Impressed with the X31

[lilserenity]

Hiya,

Tonight I was invited to an open evening at IBM's Business Consulting Services HQ at Southbank, London (I've applied for the graduate recruitment thing and got through the first stage, yay!) and dotted around were various ThinkPads, I saw a T42 and thought it looked OK, although I could see for sure why my T23 was indeed smaller.

I then spotted an X31, at first I thought it was an X40 - I thought wow that's SO small and cute, I want to take it home!! But then I saw the logo, X31, I was like wow! Firstly the machine looks awesome, I would love one of them!

I realise it is just a single spindle design but for working on the go in the usual array of applications, that little machine looks a dream and makes the likes of the 560 and 570 series that I have owned in the past look huge!

Secondly, it made me realise just how the X40 must be teeeeeny!!

If I wind up working for IBM, I will try and make sure I get an X series I expect the free laptop is a G40 though and a lemon to suck on I'm reluctant to let my T23 go of course!

Vicky

[Bob Collins]

Congrats and best of luck. Hope it all goes quite well for you with Big Blue.

[n00b1337]

if u get a job from them will they ship u off to china?

[stgreek]

Don't be so sure about the "lemon", I got an A31p when I was doing my placement for them (otoh I was coding, but still....)

[lilserenity]

Awww you're all so sweet, thanks for the well wishes. I'm going to do the Aptitude test this weekend... It'll be fine, I'm being very positive about all this, when I see something I like, I really do my best to get it. And it offers light at the end of the university tunnel as well which is all well and good in itself but I get fedup of books, living in the real world is more for me

As for whether they ship me off to China, if they offer me free noodles for life I might consider it.

And an A31p... woo... that doesn't sound half bad that. Still, I'll try and see if I can weasle and X series out of them

I'll let you know how it goes as if I pass, I'm meant to go back next week to Southbank.

I'm off to chew on my nails *chuckles*

Vicky

[JHEM]

Best of luck Luv, you'll knock 'em dead!

--
James

[lilserenity]

Thanks James

No, I won't knock em dead in a French maid's outfit :p

I'll rely on good old cl... Anyway I'm very positive about this, when I get a feeling about something I'm not usually wrong, so I'm sure this is the job for me, so I'll do my [censored] to make sure I do get it

Vicky

[lilserenity]

To keep this on topic I'm either now one step closer or a lot further away from getting an X series as I just did the online aptitude test you have to take and pass to be able to get an interview, which is a real pain because I loathe tests and always do better on the field than answering questions.

Some of those questions were tricky!! At least my mathematical reasoning and number sequence stuff was pretty good, as for the data matrices, we'll see about that one

It would be a shame if I were to fail at this stage because I know I can do well when given the chance to show my stuff in real situations.

So, lets hope I'm one step closer to that X31 Or X40 even, either would supplement my T23 nicely hehe.

[lilserenity]

Bad news.

I failed the aptitude test.



Their loss. But that was always my weakness, tests were never my strength, doing things in the real world and having real experience was. Shame they never got to see that before slinging me out.

Nevermind, someone else will get to put up with me instead.

*looks at T23, you're safe, you big brother T43 won't be replacing you any time soon dear*

Still would like an X31

[Thinker]

Bad news.

I failed the aptitude test.



Their loss. But that was always my weakness, tests were never my strength, doing things in the real world and having real experience was. Shame they never got to see that before slinging me out.

Nevermind, someone else will get to put up with me instead.

*looks at T23, you're safe, you big brother T43 won't be replacing you any time soon dear*

Still would like an X31

Hi lilserenity,

I just wanted to chime in and say that I am sorry about the test. Like you say though, it's their loss! I wish you good luck in your future enterprises, which I am sure they will be plentiful.

Regarding the X31, I had one for a month and I really liked it, but I decided against keeping it because of the lack of integrated optical drive, and because I have a little problem trying to get used to typing on the smaller keyboard.
I have to say though, that it is an awesome computer. Very nicely built and pretty fast.

