annoying! keyboard doesnt automatically pop up

I just purchased a thinkpad tablet 8 thinking it would be light years ahead of my 3 year old android tablet. man, am I disappointed.

The onscreen keyboard just sucks compared to my galaxy tab 7.7. not only do I have to press the little icon on the bottom of the screen to pop it up manually, there is zero feedback. no haptic feedback, can barely hear any sound, the number row is in a different page, and it doesn't auto fill any forms with previously typed info, such as email, names, etc.

And the android widgets is better than the win8 tiles. The stock tiles for example, instead of showing my watched stocks, it cycles through a slideshow of useless info and would take forever to cycle through the stats I want.

On android, the keyboard would appear and disappear automatically depending on where u click on the browser. on windows u have to do it automatically.

I'm using the stock ie browser.

In Windows 8, the keyboard will only pop up automatically in Metro/Modern UI apps (not desktop apps). Although, I think either the desktop version (latest) of Chrome of Firefox will pop up the keyboard automatically if you tap in the address bar.

This has been an annoyance for a lot of Windows 8 users. Microsoft thinks that if you are in the desktop then you must be using a physical keyboard and mouse so they never programmed the need to have the virtual keyboard pop up.

There are 3rd party keyboard programs that are compatible with Windows 8 that WILL work in the desktop and WILL pop up automatically when you tap/click into a text field. You'll have to Google them and choose the one you want. Warning. Most are not free.

I just found a solution for this. There is a program called Tabtip On-Demand. They charge $1.99 for their program and will fully work for 7 days to try before you buy it..

This almost brings the same functionality into the desktop that you have in the Metro screen with the keyboard.

With this program installed, when you are in the desktop environment and tap into an open text box, it does make the virtual keyboard pop only. The only exception is it will not raise the screen above the virtual keyboard. Or at least it didn't for me.
So, if you have something you need to type in the lower 1/3 of the screen, this still won't work.


Hope all this helps.