Thinkpad X60 — the Tablet Goes Ultraportable

Rovi writes "Lenovo had a gift for Thinkpad fans this season- they finally released the successor to the X41 Tablet. The Thinkpad X60 Tablet weighs in at about three and a half pounds and has great tablet functionality. The updates from the older model include a 2.5" hard drive (the X41 used a 1.8"), automatic screen orientation, and an Intel Core Duo processor. For performance seekers some serious upgrades are available, such as a 120GB 5400RPM hard drive, 100GB 7200RPM drive, SXGA+ monitor, or up to 4GB of RAM."

Comments

But will it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Run Linux or OpenBSD or my favourite, FreeBSD? Can I actually use the tablet features with those OSs?

Just asking.

Re:But will it...

[heho]

You would need a linux distro that has native support for the tablet to effectively use the tablet portions of the machine itself. Many of the tablet features, such as the "always-up" dialog toggle, and many other features interact directly with the Windows API unfortunately

Re:But will it...

[heho]

Yes the X-series tablet will run linux distro's to your hearts content, however like I said many of the features will be unavailable, including any of the ThinkVantage Technologies that Lenovo puts on them such as the RapidRestore, or Access Connections programs. http://www.thinkwiki.org/

Automatic screen orientation...

[__aaclcg7560]

If the tablet is facing a mirror, will the display properly orientate itself to be readable in a mirror?

Great commercial.

[skitz0]

When does the regular show come back on?

IBM versus Toshiba?

[Makito]

The X60 looks like a Toshiba M400 without a CD/DVD drive - much like the M200.

My question is, how does the Core Duo 1.8Ghz Low Voltage CPU performance compare to the standard Core Duo 1.8Ghz CPU in the M400.

Re:IBM versus Toshiba?

[MBCook]

My understanding is that they should perform identically. The low voltage one was just able to pass the test at that voltage where the "normal" one would have failed the test at that low voltage. They make them all the same, then bin them based on which tests they pass. The exception to this is if they have high demand for 1.6 GHz chips but are producing lots of extra 1.8 GHz chips they may re-mark them and sell them as 1.6 chips (which is why sometimes the slow speed grades overclock so well).

This is my understanding. It's a bit like military spec chips. They perform identically, they are just designed for different conditions (in this case, less voltage).

Re:I really want to buy a tablet pc

[heho]

The idea of a tablet is to be portable and not bulky, ideally, the size of an 8.5x11 sheet of paper. In terms of processing power, what do you need a more powerful processor for? I could only imagine playing CS or any other game with a digitizer pen. "The guy fragged me! as I slammed down my pen!" In terms of graphics, is due to battery life consideration. Running an ATI or NVidia chip will increase the power required to run everything and greatly reducing the battery life. On an average ThinkPad system running an ATI or NVidia chip decreases the battery life by almost 1/2 as compared to the integrated 128MB Intel graphics card.

Lenovo != IBM

[FatSean]

IBM sold off the laptop division quite a while ago.

Re:linux support?

[Provocateur]

That's quite an expensive warm-fuzzy you've got there ($1775, in fact). I just use my socks. Well, after they're washed, of course.
 

I will say..

[Junta]

Towards the end, IBM's choice of laptop hardware and their BIOS ACPI tables worked very well with Linux. IBM's support may translate some, since Lenovo started from a good position and were not necessarily inclined to deviate for no reason (Also, Lenovo bought the employees too, so the tendency would be strong). My biggest concern is if they continued to take care to do the ACPI tables properly or not going forward, but having the same firmware developers gives me hope.

Re:asthetics dont count anymore ?

[marcello_dl]

>You mean you'd rather have one of those bathroom fixture-lookin' Apples that just exude indecisiveness and shallow fashion obsession?

>Taste is in the eye of the beholder.

Indeed.

And vision is in his mouth.

Re:Long overdue? It's in the wrong sales channel

[jgennick]

But in either case, if you Joe Shmoe picks one of these up for your own use, what kind of support are you going to get from the channel that typically handles big customers who buy hundreds or thousands of units at a clip?

I'm an individual, and I've generally gotten very good service from IBM on Thinkpads that I and my family own. I've never been stuck on hold. That's a great thing right there. The worst incident I ever had was when a rep sent me the parts to replace my own LCD panel, and she did that at my request, not fully realizing that I didn't have a clue. To IBM's credit, they took all the parts back once I realized I was out of my depth. Then they took the Thinkpad back and fixed that too. And all under warranty.

