Jarnal is what you seek, a Java ap that does very good handwriting recog. in Linux. All you have to do is setup the screen digitizer to be an input device (wacom), and then properly calibrate it to get the mouse pointer in the right place.
the X41 can be made to run any Linux distro, with enough work that is. you'll be ripping out Xorg (for the pen/stylus and latest i810 code), the entire GDM subsystem (for the BFP stuff), all the ACPI infrastructure (to get at the special buttons like rotate), and such to get it working. Oh, and Java to get Jarnal working...
the X41's Biometric Fingerprint Scanner does work in Linux. It even can be tied into the GDM login process via the magic of PAM. whee! (see posts below)
it hibernates to disk. The video is i915. there is no xrandr for the i810 driver, so you need two xconfigs, one portrait, one landscape. We've made the "rotate" button switch between the two. The pen works of course in either mode.
it does hibernate to disk. It can not at this time do suspend to RAM, as it has a SATA controller and the Linux SATA stack can't do that yet. hibernate to disk goes down in about 15 seconds, and comes back in the same.
...and all the neato features actually WORK. I've been working on these for several months now, we announced this a month ago, and we have all this stuff working:
The integrated Biometric Fingerprint scanner works in Linux, so you can train your fingerprints, and use them to login (via PAM/GDM). The pen works in Xorg, so you can input to screen as a mouse pointer or stylus. You can hand-write commands on-screen (converts handwriting to ascii text in the focus area (using rosetta)). It includes a recognition suite (trained conversion of handwritten text to ascii text (using Jarnal)). And the digitizer is pressure sensitivity in Gimp.
now, that said, all of the handwriting features will require some training, but
with carefull training, are very nearly as good as the "Windows Journal" at
this time.
The screen can be rotated to portrait orientation via rotate button (not dynamic, no xrandr on i915 yet, so 2 Xconfigs). It has special "BlueKeys" support when folded into tablet configuration: scroll Up, scroll Down, Enter, and Toolbox keys.
The Toolbox Key (plugin to "EmpTool" tools to access LCD brightness up/down, volume up/down, backlight, wifi kill, etc)
I must take offense sir! You obviously have not read our site, nor do you know anything about our company. If you'd take a moment to actually research your subject before commenting...
You'd find that we are fully focused on providing the Linux OS on portable systems for individuals and companies that require full hardware support out of the box. We are very well respected by the research Universities and government research labs that buy our systems. Our customers are a very satisfied bunch (judging by the fact that they always come back for more) because we truly deliver what we advertise.
Furthermore, we are _not_ a Linux reseller, but a producer of fully tested, supported, and ready to go portable Linux system solutions. Real Linux experts take the orders on the phone, and can discuss with you at length the pros and cons of partitioning choices, filesystem choices, which distro is best for you, and which machine will have the functionality under Linux to do what your job requires. Real Linux experts sit down in front of each completed custom install and ensure that all hardware in the system works in Linux. If you need advice on Linux apps for a certain function, We've got talented people to help you.
We supply a machine specific manual with each system that explains the use and configuration of all the hardware in your system. When you place a tech support call you will always be _directly_connected_ to a real Linux expert, perhaps even the company president (he's in the support queue too)
Additionally, _all_ our employees run Linux, even the admin. assistants. We do our financials in GnuCash, all our Ad art is done using the Gimp, (even though that is a headache for certain magazines, we insist.) We use LaTeX for all quotes, invoices, faxes, bills, shipping labels. All our web-hosting and e-mail is on Linux. We have _no_ proprietary OSes or software anywhere in this organization, and never have had.
I think by "schlocky" you would mean some fly-by night outfit from NYC that charges 20% below list because they aren't a licensed reseller, and the product is opened and a restock or worse, and if you want to send it back, they charge you a 20% restock fee. And they wont have any warranty support, b/c its "gray market" goods. _NONE_ of that applies to MY company.
So, we are certainly not "schlocky". We are very well respected in the Linux community, and well connected to several of the core kernel team. We go to every Linux World Expo, and have been in the Linux Journal for 3.5 years, as well as SysAdmin, and Open, when they were still around.
Of course you are correct. You are paying more. And any one who has one of our systems will happily tell you you are getting _lots_ more. If you want all the challenges and headaches of getting a current-run laptop running Linux _well_, then by all means, please go get one and hack on! Our customers are people who have other jobs to do, who need a Linux notebook that _just_works_, so they can get their jobs done.
They are being paid to write database code, crunch meteorological data, simulate the birth of the universe.
=> They don't have the _time_ to mess with setting up the OS. Keeping your core programmers, research physicists, and tenured astronomy Profs "on-task" is worth quite a bit to the people who pay them.
