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IBM Tablet Announced
Ahkorishaan writes "We heard from an earlier report here on Slashdot that IBM(Lenovo) had filed a patent on a TabletPC, and now they have officially announced the product. Our friends at Laptop Logic have a short review."
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I know for sure(can't say how) but this will never be officially supported under linux(or *bsd) don't waste your time on something that isn't worth it
But TabletPC's exist already!
I recall seeing their tablet in their online store a week ago.
I didn't look into details, so it may have been a simple laptop with weird rotating screen.
The hip way to get your IP. No ads, ever.
Uh, /.ed already.
Mirrordot here.
This is old news. IBM has had a tablet for weeks now. It has been on the PC companies site and listed as a product for a while.
I forget the model number... X42p or something like that.
As an artist I've been waiting for the right tablet to come along. I just wonder if it has the same "laggy" feeling of other tablets I've tried. I don't understand why a tablet would be, since mice aren't laggy at all.
That's not a review, it's a summary of the press release and it's two weeks old. I'm used to commenters not RTFA, but it's getting a bit much when the posters can't be bothered either. You can find the only real review of the X41 Tablet I'm aware of here:
s p
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1823715,00.a
Well, it looks like IBM will continue to have business relations with Apple, just not what they intended!
The Crimson Dragon
I think a tablet pc would be ideal for graphic design people.
Not just because you could actually use the screen for drawing but because it's much easier to present your stuff to customers when you can turn your screen.
My quality social news site.com.
That was a few photos and a list of specs. You could get the same info from [a href="http://www-131.ibm.com/webapp/wcs/stores/ser vlet/CategoryDisplay?catalogId=-840&storeId=100000 01&langId=-1&dualCurrId=1000073&categoryId=4611686 018425021052">IBM's site.
Wildstrom at BusinessWeek likes the X41 a lot!
Generally, bash is superior to python in those environments where python is not installed.
is this a joke? hey, hawks out there! patent calculators !!
I use a tablet every day and it is great. Acer c300 is the size of a laptop, but for meetings and training seminars I take it instead of a piece of paper. Although heavier, I always have my computer with me, so I always have those notes (instead of wishing I hadn't left the legal pad at the office). I can take notes and leave them in my handwriting rather than try and convert everything to text.
I'm sure that flip-top laptops will become more common over time, since it adds a nice touch of functionality to the computer.
This news of IBM's entrance to this market is more noteworthy for its tardiness...
Building a healthy future; Connecting communities
Hopefully, the spell checker works. For your sake.
Lycoris (I know, *grown*) has a Linux release for a tablet pc. Though this press release is dated 2003.... hmmm...
If you do that then your notes are not greppable. On the other hand, converting them to text after the meeting concludes takes extra time. This is a good argument for bringing an ordinary laptop, as opposed to a tablet pc, into a meeting. I suppose it's much easier to draw quick diagrams on a tablet PC, but if your notes are mostly textual, best to use the keyboard.
An excellent little 'first look' gallery of pictures:
s ID=264
http://www.tabletpcreviewspot.com/default.asp?new
I currently own an X40 and I'd have to say it's the best laptop I've ever used - superb keyboard, light weight and battery life combined with the legendary IBM build quality. The 1.8" hard drive isn't the fastest out there (actually, I'd be suprised if there were any slower) but I'd say that's an acceptable compromise given the pros. I love the tablet concept so we'll see how long I'll be able to resist the X41T. My provisional justifcations include "But think how much tider my desk will look without all those notepads!" and "Think of the environmental benefits!"
Lenovo has been manufacturing IBM's laptops for quite some time. The only difference is that they bought the division from IBM. They even kept the IBM employees. This was actually something they specifically had to have in the deal. They wanted everything to remain the same, only with a new owner.
Douglas P. Price
i love how IBM's thinkpads still look nearly the same as they did 15 years ago and they still look cool.
