Just submitted this feedback to the Tablet PC 2004 beta:
One of the best features of the Tablet PC update is the option to "Show Input Panel next to the text area when possible". My only complaint is that it is not smarter about when I'm using a pen and when I'm using the trackpad.
This means that, unless I go in and toggle this checkbox manually, I see the TIP popup even when working in laptop mode.
I'm pretty sure the presence of a pen is exposed via the managed API, so I can't imagine this being a particularly hard technical problem to solve.