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My first thoughts:
Fear. Fear that I had made a bad choice in the trade. I was giving up a better specced machine and was worried about Windows 7 performance. As you will read below, this fear was unfounded.
Man this machine is both small and light. Exactly what I wanted. While I do miss the Thinklight having a tablet far makes up for that. The screen is very easy on my eyes and incredibly bright as well. Some people have complained of the 40GB HD making clicking noises. While I have heard them in this unit, it hasn't bothered me at all. Like a kid with a new toy, this piece of gear has barely been out of my hands all day long. I read no documentation on how to use the tablet. I just loaded Windows 7, drivers, and my copies of Office 2007 Pro and OneNote 2007 (both owned on a legit basis), firefox, and went to town.
I was able to figure out how to use the little tablet input dude on the left side of the screen with no problems. Whatever magic sauce Microsoft put into it works great. I'll be the first to admit that my handwriting leaves something to be desired and this machine was able to figure out my chicken scratch with relative ease - and speed. I've only lightly used OneNote in the past, but figured it would be an excellent addon to my X41T (now named 'Tabby' cause I'm so original
). OneNote works awesome. I can see myself leaving this program open and using it all the time. So of course I have some initial questions and here they are:
1. I want a red and black neoprene sleeve with the IBM logo on it like I had for my old T41p. Where can I locate one that will accommodate my X41T with an 8-Cell battery?
2. What is the cheapest (price, not quality) 64GB SSD for this machine? I know it's 1.8" PATA and some require the use of a ZIF connector. So basically, what do I need to order and from whom?
3. RAM. My machine currently has 1.25GB. From me reading on the forums here, I can max it out at 2.25GB through the use of a 2GB stick. I also understand that due to chipset limitations I will only be able to use 2GB of it. That's fine and is 768MB more than I have now.
4. I stuck a 2GB high speed SD card into the slot and configured it for ready boost. Minus the slow 4200RPM speed of the hard disk, this system hasn't left me wanting for CPU performance. Firefox is snappy, flash plays in full screen just fine, office runs like a champ and even photoshop plugs along just fine. So is ReadyBoost a fail waiting to happen? I've never used it before and was curious for some real world advice on what I can expect from it.
5. GMA900. Any hacks to get Aero? I understand Intel hasn't and won't write a WDM Driver for this system under Vista or Windows 7. So can I use the XP driver and get Aero or am I just screwed? The lack of Aero doesn't really bother me too much, but it would be nice to have.
6. While in portrait mode with how the heck do I highlight text? Ex: In firefox reading the forums I wanted to highlight and copy the dimensions of my Thinkpad and copy it into OneNote. However browsing the forums in portrait mode means that I have to scroll left and right. So clicking and dragging in the window, drags the forum and does not highlight text. I can highlight text using the pen if it is in a text box though.
7. I do a lot of technical reading on a wide variety of subjects. My bread and butter is IT consulting but I also enjoy physics, engineering, medicine, elctronics and so on. I do a TON of reading on my laptops. How have you guys been able to use the machine as an e-book reader? I primarily stick to web and PDF so it shouldn't be any problem for me. However I was just curious as to what the other tablet people use for reading and whatnot.
Man what a long read.
I can't tell you guys what this is like for me. Using the device with no training or ever having used a tablet before, everything felt natural. From swiping backwards to erase a word while writing to how to insert the text. Screen rotation works great. Everything is very smooth and for the most part very fast. This machine feels almost nearly as fast as the T60 I got rid of - and that is what surprised me. Perhaps I forgot the true power of the Pentium M, or underestimated it when coupled with Windows 7 which is simply put - a killer OS. The small size (I've always preferred ultra portable machines), great tablet functionality and great performance really makes me question why more geeks aren't using one. I don't think I will ever go back to a standard laptop again.
If you've read this far, thanks.
Man this is sooo cool.
EDIT: Posted in the X6x forum. Sorry guys. Hey mods, can you move this for me please?
/slaps self. [Mod edit: done]
