Re: Should I buy a tablet?
 

I recently bought a new laptop, Lenovo Z50-75, and i am very happy with it. I am now running kubuntu + windows 8 multiboot. It costed 600 € in finland then, but now you can find it for 450 €, even cheaper in central europe and USA probably. Like many Lenovo models, it came with superfish adware/spyware preinstalled, but it was easy to remove. I initially considered buying i7 version, but ended up buying AMD A10 version because of slightly better graphics card (i also use it for gaming).

Like most of you there, i think tablets are mostly procrastination devices, not good for working on doing any creative things (based on my own experience). Best tablet i ever had was the HP TouchPad, with android and webos multibooted. For first time tablet buyer, i would recommend Nexus 7, because of it's amazing price-quality ratio.

I never believed a laptop/tablet hybrid would be useful, but judging by feedback by guys here in this thread, i may be wrong.

Re: Should I buy a tablet?
 

Please elaborate!

I have experience with several older Dell Latitudes (Exx00/Exx10 generations) and Precisions and found the build quality quite good.
Last year I bought a Thinkpad T430 and I must say I'm not impressed. It's not bad either but the build quality isn't as good as that of the Dells I know. For example the T430's display bezel isn't very stable and the designers really screwed up when positioning the USB3 ports. It's roughly on par with my old FSC Amilo Si 1520. Amilo is a consumer series.
I also know how a T60 looks like from the inside. It's built well, but not better than the Latitudes!

From HP I only really know the Pavilion DV6000. This is indeed a "plastic bomber" of the worst kind, but one shouldn't mix apples and oranges. If you want to compare IBM/Lenovo to Dell and HP then compare Thinkpads T/X with Latitudes/Precisions and EliteBooks. Or compare Thinkpads R/L with Vostros and ProBooks, or IdeaPads with Inspirons and Pavilions.
But don't compare series from different levels of "professionalism" (whatever that means).

Re: Should I buy a tablet?
 

Indeed. The same goes for Copernicus' cheap Android vs. expensive iPod. It is not about Android vs. Apple, it is about cheaply bashed together vs. well built.

Yes, the cheapest is always the worst. But that does not mean that the most expensive is always the best.

Re: Should I buy a tablet?
 

Well, thanks for a lot of feedback!

I'm really thinking about a laptop with a touchscreen. It'd be great to have a device for comfortable reading of pdf ebooks (the e-readers don't cope well with them).

AFAIK, now there are apps for interpreting the touch gestures (e.g. touchegg) for Linux, even if the DE doesn't provide a sane support. So wouldn't be forced to switch to Windoze ;)

What's more, the law in Poland is such, that you may simply refuse to take the Windows with your computer and the seller has to give you the money difference back (at least it was so a couple of years ago). So, most probably, I'll stay with a touch-enabled Linux distro, most probably Mint + MATE.

Are there any key features that a touch laptop should have? Detached kbd?

Re: Should I buy a tablet?
 

I'd check that again if I were you.

Until a few years ago this was the situation in Germany too, but then the sellers had the glorious idea that they're not selling a laptop with an OS but an "integrated device". According to that point of view the laptop and the OS form a common entity that cannot be taken apart without destroying the product. In this product there is no laptop that's bundled with an OS (which would be forbidden) because there is no laptop to begin with.
As a result you can still refuse to accept the Windows EULA, ask for a refund and the seller will ask you to return the product to grant you the refund. The problem is, the product is the "integrated device" and not some "OS part" so you'll have to return the laptop too.

As you'll see here [1], the FSFE has no reports of successful returns in Germany after 2008. That of course doesn't mean there were none, but given the nature of the topic I'd call that a pretty strong indication.


[1] https://wiki.fsfe.org/WindowsTaxRefund/Germany

Re: Should I buy a tablet?
 

I accept most of your points (and pichlo's) but my main incentive for going for a Chromebook is that it will be a replacement for my tablet, not my desktop and the key factor here is the price. The one I've been considering is the Toshiba Chromebook 2 (full HD/4GB version) and only costs 330USD making it a good tablet alternative. The specs are decent and I have my desktop if I need something more powerful. Storage is limited as you mentioned but it can be expanded with an SD card. The form factor is very nice (think MacBook Air) and it's fanless which means silent operation. I've not yet bought it because some have experienced audio problems when booting into a full Linux distro and the community have been less than responsive when I've tried to help them to solve these problems.

Find me a similarly priced non-Chromebook laptop with a similar spec, form factor, battery life, without the MS tax and by all means I would consider it. Unfortunately I haven't come close with my attempts to find something.

Re: Should I buy a tablet?
 

What community is that? Is there a Chromebook community? Or are you talking about some sort of Linux community?

