Ye old tablet.

[AllRadioisDead]

Hey guys, I'm just on my HP TC4400 right now running xubuntu. I bought this guy about 3 months ago factory refurbished from a shop, it's my first laptop. I'm a student right now, in grade 12, and I kind of wanted a laptop as something to take with me on trips, or just lie in bed with (Like I am now :popcorn:). It does what I wanted, but not very well. There are next to no tablet PC tools for linux, (I know, there's xournal and cellwriter), but that's pretty much it. The battery life is just over 4 hours which is great, but it gets pretty hot, even just sitting on the table after a while. It's pretty bulky as well. I was just looking at possibly selling it on craigslist and getting a netbook or small notebook to replace it. I'm just looking for some opinions.
What would some of my options be for replacing it? Basically, anything around the 13" range will be great, with good battery life and doesn't heat up. Thanks!

[nmccrina]

I'm not a big hardware guru, but probably any laptop is going to get hot.

My laptop is a HP Compaq Presario CQ50-140US and it is very compatible...I've had Windows, Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch, FreeBSD, Slackware, and now OpenSUSE on it, no problems. It might be a little bigger than you're looking for, though (I think it's a 17" screen).

[myusername]

you can get an eee 904ha and replace the screen with a touchscreen pretty easily. there are some tutorials if you google

[AllRadioisDead]

Thanks for the responses, Touchscreen is not a big priority for me anymore since linux has limited tools available. I'm looking at the eee PC's right now, they're nice but maybe a little small. I'm looking for something around 13", I believe the biggest eee is 11.6.

[nmccrina]

Have you looked at some other Linux distros WRT the touchscreen tools? When I installed openSUSE (or was it Debian? Damn it, I can't remember. Maybe it was both.) the installer had the option of including tablet pc tools. I unchecked it, since I don't have a tablet, but it looked impressive. :)

[AllRadioisDead]

Have you looked at some other Linux distros WRT the touchscreen tools? When I installed openSUSE (or was it Debian? Damn it, I can't remember. Maybe it was both.) the installer had the option of including tablet pc tools. I unchecked it, since I don't have a tablet, but it looked impressive. :)
Don't get me wrong, linux has great tablet PC support. My touchscreen works out of the box, I just had to configure the stylus, and I haven't yet gotten around to the hardware buttons or rotation (though they do seem do-able). There's no current replacement for some the microsoft products like journal or onenote, which allow you to take notes and convert them into text, it completely removes the need of a keyboard. You can also browse the web using just the stylus by writing in the URL instead of typing it. There's also a great on-screen keyboard that keeps itself hidden at the side of the screen and pops out when you need it, and also completely disapears in notebook mode.

[nmccrina]

Don't get me wrong, linux has great tablet PC support. My touchscreen works out of the box, I just had to configure the stylus, and I haven't yet gotten around to the hardware buttons or rotation (though they do seem do-able). There's no current replacement for some the microsoft products like journal or onenote, which allow you to take notes and convert them into text, it completely removes the need of a keyboard. You can also browse the web using just the stylus by writing in the URL instead of typing it. There's also a great on-screen keyboard that keeps itself hidden at the side of the screen and pops out when you need it, and also completely disapears in notebook mode.

Ah, so it's a software thing, and not a hardware thing! Yeah, we'll probably have to wait for a tablet owner who is an awesome programmer to scratch their own itch and get some of those things written.

Dude, that one paragraph made me want to go out and buy a tablet, even if I had to run Windows; it sounds like so much fun!

[AllRadioisDead]

Ah, so it's a software thing, and not a hardware thing! Yeah, we'll probably have to wait for a tablet owner who is an awesome programmer to scratch their own itch and get some of those things written.

Dude, that one paragraph made me want to go out and buy a tablet, even if I had to run Windows; it sounds like so much fun!
It is pretty cool, windows has amazing tablet support, as do photoshop and gimp. If you're into it, check ebay, you should be able to pick up a cheap older one for around $300. If you want good pressure sensitivity, make sure to get an active digitizer and not a passive digitizer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tablet_PC). The truth is, I just couldn't deal with windows 7 on a relatively old laptop, it started to bog down once I got all my music/files and games on there, plus antivirus and other third party programs. It came with XP tablet edition, but 7 is a huge improvement.

[AllRadioisDead]

b-b-b-b-b-bump!