I'm the president of a company that only installs Linux on laptops and most of our customers are university
researchers or Linux-developers who have done done their own Linux laptop installs in the past but now do
not have the time to spend doing it and so they want the preload. Our website is
www.EmperorLinux.com but I will draw the following conclusions generally
about Linux laptops:
If you're willing to get a year-old machine, almost any distribution will support almost all the features on
any Sony, IBM, or Dell. Specifically we have had good luck with all IBM ThinkPads, Dell Inspirons, and Sony
Vaios.
The best machine for the ultimate power user is unquestionably the Dell Inspiron 8000. The 1600x1200 display
works perfectly in X4. Many of our university astronomer customers opt for this system. For a powerful machine that
you can port around daily, the IBM ThinkPad T20 series is expensive, but very nice. Its 1400x1050 display works
perfectly in Linux. Both of these machines have an Intel eepro100 ethernet which works perfectly in Linux. They both
have the Lucent winmodem which can also be made to work in Linux. They both have CDRWs which will burn CDs in Linux.
By far our most popular machines are the Sony Z505 and R505 machines which weigh 3.75 pounds and are still very
fully featured. APM can be a problem with these systems, but X runs at 1024x768, the USB floppies work, the memory
sticks work, and they also have the internal eepro ethernet. Their winmodem is worthless in Linux.
Of extreme popularity lately has been the Transmeta Crusoe chipped Sony PictureBook (C1VN/C1VP). It weighs
just over two pounds and also runs Linux very well. The camera works. Due to its small size, it does not have
internal ethernet, serial or parallel ports.
On all of these systems which are newer and don't have especially good support in any distribution, the primary thing
you really need to make them work well, is to recompile your kernel (and to get a very up-to-date kernel.) We
specifically keep up to date with every minor release of the kernel, and frequently with patches in between. You
should never use the PCMCIA services in the kernel, rather use the separate pcmcia-cs package. To get sound to
work, you will almost certainly need the ALSA drivers. Our current set-up snapshot as of 8/6/01 is:
My personal machine upon which I have done all of my development work for the past year is the IBM T21. The
person who does all of our web and Perl development uses the small C1VN. My wife, who has to carry her computer
in a backpack all over downtown Atlanta, uses the Z505.
you might take a look at www.EmperorLinux.com. We sell fully pre-configured Linux laptops and notebooks. Sony, Toshiba, IBM(soon). Some of our stuff includes a 3.5 pound P-II-400 or a P-III-500 with 15'' LCD. Also, if you don't see a system you like, we do custom orders all the time.
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Jarnal is what you seek, a Java ap that does very good handwriting recog. in Linux. All you have to do is setup the screen digitizer to be an input device (wacom), and then properly calibrate it to get the mouse pointer in the right place.
ok, the SD card is (i think) dead and worthless. CF, now there is a card for professionals. and the SD is the only no-go object in the box.
the X41 can be made to run any Linux distro, with enough work that is. you'll be ripping out Xorg (for the pen/stylus and latest i810 code), the entire GDM subsystem (for the BFP stuff), all the ACPI infrastructure (to get at the special buttons like rotate), and such to get it working. Oh, and Java to get Jarnal working...
the X41's Biometric Fingerprint Scanner does work in Linux. It even can be tied into the GDM login process via the magic of PAM. whee! (see posts below)
it hibernates to disk. The video is i915. there is no xrandr for the i810 driver, so you need two xconfigs, one portrait, one landscape. We've made the "rotate" button switch between the two. The pen works of course in either mode.
it does hibernate to disk. It can not at this time do suspend to RAM, as it has a SATA controller and the Linux SATA stack can't do that yet. hibernate to disk goes down in about 15 seconds, and comes back in the same.
The screen can be rotated to portrait orientation via rotate button (not dynamic, no xrandr on i915 yet, so 2 Xconfigs). It has special "BlueKeys" support when folded into tablet configuration: scroll Up, scroll Down, Enter, and Toolbox keys. The Toolbox Key (plugin to "EmpTool" tools to access LCD brightness up/down, volume up/down, backlight, wifi kill, etc)
I must take offense sir! You obviously have not read our site, nor do you know anything about
our company. If you'd take a moment to actually research your subject before commenting...
You'd find that we are fully focused on providing the Linux OS on portable systems for individuals and companies that require full hardware support out of the box. We are very well respected by the research Universities and government research labs that buy our systems.
Our customers are a very satisfied bunch (judging by the fact that they always come back for more) because we truly deliver what we advertise.