No way with a FHD display.
If you drop that I'd say look for an Acer Aspire E3, ES1 or V3.
If you need the FHD display, increase the display size to 14", drop the passive cooling and go for a Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 2.

Re: Should I buy a tablet?
 

The community is a bit disperse. There are various threads on Google+, Reddit, an Arch Linux wiki and a dedicated thread on the Ubuntu forums for booting Linux on Toshiba Chromebook 2 using the "Chrubuntu" method.

6 hour battery life? 600USD? Ouch! That's a shame, suddenly I've lost interest in regular laptops once more.

The Chromebook market is just starting to heat up. The recently announced Asus Chromebook Flip which can be converted to a variety of form factors including tablet, looks quite appealing at only 250USD. I'm not too sure about the CPU/GPU combo through as I'd rather have x86 with Intel graphics. If you're after something high-end and have a bit of money in your pocket then the 2015 edition of the Chromebook Pixel is just gorgeous with its 2560x1700 display.

Re: Should I buy a tablet?
 

I've read about that some time ago. Wasn't that essentially replacing the ChromeOS userland with an Ubuntu userland while keeping the ChromeOS kernel? iirc that seems like a very poor alternative because at some point in the future you'll run into the same kind of problems with this ChromeOS kernel as we are here with our ancient Fremantle kernel on our N900.

In advance: Sorry for the partly German links. I'm too lazy right now to check for English versions.
Notebookcheck says the CB30 runs 7 hours with wifi on battery [1]. The same goes for the ES1 [2] and I think 6.5 hours for the V3 [3] still counts as similar.

I don't know the US market. I only checked the German/EU market. Here your CB30 costs 320 Euros. All the alternatives I mentioned cost between 250 and 400 Euros.


[1] http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-....113401.0.html
[2] http://www.notebookcheck.com/Test-Up....128962.0.html
[3] http://www.notebookcheck.com/Test-Ac....122339.0.html

Re: Should I buy a tablet?
 

But the courts have already seen through this kind of shenanigans when Microsoft claimed that IE was an integral part of Windows and cannot be removed without crippling Windows. Claiming that the laptop and the OS are an integrated product is even more feeble, and even easier to disprove.

As long as the manufacturer or the reseller pays the postage then it would be good fun to keep buying and returning those machines until the manufacturer stop being such d*cks.

That is until Google release an update that renders your SD card useless like they've done with Android 4.4.2 (and probably subsequent versions).

Re: Should I buy a tablet?
 

You're right, it's not ideal but the components tend to be relatively common compared with smartphone hardware so there's a reasonably chance of drivers being upstreamed. It's still a much better situation than buying a laptop where Linux isn't officially supported and you may be missing some Linux drivers altogether, thus you're unable to use some of the hardware. That said, even if you buy a laptop where the vendor does support Linux, that doesn't mean that they are going to upstream drivers so I don't think the situation is any different.

Since when where we stuck with an ancient kernel on our N900s? :P

The CB30 is an older model. The Toshiba Chromebook 2 (CB35-B3340) supports up to 9 hours.

Really? I got that figure straight from Lenovo's website. I'm not interested in the others you mentioned as they are missing a full HD display.

Meanwhile, the CB35-B3340 has dropped 30USD and is only 300USD from Amazon.

I think you missed the part where I said I won't be running a Google OS on the device.

Re: Should I buy a tablet?
 

Apples and oranges?
I like fruit salads but I don't think MS does. So unless someone (you? me?) brings that to a court I don't think that policy will change.

Maybe that works in LEO, but in Germany every seller is free to decide whether to make a contract with you or not. And I guess after you've returned the 2nd device because you don't want the Windows he'll probably just ignore you.


I'm not worried so much about hardware, but about software.
For Easy Debian Jessie I have to patch glibc because the standard Debian packages don't like Kernel 2.6.28.
And I've heard rumors that Systemd is or will be very specific about which kernel versions it accepts. Now, I don't like Systemd anymore than you do, but the reality right now is that it's kind of hard to get around it.

Not sure if you're right. At least you're not wrong.
Be wary of any Dell laptops that officially come with Ubuntu! There have been reports of acpi tweaks that initially only worked with the Dell-Ubuntu images because of non-free kernel modules.
Afaik it's fixed now because these tweaks have been mainlined, but it took longer than Canonical's support of the respective Ubuntu version lasted. So Users of these Dell-Ubuntus were without any security fixes for quite some time.

The sites I checked [1][2] indicate, that the CB30 is the Chromebook 2. :confused:

Prices on manufacturers websites tend to be higher than in regular shops.
At least with Dell it usually helps to phone them to get a more "reasonable" price. It's like on a bazar. I wouldn't be surprised if it's similar with Lenovo.