I'm sure other's mileage may vary, and surely there must be some bad experiences out there, but I've found Thinkpad service to be top-notch, so much so that there are only two brands of notebook that I buy these days: Thinkpad and Apple. (Apple, because that's what you need for OS X).

Re:linux support?

[LunarCrisis]

Just to clarify, since the parent post might have been misleading, there IS support for the tablet under GNU/Linux. I'm quite happy with my X41 tablet running gentoo (had to install from a knoppix live-USB though), the thinkpad buttons and screen rotation work fine, and support for high precision tablet coordinates and pressure sensitivity work great in GIMP, Inkscape and Xournal (minus pressure since Xournal doesn't use that). Hibernation with Suspend2 seems to work fine too.

What isn't really available, and I'm sure this is what the parent post was talking about, is handwriting recognition software. AFAIK there isn't really any available for GNU/Linux (please reply if I'm wrong here). I knew this when I bought the system, but I really couldn't care less. Handwriting on a computer sounds like a waste of time to me (unless you can't type), I wanted the tablet for drawing =).

PS. Not linux-related, but the pen on the X41 tablet doesn't have an eraser, this isn't a big deal for me, but you might want to find out whether the X60 tablet's pen has one if you're used to having them on other wacom tablets.

Re:Long overdue? It's in the wrong sales channel

[crazy.tyae]

Color me cynical but when I hear something is long overdue I wonder if it's been thrown together quickly out of desperation. This model or models which check in at 4+lbs are not ultraportable. One would think that with a smallish screen it would come in a little lighter. Lenovo has been doing quite well, so I don't think this could be called a desperation move. 4+lbs is a bit hefty but you could always use the 4 cell battery which allows the unit to come in under 4 lbs. On the screen, this is certainly not smallish for an ultra-portable - average perhaps. I'm willing to accept the extra heft in return for the durability of the materials used to construct the tablet.

I have to wonder how they're going to support a consumer model like this out of the corporate channel since obviously there are zero corporations out there who are going to stock their inventories with this. Although I've heard some horror stories regarding the standard "depot" service, I've also heard a tot of positive stories. (See the thinkpads.com forums for some firsthand accounts.) Also keep in mind that the average Joe care also order 9x5 NBD service for additional $. (I believe this may be handled, at least in the U.S., by the same service which was used before Lenovo became involved.)

And of course it needs a docking station and massive audio. It has an optional dock. Massive audio? Are we still talking about ultra-portables? ;-)

Re:asthetics dont count anymore ?

[LunarCrisis]

Beleive me, the swivelling screen makes jaws drop. It also doesn't have that ugly sealing ridge around the edge of the top screen that most thinkpads do.

Re:linux support?

[nostriluu]

I ran Debian on a Toshiba M200 (1.6ghz Pentium M, 2 GB RAM, 7200rpm HDD, dedicated NVidia video card). Good specs (at the time) for a 4 lb system, plus the tablet features. It was fast enough, and had a high res (but small) display so it was my primary dev system, although like the x60, it's a convertible, not a true tablet (big difference).

I never did focus on word recognition since I consider it awkward, and I didn't end up exploring the MS tablet integration features (some of which sound interesting) much before the XP partition died of a virus. Unfortunately, under Linux it was a challenge keeping the stylus, touchpad, rotation, power management, and video out working (or not). Not to mention the proprietary SD card reader. I'm no expert, but it was an unreasonable amount of very frustrating try-this, scanning outdated bulletin board conversations, etc work, and the implementations kept changing so if one thing is fixed, another breaks. This was 2004 - 2006, btw.

I did use it for some occasional drawing, and it was nice to be able to fold it down for some situations.

Having a vendor supported model would be a tremendous boost for Linux, and people like myself who want full vendor support. The kernel and the environment are of course separate, so it would really just take a 'certified' list of open source friendly hardware.

Re:linux support?

[grcumb]

Anyone have positive experiences getting full tablet functionality under linux?

I can't speak for this tablet, but I do know that Lenovo as a company not only supports Linux on their desktops, they ship it as the default OS for their domestic-consumption PCs.

I'm working on a systems integration project for a small nation in the South Pacific. The Chinese government provided all the IT equipment through its foreign aid programme, and every Lenovo machine we received had Kylin linux installed, along with a Chinese variant of OpenOffice.org. Kylin Linux appears to be a derivative of RedHat.

I must say I was impressed by the quality of the hardware, too. All the components were decent quality, perfectly adequate for a typical office workstation, and better than many donors provide. If this example is anything to go by, then I'd assume that you'll be able to get decent Linux support for your tablet, though perhaps not until the Chinese rip off someone else's hardware drivers. 8^)