What happened to IBM's Linux affair? The only way Linux will further progress is if you make it work with the new. This is the best place to start Linux on tablets from the ground up, with IBM's "support". Office productivity can be made with OO.o and wine. Especially with the end of June nearing meaning OO.o 2.0's release near. I just don't get it... i feel like deja vous from Batman Begins... some manager at IBM didn't get the memo. :o/
"Persistence is annoying success." - ghee22 11:28:1999 - 10:53:PM
I love IBM ThinkPads. If cost were no object, a ThinkPad would be my first choice for a notebook. Now having said that, I just can't find that much use for these Tablet PCs. My handwriting is atrocious, so I'd rather type. If I need to draw a picture or diagram I'll use a piece of paper and scan it in later.
On the other hand, converting them to text after the meeting concludes takes extra time.
Also, I can type a hell of a lot faster than I can scrawl out my chicken scratch. God help anyone else who would have to read that off my tablet too, I wouldn't even want to.
TFA isn't a review -- it's just a rehash of the IBM announcement. Plus it's on a site with zero Slashdot compatibility. Wny not link the IBM/Lenovo page directly? Probably because the submitter wanted to promote his site.
While your at it, mod down whoever choose the submission as well
Wow, the site is only two weeks old.
Didn't people already know about this?
Tablets are a great idea, but MS has the target audience all wrong. This shouldn't be marketed at business people, it shoud be aimed squarely at students.
As an undergrad in physics I would have LOVED to have one of these. Our notes consist of equations and diagrams way more than text, so a traditional laptop in class is worthless. But a tablet would have been perfect, especially as more an more of our profs started releasing their notes as pdfs. And I would have bought one if they weren't all crap. The build quality one these things is terrible (Note that I was only looking at convertables) and they're not at all ready to be tossed into a back pack and biked to campus. And since they're so fragile and small/underpowered they're not good enough to be your main computer, but not many students can afford a tablet as a second.
If MS turned it's huge marketing machine towards tablets for students and got it's hardware partners to make some cheaper and sturdier variations, then these things would take off.
I thought IBM sold off their PC and laptop business??
---- Booth was a patriot ----
why are small 1280x1024 displays so hard to find?
is there a shortage of high-res displays?
IBM used to make a laptop with a 1600x1200 display. Now their largest screens seem to be 1400x1050.
Some mainstream 15" HP laptops are also limited to 1024x768, which is ridiculous.
With 128MB of video ram, why not provide a high-res display option?
actually, when I got to use a tablet PC (via my ex-employer), I really liked just sitting down at the couch with it and reading e.g. *cough* slashdot during, say, commercials between programs (or even with the TV off :-). I definitely don't do graphic design (I can't draw :-).
:-)
... wrong when it's not a physical-pressure-touchscreen and one of those RF-sensing types.
it's not just useful when you're going to *input* info, but also when you're just referring to stuff without any need to type anything in response.
it's much easier to wield when there's no keyboard in the way - nice to just have a "video slate" where you can drag-drop links onto firefox tabs
One thing, though - I've tried quite a lot of tablet PCs, but I find that the *only* one's i've really liked were those with actual touchscreens, and not the wacom-tablet-like RF-sensing screens. And in my experience that means only Panasonic tablet PCs. I don't know about screen longetivity where you actually have to press the stylus onto it etc., but the *feel* is just
In case you want to read the article, here it is...
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Because too much resolution pisses off users. They have too small letters on their screen, because Windows is set at 96dpi by default.
I hope IBM will make Tablet PCs useful for college students, for the education market and for artists.
Current Tablets are not very attractive because of
- short battery life (if you're going to use your tablet for classes, you need more than 2 hours--anything over 4 hours would be best)
- high price tags
Tablets are currently targeted at executives, but there are surely a lot of students, graphics freelancers etc. around who would possibly buy a Tablet if it were useful and affordable.where's all that Karma?
Let's get it right: IBM got OUT of the PC business and sold off everything to Lenovo. Don't keep confusing the consumer by saying "IBM(Lenovo)". It's "Lenovo", a chinese company that uses wage slaves and makes insanely crappy hardware. You think phone support is bad now with the indian outsourcing, you just wait.
Yeah, tablets seem like they would be great for students. I know that when I was an undergrad writing out biochemical pathways or thermodynamics equations would have been impossible on a laptop and they didn't have tablets back in the day.