[1] http://www.toshiba.de/laptops/Chrome.../chromebook-2/
[2] http://www.heise.de/preisvergleich/t...loc=at&hloc=de

Re: Should I buy a tablet?
 

Since about November 2009? :P

I don't think it's apples and oranges. If anything, claiming that an OS is an integral part of a HW is a bigger BS than claiming that any particular application is an integral part of an OS.

I am confident that the claim would collapse in the court like a house of cards. The trouble is, who will challenge it? Other companies with big bucks had a vested interest in challenging Microsoft and IE. I certainly do not have enough resources for a similar challenge, even though I am confident that I would win if I tried. We need someone with big bucks to start the ball rolling.

Re: Should I buy a tablet?
 

I agree. But it's still a separate issue, and therefore separate kinds of fruits. Losing the browser trial did not force MS to stop their OS bundling.
Quite frankly I think the browser trial was a mistake because of its too narrow scope. It should have been about any kind of bundling.
And it should not just have been against MS, but against anyone who forcefully bundles any SW with any HW. Though I'm not sure if that's even legally possible.

Re: Should I buy a tablet?
 

Not if you use a distro that supports non-systemd init.

It looks like in Germany they use a model number that is similar to the original Toshiba Chromebook. Elsewhere CB35 is used.

That's not always the case. The Toshiba US website also lists the CB35-B3340 at 300USD. In any case, negotiating a 50%+ discount with Lenovo seems like I'd be pushing my luck.

It seems you're not familiar with this project. Great progress has been made and continues to be made.

Re: Should I buy a tablet?
 

I intended to write a quite long paragraph here before I realized that it would be off-topic in this context.
Let me just say that Systemd is much more than an init system and that I have a timeframe of like 10 years in mind, which is how long I usually use my computers.

Re: Should I buy a tablet?
 

Just two weeks ago I built a new CLFS installation (C here being cross-compile... my host being a regularish x64 and target being MIPS 64 LSB system...)

Long story short, when building LFS you have 2 major options to go for, you need to make selection between sysvinit and systemd init.
Naturally I selected the sysv based init :D

Re: Should I buy a tablet?
 

I can also have Debian Jessie without Systemd init. But I can't have it without Systemd, the middleware or "2nd kernel" or however you may call it. (Actually I can, but what remains has little to do with what Debian is about.)
That's why I said it's much more than an init system. And most of the discussion totally misses the point because it only revolves around the (comparably insignificant) init aspect.

btw: This is the point where I think this topic should be split.

Re: Should I buy a tablet?
 

Just a heads up, Dell is now selling the 2015 XPS 13 at a discount and running Ubuntu. No Windows license included.

The early criticism so far is that while Ubuntu can challenge Windows 8 from a usability perspective, it apparently suffers at being finger-friendly, being battery efficient, and making most of the HiDpi display. Anandtech are awaiting review units from Dell.

I think the criticism is true, but we'll see how exaggerated it is, once we get some reviews flowing through.

Re: Should I buy a tablet?
 

Apparently that depends on where you're ordering from, I just checked and there's no "No Windows" option for me. The only thing I can customise is which of the expensive extended warranty packages that I want to waste my hard earned money on :D

Re: Should I buy a tablet?
 

You can buy a Lenovo (ThinkPad X220T Serie among others) here WITHOUT any OS :)

https://www.lapstore.de/aframe.php?s...ang=en&a=14495

Cheers!

Re: Should I buy a tablet?
 

I know. I got my T430 from there (without Windows) and bought several Latitudes for friends also from this or similar shops (with Windows, but it was optional).

There are at least half a dozen similar shops in Germany and the quality of the devices and the service is usually excellent.
The problem is, that they have a very limited variety of devices because they resell mainly returned laptops from leasing programs of big companies.
So for the most part you can only buy there what someone else has leased before.
If your requirements match exactly that pattern or if you don't have clear requirements at all, these shops are great places. But if you have clear requirements that can not be met by these few devices (e.g. wicket), then you still have the problem of bundled systems.

Another problem, at least with Lapstore is, that you can only get older laptops without Windows. As a rule of thumb: If a Laptop is pre-configured with Win7 you can usually remove it completely. But if a Laptop is pre-configured with Win8 you can only downgrade it to Win7.


btw:
My post you quoted was about returning Windows licenses. This is a completely different story than buying devices without Windows in the first place.
In my opinion buying a laptop with a Windows license when you know in advance that you don't want it is a mistake. But returning the license would still be better than simply swallowing it. My point is that returning the license alone is (next to) impossible.

Re: Should I buy a tablet?
 

