Did IBM get it right?
IBM's X40 laptop.
I took delivery of an IBM X40 laptop about a week ago. I now have it set up and working at home, at work and on the train; I'm beginning to acclimatise (not acclimate) to the keyboard, with one or two exceptions, and finding it a real replacement for my dead-tree notebook, without which I seldom venture into any meeting.
Its small enough not to require its own bag. I don't need to take the power cord with me every time I move, its very light. The twelve inch screen was the first thing I became used to, its clear, big enough for the work I do, and I really don't miss those extra five inches... if you'll excuse the expression.
Seeing the ultra-wide laptops, I grin as I use my diminutive system. It meets my needs.
I'm still unfamiliar with the IBM software, and there isn't a user base I can contact easily enough, IBM backed off from setting one up when I asked them, so I have set one up on Freelists.
With regard to the keyboard, my only niggles relate to my own usage. An emacs user, I need the control key with great regularity, and in its expected place I find a key marked 'fn' which is coloured and associated with special functions of the laptop. The actual control key is adjacent to it, inboard, and very easy to miss. The arrow keys are the normal cross layout, but sufficiently small to miss without any difficulty. So far they are a miss on my scoreboard. I need to look prior to using them. The hash # key and apostrophe ' key are too small at first use, I constantly write 'don#t' since my little finger strays too far right and misses the apostrophe. These two are half size keys.
Everything else I'm very pleased with. The battery life of greater than two hours on the normal battery I find enough for my purposes.
Just don't use it on your knee gents, it gets a little too warm.
Sans Labels
Designed for ....
Catching up with my own blog-list; I came across this in Paul Grahams blog (Paul wrote this which I found a very good read),.
Having seen the glaring (for IBM?) brightness on the stickers on the front of my x40, I decided to do something about it. The result? My shiny new x40, sans labels. I'd include a label if the Gimp were as approachable as my (now Ex) windows graphical tool, Irfanview. Far preferable. Thanks IBM, but if you want me to advertise Intel or Microsoft, you'll have to do more.
Which brings me back to an earlier post of Pauls. Slowly; reluctantly; but nevertheless.... Paul commented that less is more, but far better than I can say it. Having been paid to write reports, I know what he means. I first obtained internet access via a paid connection. This impacted my thinking such that even now, with a permanent connection, I still rarely write more than I think is necessary. This is backed up by an Engineering training where waffle is to be avoided. The end result is that my publications, if that's not too grand a word, are minimal to say the least, and lack the refinement (to a personal level) that Pauls approach supports.
Add to this the fact that it's ages since I rose at 4a.m. to work; prefering to read email and blogs nearer to 6p.m. which coincides with, or follows my pre-prandial wine, and I am seldom in the frame of mind for carefully thought out deliverances.
Ah well. My only comfort is that there are probably far more like me than like Paul
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