Best wishes,

Ruben

[lilserenity]

Well, one thing is for sure, I don't get knocked down for good, I bounce back and try twice as good I wrote my thoughts down last night:

http://www.lilserenity.com/new/me/comme ... 070305.php

And this is, as a small example a nice slice of "unsuitable for IBM" Lil's code:

http://www.lilserenity.com/new/me/comment/payments.php

What made me laugh more today was I have a final year computer science degree person in the house who lives here too, she had a problem, now bear in mind she is probably the kind of person IBM would let in as she is on paper an absolute star at maths.

She came to me with the problem, with ASP, now I have never touched ASP not even with a 10ft long barge pole, PHP all the way for me And she could not sort out the problem and had been trying to figure out the problem for a few days. Suffice to say a couple of tweaks here and there to her code and it now works.

Anyway - hope you are getting on with your T23 now after the hassle you had! I'm still clinging onto mine tightly as it's a diamond of a machine, doesn't get much better than this. If I were to own an X Series class machine, I'd keep the T23 for sure, but an X series would be a luxury when I have some pennies to spare for when I need a no nonsense ultra-portable, for everything else, there's the T23

However I have small hands (not big flappy goalkeeper ones, which would raise some questions!! ) so smaller keyboards does not cause a problem for me

Maybe one day!

Vicky

[MagicBoy]

If I wind up working for IBM, I will try and make sure I get an X series I expect the free laptop is a G40 though and a lemon to suck on I'm reluctant to let my T23 go of course!

Vicky

You'll probly get a low-end T4x. That's what they were handing out when I left in Global Services in October...

[Thinker]

Hi Vicky,

I read your blog. I basically agree with the fact that academic tests are far less meaningful than real life tests. Too bad that things still work that way nowadays, and that you would lose the opportunity to land a job just because Mandy with a dollar to the left raised to the power of...Well, you get me

I am sure you will get something better soon. That code of yours looks pretty impressive. I recently had to do a Java application for my OOP class at college, and it ended up being the longest program I have written so far (about 1200 lines of code. I know, I'm a baby ), so looking at your code got me shivering. How did you learn to program PHP, by the way?
I've been wanting to learn PHP for a while now, but didn't find the time to do so.

I'm also sticking with the T23, it is a great computer. Regarding the keyboard of the X31, I don't really have big hands, but something about it didn't agree with me (kept trying to hit the backspace and missing it). I'm sure I would have gotten used to it eventually, but even so I had to decide between the T23 and the X31 for practical reasons, specially when I heard about the T43 coming out soon.

Keep those spirits up, and happy programming!

Ruben

Edited by Moderator: 36 lines of excessive quoting removed. Trim your quotes, guys.

[middle14]

Just for clarification, the X31 keyboard is full sized. This is what sets Thinkpad ultraportables apart from much of the competition, the IBM full sized 19mm keyboards. So, not sure why it seemed small to you.

I've now had my X31 for a few months. Couldn't be happier with it, it works flawlessly, no issues of any kind so far.

[stgreek]

Just for clarification, the X31 keyboard is full sized. This is what sets Thinkpad ultraportables apart from much of the competition, the IBM full sized 19mm keyboards. So, not sure why it seemed small to you.

I've now had my X31 for a few months. Couldn't be happier with it, it works flawlessly, no issues of any kind so far.

It is may be called "full-size" but it is not the same size as the T4x one (keys maybe closer or sth like that?). Everytime I switch from my T40 to my X31 I always type the wrong keys, as I think i am typing on the T40 keyboards but I'm not!

Regards
Stavros

[sneakyazn]

according to the tabook, the x31 uses keys that are 97% of those on the t series. they have a 18.5mm pitch while the t-series have a 19mm pitch

[middle14]

In reading reviews I had always seen "full sized" and assumed it was 19 mm, you are correct at the 18.5 mm. Here is the comment from the IBM site:

"ThinkPad X Series notebooks have alphanumeric typing keys that are spaced 18.5 mm vertically and 18.2 mm horizontally, which is defined as full-sized by ISO/IEC 15412 and key displacement (stroke) is 2.5 mm, which is defined as full stroke by ISO/IEC 15412."

I have fairly large hands and find the X31 to be great to type on, maybe I'm just used to it at this point as I assume my X20 had the same size keyboard. I used to use a Hitachi Win CE portable with a very small keyboard, that used to be a real challenge to type on, took some getting used to each time I started using it.