UPDATE: A more detailed version is here.
So I got my Lenovo Thinkpad X61 Tablet.
Because I “have” to buy it through my school (read: if I do, I get 3 year warranty, in-school repairs, Adobe Photoshop 5 Elements, Adobe Premier 3 Elements, and Adobe Contribute 4), I am stuck with:
-A 1400 by 1050 resolution screen. While this is very good, it means that I don’t get to use multitouch. It doesn’t matter to me, because multitouch screens have lower resolution and are $100 more. I can just build my own (I’ll post about that when I do it).
-A 1.60 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo CPU. If I ordered it outside, I would have been able to get over 2.0 GHz.
-80 GB of hard drive space at 5400 RPM. You can get up to 120 normally, and I would have gotten a 100 GB 7200 RPM, but no, they HAD to get a hard drive that was slower.
-BLOATWARE!: As of now (before I reimage my laptop tomorrow), I have Picasa2 , PC Doctor 5 (trial), Norton Internet Security (unneeded), Microsoft SQL Server 2005 (as if I would need that), and Microsoft Office 2007 (trial) on my PC.
Wow.
But the Thinkpad is great!
Comments
1. The keyboard has the “snapiness” that I like. I know when I’m pressing a key, and it’s very responsive, like playing a well tuned piano. One pet peeve of mine is that the Fn and Ctrl keys are switched, so I end up pressing Fn when I mean to press Ctrl. I’m getting used to it, though (the layout is: Fn|Ctrl|Windows key|Alt|Space|Alt|Context menu|Ctrl). Unfortunately, unlike the other Thinkpad models, the tablet does not have a keyboard light.
2. The screen smudges VERY easily (my screen has at least 50 right now; it’s covered in them), but this is only noticeable if the screen is in the sunlight. The screen works OK in the sunlight. Unlike some older tablets, there are no weird color dots on the screen.
3. The “Tablet” functionality works very well. The only thing I miss is that there’s no touchpad.
4. The power buton, ThinkVantage button, and the volume control buttons have the same responsiveness as the keys.
5. All tablets have a rotating screen. This one is pretty sturdy. It can only turn clockwise and back, so you can only share your screen with people sitting to the left or opposite of you.
6. This laptop has a firewire port (albeit, a smaller one)
7. NO INTEGRATED CD DRIVE! Lenovo does sell an ultrabay (a docking statio) for like $100, but I’m just getting an external case for my slim DVD drive that I got from a different laptop.
8. Fingerprint scanner. Very convenient, and it works.
9. The latch is interesting. So you open up the laptop by moving to the right a small spring-loaded “switch”/latch thing in the front on the right side. You then push the screen up. The part of the latch thing on the screen is like a normal laptop’s latch thing, but it can “slide” (more like snap, but smoothly) to the other side. In other words, you can latch your computer into tablet mode.
10. There’s a driver for tablets that use Wacom Penabled systems (and other Wacom tablet technologies) that allows you to assign the button on the stylus (it has the pen tip, a button, and an eraser) to various things (I use it for middle click while browsing to open links in new tabs).
11. You can run all (I think) of the Powertoys for Windows XP Tablet by saving the installers, then right-clicking to properties, clicking on the compatibility tab, and running the setup program in Windows XP SP2 compatibility mode. This just tricks the installer into thinking you have a Windows XP Tablet edition. I’m not sure if this works on regular Vista (non-tablet), but it won’t hurt to try.
12. My configuration of RAM might not be enough. Today my Thinkpad wouldn’t work properly because there was not enough memory (I found out by trying to print a document from Word). I ended up holding the power button to reset it. The most likely cause is transparency, which would show that my RAM is insufficient.
13. This is a Vista comment. FIREFOX DOES NOT WORK IN VISTA WHEN IT TRIES TO LOAD JAVA!!!
14. Most of Vista and Office 2007 (on the surface) is just a graphics enhancement of XP and Office 2003, respectively (the major exceptions are the Ribbon and the start menu). Even the context menus are the same! If Vista was written from scratch, it certainly borrowed A LOT from XP.
15. Vista comes with a journal tool that’s useful for taking notes
16. Handwriting recognition is only effective when you have words in the dictionary. For example, “Firefox” turns into “Fire fox” or “Firefor” sometimes. Or “WordPress” turns into “Word Press”.
Overall, the Thinkpad X61 Tablet is a very good choice if you’re considering a Tablet PC.
