SciTech Guy

I have been using a Thinkpad X60 tablet for almost a year now and I’m really happy with it. One of the questions I had from the beginning is “Do I want a Tablet or a Laptop?”. In reality I wanted both.  The problem was that most of the tablets at the time where either good laptops or good tablets, but where really lacking on the other persona.

When I finally saw the X60, I was really impressed. Here was a good strong laptop with good built and a great screen that worked very well as a tablet.  It is pretty well built, as the hinge has held up quite nicely over a year of abuse.  It is pretty light and has good battery life (depending on which battery you use, but there’s a total of 4 different options and some of them can be used together).  UPDATE: Lenovo has since updated the line to the X61, but the machine is pretty much the same.

The machine came with XP for tabletPC, but I quickly up(?)graded to the recently released (at the time) Vista Ultimate. All the features of the old OS where there, plus the pretty graphics and addons that came with Vista. The upgrade was not painless… far from that. I was crashing multiple times a day and this was only resolved slowly as lenovo too its sweet time releasing upgraded drivers. Even the ThinkVantage tools had issues, so I had to update things manually for a while.  Things have pretty much stabilized since (other than the display not coming up as it wakes from sleep every now and then), and I’m pretty happy with it right now.

One thing that significantly enhances the usability and experience of the X60 is OneNote 07.  This program is a godsend for people in meetings.  I can take notes easily with it either in tablet mode or laptop mode. On the one hand, being able to write with the pen makes it easy to take notes and draw diagrams.  Nevertheless, because of having grown up with computers, I can type faster than I can write.  Furthermore, although my Ph.D. makes my a Dr., my handwriting makes me an MD.  It is mostly illegible (thanks Mom), unlike my Dad’s wonderful penmanship.

If anyone can present a challenge to handwriting recognition programs, I can probably give them a run for their money.  That being said, OneNote isn’t bad.  It does manage to recognize my handwriting with enough accuracy to make search useful.

So what’s the split between laptop and tablet at the moment (having owned it for a year)?

The truth is that I mostly use it as a laptop.  I probably use it as a tablet about 10% of the time.  Nonetheless, that 10% makes up for the compromises on the machine.  Being able to take notes without clicking noises is great for meetings and great for digitizing diagrams.

Dell has finally seen the light and is coming out with a tablet.  Apple can’t be far behind (and I would love an Apple tablet, I was an early Newton adopter).

This entry was posted on Monday, March 31st, 2008 at 5:25 am and is filed under Gadget, Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.