But students are cheap as hell. And don't always have disposable income like companies. And students like to steal and pirate. Yarrr... (that's my pirate voice.)
There is no built in optical drive. yay for externals?!?!!!!!!!!!!111one
Norwegian state owns something like 60-70% of the Oslo stock exchange. I belive it was something like that.
It is natural since they have a lot of money. The state tries to downplay its own rolle and it tries to not mix politics with ownership.
Most of the oil money is put in other countries because of this and other issues.
Actually, no. They're searchable even when not converted. You know, like, the search tool also does the HWR on the fly? Bringing a laptop in a meeting is distracting: not only is there an additional barrier between you and the other people (visual contact IS important, even in this age), but the noise of the keyboard rapidly get annoying (and I feel sorry for you if your keyboard isn't even slightly clicky :p). My TPC (the M200), otoh, lets me take notes anywhere on presentations, just like on paper, AND both the notes and the presentation will be searchable. I never have to leave my typing mode to select where I want my notes to go with a keyboard, etc. Most of the people I know in college (DDS... I guess health can be different from engineering on several aspects) who have bought laptops never knew that tablets existed, and, had they known, there usually would have been one of comparable performance available (the Averatec is surprisingly cheap, but that's understandable since it's Averatec)... This is very much a problem of publicity.
;).
Re the quality of the HWR, try Win XP Tablet PC Edition 2005 (AKA XP TPC w/ SP2). The TIP and the way to interface with it have changed a lot, and so has the HWR engine. And it gets better with time, the engines requires you to change your writing method a bit sometimes (to what they should have been had we not all decided that calligraphy was BS back in grade school
Try Corewar @ www.koth.org - rec.games.corewar
This one is different: it's red, needs no batteries, and you control it with two large knobs at the bottom of the screen.
Yeah, it's called "etch".
http://www.debian.org/releases/testing/
I think that is short sighted. Anyway, I worked for quite some time in a computer retailer (we sell computers in the dozens for corporations) and we recieved less complaints and had far less troubles with Dell and IBM notebooks. HP/Compaq gave us hell (lots of heat-related hang ups).
Think UPS delivery, drug reps visiting a doctor, using it as disply material, etc.
Anyone who needs to share quick information and maybe capture a signature. Anyone making a stand up sales presentation to someone on the go. Being able to hold the tablet so both can see it is clearly an advantage in these situations.
Quality Hosting e3 Servers
I saw the IBM TabletPC (which is mainly a low end laptop with pivoting touch screen) and I was not impressed at all. The system was the highest end and scrolled like a hog. IBM join the market too late with a very poor product.
I've had a Toshiba M200 for almost a year. Its a very popular tablet. It weighs a bit more than this new Lenovo, but has a higher screen res (1400x1050) and a faster CPU and probably hard disk (mine is a 60GB 7200 RPM drive). It also has a tilt sensing accelerometer, but I'm not aware of any cool applications for that. :)
Just to swipe at a few fallacies:
1. As a tablet, its a decently powerful machine. Pentium M @1600 mhz is a nice chip, and it supports up to 2 GB RAM. I used to disdain notebooks and always go for custom built desktops, but its been my full time workstation since I got it.
2. It was more expensive, but not much more than a comparable good quality notebook. Certainly not cheap though.
3. Battery life is up to four hours.
4. Getting Linux to run on it is a pain, but that has more to do with laptop power management functions and other non Tablet details. Several people (who have more dedication/knowledge than me) have gotten theirs running fully, including pen input.
For my *nix needs, I currently use CoLinux; I can run a CoLinux instance (which is running X, Gnome, and server stuff like Apache and Mysql), Eclipse on the Windows side, a bunch of Firefox browsers on both sides (which use the most memory), VNC @ 1400x1050x16 into the Linux side, and assorted shells and its still comfortably usable for dev with 1 GB of RAM.
5. I almost never use the pen for text input, but the convertible form factor is very handy (for example, when on a train/plane or reading on the couch) and using the pen is a nice alternative to the mouse/trackpad (I do wish it had a trackpoint).
6. All the Journal/Onenote stuff seems interesting, but I haven't really checked it out since it doesn't have much to do with my main work and I don't feel particularly inclined to commit to anything from one vendor.
