed, say, do you hold it by the thick or thin half? If you have just read 20 pages, it's very likely that you are holding the other 280 pages in your right hand, not the 20 pages in your left hand. The grip just feels natural and less tiring.

The tablet weight is, of course, another thing -- we want the lightest possible, even lighter than our traditional paper books. Please, Apple and other tablet makers, work on the weight, the thickness is not an issue.

When the Notion Ink Adam tablet appeared (and promptly vanished?), I immediately liked many things about it: a grip so thick that it accommodates removable batteries (very few tablets have that, maybe none) and speakers larger than the norm.

The Sony S1 tablet also sports a human grip, similar to Adam's, although Adam was the first to break the (mostly) Apple-imposed thin-is-beautiful dogma.

My HP TouchPad (running Android, of course) is quite thick, but I like it more now that I've increased its thickness with a protective case! The weight, on the other hand, is a real, not cosmetic, problem, requiring various strategies for carrying around and using comfortably.

Winkey power key

A surprising number of users have no idea what the Winkey (the key with the Windows logo, next to the LEFT Ctrl key) is for, let alone the Application or Menu key (the one next to the RIGHT Ctrl key). They may hit them only by accident and simply ignore them, or panic and make sure they never touch them again! Even if shown that pressing the Winkey is the equivalent of a mouse click on the Start button, they are not impressed and continue to waste a few seconds here, a few seconds there, navigating with the mouse exclusively. Those seconds do add up, resulting in days or months wasted. Sigh...

We have already seen the power and simplicity of using the Winkey+Pause shortcut, but Winkey has many more uses assigned to it out of the box. When this key first appeared on keyboards with the advent of Windows 95, Microsoft assigned only a handful of functions to it. With every new  Windows version, new assignments were added. Unfortunately, with Vista and Windows 7, Winkey became overloaded and too complex to use even for keyboard fanatics. Worse, some assignments introduced in Vista were revoked in Windows 7, totally discrediting the UI design team in charge of keyboard issues.
Here are the essential Winkey combinations introduced in XP that have proven to be very useful. I rely on many of them daily. The list is much longer and may change as Windows evolves. Note that UPPERCASE letters below require pressing Shift in addtion to Winkey:

Winkey+F1 - Windows Help
Winkey+Pause - System Properties
Winkey+b - Select the first icon in the Taskbar Notification Area. Use arrows to select other icons, or TAB to jump to other elements on the Taskbar. This is extremely useful if no pointing device is available!
Winkey+e - Windows Explorer
Winkey+E - Network Connection
Winkey+f - Search for files, people, computers, Internet
Winkey+Ctrl+f - Search for computers
Winkey+l - Lock your session, or switch user
Winkey+r - Open the Run dialog (a must for power users)
Winkey+u - Utility Manager
Winkey+d - Show Desktop - please learn at least this one, please...
Winkey+m - Minimize all windows
Winkey+M - Restore all windows (after Winkey+d or Winkey+m)

Be sure you try them at least once and start using them. Also, please, promise me that you will at least start using Winkey+m (or Winkey+d) and Winkey+M if you often click on icons on your desktop. Why am I asking this of you? Because I see so many people not knowing how to bring their Desktop into full view other than minimizing (even closing!) or dragging around windows until the icon the need becomes visible. When they've launched the icon, they happily restore everything manually, never wondering if there is an, er, intelligent way of doing this.

And then came Vista and 7... and made a horrible mess! Some of the combinations introduced in Vista and 7 are doomed to be totally ignored, or hated when pressed inadvertedly.

For example, Winkey+[n] will bring to front the applications currently on the taskbar. Good for the first 10 applications, where Winkey+0 is 10. What if you have more? I can see why Winkey+1 or Winkey+2 is a time-saver, but not, say, Winkey+8. Locating the 8th item on the taskbar by counting is slower and more error-prone than just grabbing the mouse and clicking on the item.

For the first time, I find that switching to the mouse would make more sense for certain operations!

As for me, I will continue using Alt+TAB or Alt+Escape as the preferred way to bring an application to the front. Winkey+n should have been left for users to assign their own functions -- something I've done years ago using AutoHotkey and that I now have to abandon.

There are also plenty of combinations related to moving windows around the screen(s) and Winkey+DOWN/UP to Restore/Maximize the currrent window.

The assumption here is that users would want to spend all their time manipulating windows instead of doing useful work. Does one really maximize/restore windows frequently? I have never done it -- I just Alt+TAB to something else and leave all my windows as they are.