Geek Note #1

Each Geek Note will be numbered to make finding the one you’re looking for easier. These will mostly be things that won’t bother the average user, or the kind of detail that makes my wife’s eyes glaze over. If you come across a Geek Note that you feel should be in the main article, please let me know, and I’ll try to incorporate it.

Geek Note #2

One thing that wasn’t so smooth of them however, happened right after the IBM logo went off the screen: A FAT32 to NTFS conversion screen came up, and started churning away. This took about 10 minutes, and wasn’t a huge deal, but I found it strange that Lenovo would have configured the machine with FAT32 in the first place. Luckily, the conversion finished without issue.

Then, as soon as the Windows XP configuration screen came up, I wanted to convert to tablet mode to try the pen out because there was an on screen keyboard displayed – but after I swiveled the smooth mechanism around, I was disappointed to find that the screen did not automatically change orientation. I later learned that it was because the graphics drivers were not yet activated during this part of the setup. Not a huge deal, but Microsoft looses points on polish, because the TIP (tablet input panel – The Tablet PC’s way to get your handwriting into text) seemed to be working fine.

Another weird thing about the windows setup, was that the wifi didn’t seem to be working because the tablet wanted to dialup to send the registration information to IBM (Lenovo?). Another minus on the polish points, but not a big deal – it said it could be sent later.

Geek Note #3

Some people may be put off by the ‘low’ XGA (1024×768) resolution, but for my purposes, it works perfectly. Any smaller, and I feel text might become too difficult to read. It’s sunlight visibility is fairly good. Definitly not great, and users who plan on being outdoors most of the time may want to take a look another tablet. I attempted to do a slideshow during a lunch, and it was almost un-viewable. So it’s good for very light outdoors use.

Geek Note #4

First thing I did (as I do on all my new computers) is run windows update manually. I was able to quickly connect to an open WiFi point (using Window’s wifi manager, more on this later) fired up IE, and went to Windows Update. I was SHOCKED with the number of updates that I needed to get, maybe 30 or 40 individual updates. Thet took about half an hour to download, and another half hour to install. Lenovo should really consider keeping their system images up to date because if I were on dialup, I would still be installing updates today.

Next thing I did was run Microsoft Office, and run it’s update utility. I really wish Microsoft would integrate this into the standard windows update, because I was forced to go to another web site, and run a web based utility. (Edit: Sooze on the Tablet PC Buzz site has informed me that there is an update to Windows Update that does exactly what I was hoping for. You can download that new Active X Control here.)After ‘validating’ my copy of the software, I finally ran it’s update, and it failed after about 20 minutes. It said it had issues applying Service Pack 1 even though all instances of Office applications were closed. Frustrated, I ran it again. This time, it was successful. This is another instance of Lenovo not having their system images up to date, while not a big deal – dialup users would spend MUCH longer updating their systems than I did.

After my hour long XP patch session, I took a look at what was running by default. At first glance, everything seems pretty good. Not too much bloatware in the taskbar, though some users may not like the inclusion of Norton Anti-Virus, IBM’s message center, and VirtualDrive by Farstone Technology, most everything that was running seems to be integral to system usage, or at least ‘usefull’.

Geek Note #5

Zinio, and a couple of other programs were fairly out of date. I was frustrated that Lenovo decided to include these useful programs, but didn’t bother to make sure they were the most current versions. These are the version numbers that were installed, versus their current version (as of the date of this post):
Zinio 1.4 -> 3.13
Adobe Acrobat 6 -> 7
Sun Java 1.4.2 -> 1.5.4

Geek Note #6

To disable windows’ management of your wireless card, Start->Control Panel->Administrative Tools->Services: Then scroll to find ‘Wireless Zero Configuration’. Change the startup type to ‘disabled’, then restart your system. IBM Access Connect should be able to take over the connection duties from now on.

A driver update was released on August 22nd, 2005. It has cleared up ALL my connection issues, and can be downloaded here.

Geek Note #7

I have noticed that the memory overhead involved with my main programs (Outlook, OneNote, Firefox, Trillian, FeedReader, GoogleDesktop, NAV) adds up to over 700mb resting usage. Considering the system uses a 1.8″, 4200rpm hard drive things are a little more slow than I would like, and I’m looking into upgrading to 1.5gb memory (the max for this system). I’m a little weary about upgrading though because I’ve read about issues with hibernating on systems that have over 1 gb of ram. I need to do a little more research on this issue, as it is my primary resting power state. Note: This is a documented problem with ALL Windows XP based systems, so it is not limited to this tablet. (Edit #2: Well, reader Ben has pointed out that the hotfix that I found only ‘reduces the occurrence’ of this problem, and he still has issues hibernating with his IBM T41 with 2gb of ram. I’m going to experiment with Standby to see if it will meet my usage requirements before I go shopping for RAM – this might turn out to be a big deal.)