Linked by Eugenia Loli on Mon 23rd Mar 2009 11:37 UTC
Go on, go around these gadget sites and read all that talk about netbooks and what not. Acer Aspire One this, MSI that, Dell Mini 9 this, Asus that. It feels like the second coming of laptops in this netbook revolution. But truth is, even back in 1999 you could find super-lightweight laptops in the market (for the right price). This 2005-released IBM Thinkpad X41 laptop that Geeks.com sent us, a well-known shop for computer parts, is one of the best Linux-compatible laptops you can buy today for cheap.
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Member since:2005-07-06
There where two versions of the x41 one normal version and one with a wacom tablet screen (the version I have). Other than that I think the hardware is identical.
Unfortunately getting the touchscreen features to work under linux is seriously non-trivial. Just getting the pen to work isn't too hard, but making the screen rotate between landscape and portrait and have everything work is a complete pain to set up. Tablet PC's never really caught on in the Linux world I guess.
Despite all that though I'm totally in love with the tablet PC concept, and I'd be hard pressed to buy a laptop that wasn't a tablet now.
Member since:2006-04-22
I think it is the x40 that is non-tablet. This is what the wikipedia article says and I see no non-tablet X41s on ebay. I almost wonder if Eugenia didn't accidentally get the X40.
Also regarding your tablet settings issues, I found this site where it looks like most people are getting everything to work perfectly using intrepid:
http://liken.otsoa.net/blog/comments.php?entry=entry080617-120522
Member since:2006-03-08
Unfortunately getting the touchscreen features to work under linux is seriously non-trivial. Just getting the pen to work isn't too hard, but making the screen rotate between landscape and portrait and have everything work is a complete pain to set up. Tablet PC's never really caught on in the Linux world I guess.
Hmm.. I wonder if perhaps the X41 is trickier to setup than a Toshiba M200. I acquired one of these and have been just thrilled:
http://lnxg.wordpress.com/2009/01/21/my-newish-linux-laptop/
On the M200, rotating the screen was just done with an xrandr command. I found adding taskbar icons for an onscreen keyboard as well as rotate 90 and 0 degrees to be incredibly useful. True, it wasn't all done for me out of the box but it wasn't too tricky to follow a couple of how-tos and tweak from there.
I'm thrilled with Linux's support. The pressure sensitivity opens up so many choices. The Gimp is just a joy to use. What a treat!
Despite all that though I'm totally in love with the tablet PC concept, and I'd be hard pressed to buy a laptop that wasn't a tablet now.
Me too, or at least I will likely continue to own a tablet along with other laptops. It's just fantastic that we can pick up tablets like the X41 or Toshiba M200/M400 for a few hundred dollars. Ebay routinely has slate-style tablets for well under $500CDN these days. Most of them seem to use Intel for everything, so they are well suited to become Linux laptops.
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Member since:
2006-04-22
When I search on ebay for "thinkpad x41" I get tablet PCs with touchscreen. The article makes no mention of that. Am I looking at the wrong product or do these features just now work in Ubuntu?