I got an email the other day asking about the Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet PC
I’ve been using. The emailer thought maybe there was something wrong
with the machine and that I hadn’t been using it because I hadn’t
blogged about it for so long.
Well, part of the problem is in the nature of blogs – or at least the
way I approach them personally. Generally, I blog about what’s new in
TechProGuild, some interesting story I’ve seen in the Tech News, some
IT issue that’s been particularly bugging me, or just random thoughts
that happen to cross my mind. The Lenovo ThinkPad just hasn’t
been hitting any of those categories for me lately because the darn
thing just works too well.
It’s become my standard PC for work at home and office meetings because
the pen features are extremely handy. Plus, with the attached keyboard,
it’s easy to rotate out the keyboard and use it rather than the stylus.
I’m surprised with the Tablet’s ability to recognize my ‘handwriting’.
I can barely read it myself sometimes, but somehow the Tablet can seem
to decypher it pretty well.
Of course, that doesn’t have anything specifically to do with the
Lenovo itself. That’s more a feature of XP’s Tablet Edition. Where the
Lenovo really rocks is the form factor of the machine to begin with. TechRepublic Editor Bill Detwiler currently is experimenting with two Tablet PCs – one from HP and one from Gateway.
The Gateway is just huge. It’s about 4 inches wider than the Lenovo.
It’s also a couple of pounds heavier. It makes for a nice
laptop-replacement, but to rotate the screen and hold in your arms for
a tablet – it just weighs too much.
The HP is smaller than the Lenovo by about 2 inches, but it weighs
about the same. Plus, the keyboard is detachable, so it’s not nearly as
convenient.
We’ve also had a Viewsonic Tablet PC here as well, but it also couldn’t
compare. It didn’t have keyboard at all and weighed about 3 lbs more
than the Lenovo. It was also a lot slower.
In any case, the Lenovo is the best Tablet PC we’ve got in the shop
right now. And I’m not letting Bill near it. Mine.
MineMineMineMine. But I digress…
The Lenovo seems to have the hardware combination down perfect. It’s
not too big, not too heavy. The battery easily holds most of the day,
as long as you back off the brightness of the screen. I’ve never had
any problems getting and keeping a connection.
If there are any areas I could complain about there would be two: One
is around the vaunted ThinkPad keyboard and the other is around the
infamous TrackPoint. ThinkPad keyboards are still in a league by
themselves, but my poor Lenovo has a mushy spot around the arrow keys.
Maybe it’s broken underneath, but it just doesn’t feel the same as the
rest of the keys.
As for the TrackPoint, it seems to have fits whenever the hard drive is
running a lot. If you try to load several programs at the same time,
the TrackPoint jumps randomly and sometimes starts additional programs.
I’ve seen on Usenet where this appears to be a common occurance, but
noone seems to have suggestion that works to fix it.
So that’s about it with the Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet PC update for
now. If you don’t hear about it again for a little while, it’s
only because I’m using it and enjoying it too much.