The speech integration is cool, and after MS did an update I notice it responds to some words especially well (it favours pronounciation of "United Nations").
7. It has a dedicated button to take you to Windows Task Manager (where you view and kill processes). The button icon represents a toilet plunger. Very apropos. This is probably to cover for the fact that there has been a memory leak problem with the MS tablet software 'tcserver' for some time that MS has refused to fix. After a week or so of operation it gobbles up a bunch of RAM. Go Microsoft.
Note I'm talking about a convertible, not a true tablet, which don't have an attached keyboard and are lighter. If any of the above sounds good to you or you just like trying new stuff, you might want to consider a similar device.
They still have a 1600x1200 15" display.
t ,92P6684.aspx
Also, they've got a QXGA (2048x1536) 15" display for the R series. You can even buy one (for more than the cost of many R series laptops) right here: http://www.sparepartswarehouse.com/IBM,Laptop,Par
Unfortunately, I don't think it works in T series laptops...
I also have an m200. It totally rocks!!! Great screen resolution and works exceptionally as a laptop. Also I easily installed linux using ubuntu and IIRC I put the install.iso on a SD card, and booted off that. It was a piece of cake from there.
As a tablet I found that it worked well for photoshop and other apps, but to do real drawing I got the best results from using the bundeld Alias Sketchbook Pro - perhaps because it is a non-bloated application. Apps like Macro Flash didn't seem to keep up properly which is odd considering I have a gig of ram.
anyway just thought i'd chime in.
They'll put in higher-resolution screens when Microsoft figures out how to make Windows use scalable graphics.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
In the 40s and 50s, he used a regular typewriter for typing mathematics. He was VERY FAST because he came up with a one-dimensional system of notations for everything.
My personal annoyance about the "tablet PC" market is that latter part... the "PC". When they first started the craze way back in 2000 or so, I thought, it would be a cool idea. Meaning just a tablet Something with a nice, readable screen (digital paper was all the buzz as well) that I could use to read normal 8.5x11 documentation on. Maybe take notes, but that's it You know, like a tablet of paper. Simple, thin, low power. Kind of an over grown PDA. I don't want the PC part, I have a nice desktop for when I'm at my desk and a pretty swell laptop that I do work on in a more mobile fasion (read coffee shop hacking). The missing piece is the tablet. Something to take with when I walk away from both. Something I can read on the bus, or curl up in a chair with.
Yes I have a stack of PDA's in my junk drawer. I read quite a bit on a Palm III and I'm up to watching vids on the bus on my PalmOne LiveDrive. It's not the same. I can't sit outside and read (can't see the screen in direct light) and I still end up carrying a notebook and killing trees to print RFC's (laser double-sided, 2-up... I don't need back problems as well as getting stoned by tree huggers)
Is it a plot by the paper companies? (Or ink/toner sellers?) This is what's keeping paper alive. It's all these reviewers that complain that this tablet is a little wimpy on the processor or that tablet won't replace a laptop. Duh! Not the point. Charging $2k plus ain't going to help either. Let's take a big step back, and work on good old hirez, black and white text folks, you know, like in every best selling book, manual and most all newspapers. Then we can go WiFi and bluetooth keyboards and the mess.
Am I alone here?
It still has the lousy 1024x768 XGA display resolution, like all X series ThinkPads. At 12.1" they could pack much more than that at the same DPI as other ThinkPad models (e.g., 1400x1050 in 14.1" and 1600x1200 in 15" for the T series).
My primary potential use for a convertible in tablet mode is as an e-book reader, for reading and annotating those lengthy PDF documents. A width of 768 pixels is just not enough to produce sharp text when viewing a PDF document preformatted for paper, especially if you want the page to fit vertically too.
Nice keyboard, conservative screen and No-Internal-Moving-Parts = 8 to 10 hours on a standard battery. With an extended battery, (if I ever manage to find one), the machine will get up to 15 hours on one charge. Not ideal, but better than a 'down by lunch time' modern machine.
When a portable word processor is all you really need, that's all you should really buy. Best part is that after shipping and a spare battery, I paid only about $275 on ebay.