Furthermore, we are _not_ a Linux reseller, but a producer of fully tested, supported, and ready to go portable Linux system solutions. Real Linux experts take the orders on the phone, and can discuss with you at length the pros and cons of partitioning choices, filesystem choices, which distro is best for you, and which machine will have the functionality under Linux to do what your job requires. Real Linux experts sit down in front of each completed custom install and ensure that all hardware in the system works in Linux. If you need advice on Linux apps for a certain function, We've got talented people to help you.
We supply a machine specific manual with each system that explains the use and configuration of all the hardware in your system. When you place a tech support call you will always be _directly_connected_ to a real Linux expert, perhaps even the company president (he's in the support queue too)
Additionally, _all_ our employees run Linux, even the admin. assistants. We do our financials in GnuCash, all our Ad art is done using the Gimp, (even though that is a headache for certain magazines, we insist.) We use LaTeX for all quotes, invoices, faxes, bills, shipping labels. All our web-hosting and e-mail is on Linux. We have _no_ proprietary OSes or software anywhere in this organization, and never have had.
I think by "schlocky" you would mean some fly-by night outfit from NYC that charges 20% below list because they aren't a licensed reseller, and the product is opened and a restock or worse, and if you want to send it back, they charge you a 20% restock fee. And they wont have any warranty support, b/c its "gray market" goods. _NONE_ of that applies to MY company.
So, we are certainly not "schlocky". We are very well respected in the Linux community, and well connected to several of the core kernel team. We go to every Linux World Expo, and have been in the Linux Journal for 3.5 years, as well as SysAdmin, and Open, when they were still around.
care to duel?
Of course you are correct. You are paying more. And any one who has one of our
systems will happily tell you you are getting _lots_ more. If you want all the
challenges and headaches of getting a current-run laptop running Linux _well_,
then by all means, please go get one and hack on! Our customers are people who
have other jobs to do, who need a Linux notebook that _just_works_, so they can
get their jobs done.
They are being paid to write database code, crunch meteorological data,
simulate the birth of the universe.
=> They don't have the _time_ to mess with setting up the OS.
Keeping your core programmers, research physicists, and tenured astronomy Profs
"on-task" is worth quite a bit to the people who pay them.
- If you're willing to get a year-old machine, almost any distribution will support almost all the features on
any Sony, IBM, or Dell. Specifically we have had good luck with all IBM ThinkPads, Dell Inspirons, and Sony
Vaios.
- The best machine for the ultimate power user is unquestionably the Dell Inspiron 8000. The 1600x1200 display
works perfectly in X4. Many of our university astronomer customers opt for this system. For a powerful machine that
you can port around daily, the IBM ThinkPad T20 series is expensive, but very nice. Its 1400x1050 display works
perfectly in Linux. Both of these machines have an Intel eepro100 ethernet which works perfectly in Linux. They both
have the Lucent winmodem which can also be made to work in Linux. They both have CDRWs which will burn CDs in Linux.
- By far our most popular machines are the Sony Z505 and R505 machines which weigh 3.75 pounds and are still very
fully featured. APM can be a problem with these systems, but X runs at 1024x768, the USB floppies work, the memory
sticks work, and they also have the internal eepro ethernet. Their winmodem is worthless in Linux.
- Of extreme popularity lately has been the Transmeta Crusoe chipped Sony PictureBook (C1VN/C1VP). It weighs
just over two pounds and also runs Linux very well. The camera works. Due to its small size, it does not have
internal ethernet, serial or parallel ports.
On all of these systems which are newer and don't have especially good support in any distribution, the primary thing you really need to make them work well, is to recompile your kernel (and to get a very up-to-date kernel.) We specifically keep up to date with every minor release of the kernel, and frequently with patches in between. You should never use the PCMCIA services in the kernel, rather use the separate pcmcia-cs package. To get sound to work, you will almost certainly need the ALSA drivers. Our current set-up snapshot as of 8/6/01 is:Kernel: linux-2.4.7 + 2.4.8-pre-3 + kerneli patch (kernel.org)
Sound: alsa-0.9.0beta5 (www.alsa-project.org)
PCMCIA: pcmcia-cs-3.1.27 (www.pcmcia-cs.sourceforge.org)
My personal machine upon which I have done all of my development work for the past year is the IBM T21. The person who does all of our web and Perl development uses the small C1VN. My wife, who has to carry her computer in a backpack all over downtown Atlanta, uses the Z505.
you might take a look at www.EmperorLinux.com. We sell fully pre-configured Linux laptops and notebooks. Sony, Toshiba, IBM(soon). Some of our stuff includes a 3.5 pound P-II-400 or a P-III-500 with 15'' LCD. Also, if you don't see a system you like, we do custom orders all the time.