Is it not better to have Windows though?

Pay for the license and swallow the cost, but at least there will be a stable software to fall back on.
I always believed dual booting was the way to go.

And theres nifty tricks out there, like holding the space bar during boot goes to Windows and w/o goes straight to openSUSE (sorry I meant Linux distro, I swear *looks slyly*)

Re: Should I buy a tablet?
 

I used dualboot but that was last millenium.
I have had no need for windoze for 15 years or so...

Re: Should I buy a tablet?
 

Agreed. (even I still like it, e.g. Bootcamp)

cannot agree (not speaking work wise, bound to Win) lots of hardware, child games, etc. come with Windoze only SW. Latest example: TipToi, a (USB) stick for kids which reads / makes noise / asks / plays out of a special book.

Re: Should I buy a tablet?
 

Well, basically, I haven't booted my old Windows since at least 6 months. So I doubt I'll need any Windoze in the near future :)

But if we really were forced to use it, wouldn't virtualization be a better option?

Re: Should I buy a tablet?
 

That depends on who you ask.
I rather the dualboot method, because its simple and solves A LOT of bugs and possible problems.

However, virtualization does have its advantages.
One being that you do not have to shut down the PC and reboot to the alternative, so it makes working quicker.

I should mention that I have to use Windows *gulp* Vista at work. And then have to use virtualization in Vista, to use Windows XP. Crazy I know. I mean they have IBM laptops with square (and red) displays. Do you guys even remember BenQ.... yeah there is one of those desktops there. And the IT guy that works here manages our on-site servers for the whole country, he's toting around a Surface Pro 3. He hates Macs, and doesn't understand Linux. And I have to suffer. There's heaps of ways to the computers could be hacked (cause they're older then my underwear) but no-one really cares. I don't think a hacker would care either, cause the whole system is so "bleh".

Re: Should I buy a tablet?
 

If you intend to run Windows, then I agree with you.
But if you don't intend to run it for whatever reason, then why should you be forced to support that company by obtaining a license from them?
I don't write "buying" because it's usually not a matter of financial cost, because as others have pointed out it's sometimes even cheaper to get a computer with a Windows license.

It's a matter of free choice. MS assumes that every license they "sell" is a computer that's running Windows. That's not true and they know it. Nevertheless they use these statistics to strenghten their market position, because hardly any computer seller will risk to lose his deal to get the MS licenses basically for free.
Imagine you're vegetarian by conviction! Would you accept to have a "free steak" forced on you in your grocery store or otherwise you are not allowed to buy anything there? I don't think so. So you'd just go to another grocery store. But what if it's hard to find a grocery store that doesn't have this policy, and the few that don't have it only have a very limited range of (even vegetarian) products?

I'm not saying everybody should abandon Windows. If you have a use for that OS, by all means, use it!
I just don't want it to be forced on me. And that includes the very first step, my choice of obtaining a license in the first place.

Re: Should I buy a tablet?
 

Moreover, if the circumstances force you to use Windows and you want to comply with EULA, you can always buy a retail version. In contrast to the OEM version, you can move the retail version among computers. And is much easier to virtualize EULA-wisely. And why should you be forced by a company to buy something that you'll hardly ever use?

Re: Should I buy a tablet?
 

Hmm. There is usually one more option these days; most products today (including the TipToi manager, according to its web page) support both Windows and OS X. Given that OS X is a flavor of Unix (it's a BSD derivative), I find it much more friendly than Windows. And, the quality of Apple desktop hardware today is about as good as it has ever been.

So if you aren't stuck with a PC because of work concerns, it might be worth some consideration. (And Apple PCs make fine Linux boxes too, should you tire of OS X. :) )

Re: Should I buy a tablet?
 

But they are bundled with a proprietary OS too. I might have bought a Macbook some years ago if I could have gotten it without Mac OS.

Re: Should I buy a tablet?
 

Indeed they do :D
(posting this from my MacBook Pro without MacOS in it...)

Re: Should I buy a tablet?
 

Just giving an update at my workplace.

Yes, I know the computers are old. Like medieval.

However, I just made a daunting find. Someone went and bought recently (past 4 months) a brand new packet of Floppy Disks.

I sh** you not.
So as far as the "tablet revolution"... I have lost all hope.


(little reminder for myself to watch Sophie's Choice, Schindler's List, Mystic River, Cowboy Bebop, Boccaro, Blood C, Devilman)

Re: Should I buy a tablet?
 

LooL, time for you to change job/office ;) floppy discs indicates it's time :D it was about 10 years since the comps was shipped with floppy. Even the CD/DVD/Bra drive is soon gone...if you buy a tablet you will be so tech so you can demand twice the salary :D get a tablet