Too bad the Alphasmart Dana is too bloody expensive for what it is. (Over $450 for a keyboard and an LCD screen???) But the real shame is that the QuickPad Pro seems like it was rushed to market before the programmers finished their job. That puppy got between 50 and 100 hours on a set of 4 AA's, but their internal word processor only edits
Although. . , (after I'd made my purchase of the Jornada 820), a tech support guy for the QuickPad company got back to me and told me that while those limits were true, the machine was nonetheless able to run an old DOS copy of Word if you could find one, which had no such restraints. This is very cool, though, like I said, I learned this after I'd bought a different machine. Ah well. In any case, the QuickPad is just barely this side of a heavy purchase; $300 before shipping costs!
-FL
Why in the hell would anyone want that shit ? Someday it will be cool. Today it's junk. Are people too fuggin wimpy to carry a good laptop ?
The people at "Laptop Logic" are not my friends. In fact, I've never even heard of them. I certainly did not sign a friendship authorization form (FAF).
... and then they built the supercollider.
Where are those nasty specs?
-CPU is prettty decent @ 1,5Ghz.
-GPU? anyone?
-XGA? Pentium 1 laptops are quipped with XGA.
-4200rpm harddrive? Luckily you can replace them with a 7200rpm disk.
-optical drive in a tablet PC? who uses opticals on laptops?
Like 5 years ago.
The only two reasons I'm interested in Tablets are reading ebooks/other e-info and its "unlimited" notebook (as in class notebook, not laptop) capability
look at the memory prices!
Total memory [6] [Help me decide]
Note: Total memory includes the base memory that comes with the system.
512 MB included in base system
768 MB (2 NonParity DDR2 SDRAM SoDIMM PC4200) [add $125.00]
1 GB (2 NonParity DDR2 SDRAM SoDIMM PC4200) [add $250.00]
1.5 GB (2 NonParity DDR2 SDRAM SoDIMM PC4200) [add $750.00]
http://www-131.ibm.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/
$750 for 1.5 GB ram!
Crucial quotes 1 GB sticks at $148.39
"What does slashdotting mean?"
"You've never heard of slashdot?"
"I know it makes websites not work."
I too have been wondering about two things:
a) tablets - as you've elogquently pointed out, why do I need a PC when all I want is a tablet; and
b) digital camera - what I hoped for was a CCD and memory insert replacing the film in my camera. So why do I need a camera that has exotic shooting modes, in-camera photo editing (who the heck does that quintessentially ackward task?), and a footprint so tiny that I can't expect to use it if my eyesight falls below 20/20 or my fingers swell up?
Maybe the watchword should be, "Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should."
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
got a little layout for my dream machine in the above link, let me know what you think, people!
Rise up in the cafeteria and STAB them with your plastic forks!
And how are you supposed to handwrite if you don't use an electromagnetic (wacom) digitizer?
Your hand would make the cursor go all over the place.
actually no, this is an argument for bringing your tablet's keyboard to class... i'm getting really tired of hearing arguments that run: it's bad not to have a keyboard tablets don't have keyboards therefore it's bad to have a tablet almost every slate-form tablet comes with a separate USB keyboard you can plug into it when needed, which could be used in conjunction with a stand for the slate itself, and many models have optional keyboard stands that the tablet can lock into. furthermore, convertible talbets have the keyboard attached, and can do anything a laptop can. the only defining feature of a tablet is the ability to write on the screen, and the associated cost. I'd say that anyone who goes to math classes, or any other class that requires free-form drawing, (i.e. music class, anything involving diagrams) or who wants to be able to write on PDF files should take the performance cut and buy a low end tablet if the price is a problem--and play unreal on their desktop... ps. as far as the handwriting recognition, in onenote you can have the text remain displayed as graphics, but be searchable behind it, like a PDF file. so recognition errors are non-critical but you retain the value of searching
I want something about A5 size, 14x21cm. The size of a trade paperback. No keyboard built in, but an option to plug in any old USB keyboard.
It should have Acrobat Reader equivalent and a decent web browser, and wifi. I also don't care what OS it runs so long as it isn't Windows.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak