x220t owners

[AndreR]

The strength of the iPad is the greater battery life, lighter weight and price. The downs is everything else! (No active digitizer, inferior note taking softwares, no MS Office, no Windows compatibility etc.)

I´m an engineer student and do a lot of note taking (with One note and PDF Xchange Viewer). I also use my computer more as an traditional computer than a tablet, and I´m in a strong need of an fully functional computer with MS Office and some other softwares. The iPad where for me therefor not even an option.

But as someone else said, you have to list what is important for you. Because of the iPad has no "active digitizer" and inferior softwares so wouldn´t I recommend it to any one for note taking, if not the price, battery life and weight where extremly important.

[darthhen]

AndreR, have you tried Nitro PDF? I find that the Nitro PDF has a more touch friendly interface....also, it let's you print to PDFs as well.

[Cads]

Hi everyone!

I am interested in buying an X220T and would love to get opinions from other owners.

I am a doctoral student in the social sciences and basically I want to get rid of my piles of notebooks and folders and scraps of paper and go digital. I need a machine that will be usable/useful for the next three to four years, that I can use for heavy-duty writing and reading/research, and that I can also use extensively for hand-written notes in seminars and in the field.

I've read various reviews on the X220T and it seems to fit my needs very well. I'm not a computer guru, and my needs are relatively basic, so I'm trying to understand whether I should treat any of the drawbacks/problems you guys have noted here in the forum as show-stoppers.

This is a pretty big purchase for a poor student (and in South Africa, where service from Lenovo might be non-existent) so I want to make sure I do my homework!

Several of my friends are pressing me to consider an iPad 2 instead ...

I would love to hear stories from others -- particularly folks in academia or sales/marketing types out in the field -- about how you use your laptop.

Thanks!!

Richard

Mathematics undergrad here, use the x220 for daily notetaking and work.

While there are technically stopgap applications in iOS (iPad) and android for notetaking, and e-reading tends to be a bit more natural on a slate, a tablet PC like the x220 is way more of an appropriate machine for going paperless. The primary advantage is the active digitizer but the other huge issue is the availability of OneNote 2010, though some swear by evernote as well.

For instance a lecture for me consists of showing up x220 in hand, creating a page with printouts from slides or relevant PDFs/scans and any other material, and inking over that. I also let OneNote record the lecture with the ambient mic, and when it plays back it will highlight whatever ink you were scribing at the time in the recording. Somewhere in the notebook will be an .stdu of the textbook and whatever other materials are appropriate. This kind of comprehensive functionality isn't available on a slate tablet running iOS or android.

As a cherry on top the machine that I do all of this on is the same machine I comfortably run mathematica and other heavy duty software on, plus the occasional videogame I suppose. It's versatile in the sense that you can do most any sort of work with it but not in the sense that it's as portable or as streamlined as an iPad or iPad-like tablet.

Basically for the functionality you're looking for a tablet PC like the x220 would be ideal, though for the x220 there are caveats such as the inaccurate pen response at the edges to consider (though lenovo promises a fix for this issue in the near future apparently). You may be content to overlook these and other issues in light of the reasonable price as compared to the equivalent from HP or Fujitsu. At the very least a media tablet with an active n-trig digitizer will suffice. In comparison to these machines the iPad will be an unsuitable toy for replacing paper and pen.

[Agent 9]

What Cads said ^
I have had the HP Touchpad, and spent some time on a friends iPad (we were compring his ipad to my 2730p, I went "I can do ths and this, and One Note is amazing with its massive set of features and with the Wacom pen it is nearly perfect" and he said "I use my iPad for notes too" and I asked him to show me, and he pulled up a 'app' and then used the touch type keyboard to 'take notes'... needless to say I was not impressed. one. bit... the iPad and other entertainment tablets are excellent at what they are intended to do [which is to be used almost solely as entertainmemnt devices], but if you try to do anything more with them then it is like a sheep walking on its hind legs <-- +1 to anyone who gets the reference )

you can also get yourself something like the Lenovo X200t, HP 2730p or Fujitsu T5010 for maybe $500-300 (the X200t and the T5010 had touchscreen options), and then put the money saved towards upgrades and extras (like a laptop sleeve, more batteries, a pair of headphones, or simply gas/ food money)... you can also get an older, or newer Tablet PC than I listed, there are a TON of options out there, and most all of them are simply great

[AndreR]

AndreR, have you tried Nitro PDF? I find that the Nitro PDF has a more touch friendly interface....also, it let's you print to PDFs as well.

I just tried it, but it was an awful experience for me. The scroll was very choppy, the pen/annotator didn´t I manage to change and the writing was not at all as accurate. I looked little fast through the settings and didn´t find any settings that could effect my experience. However so did I like the ribbon interface.

What do you mean with "print to pdf"?

[darthhen]

I just tried it, but it was an awful experience for me. The scroll was very choppy, the pen/annotator didn´t I manage to change and the writing was not at all as accurate. I looked little fast through the settings and didn´t find any settings that could effect my experience. However so did I like the ribbon interface.

What do you mean with "print to pdf"?

AndreR,

That's odd. My scrolling and zoom in/out are both smooth.

The "print to pdf", I meant you can print things to PDF. For example, in your browser, let's say you're trying to print out a page. You can do ctrl-P (should bring up the print menu), then you can select "Nitro PDF Creator 2 (Reader)".

[kaharvey2]

My laptop shipped today!!!


I'm not going to bother with downloading the test windows 8 right now. I'm not very good with changing interfaces anyway.

Btw, I'm a pharmacy student and I'll mostly be using mine for notetaking. Particularily, annotating pdf. My professors use mostly pdf files (sometimes powerpoints) and I'd rather just annotate on the notes themselves than in one note. I'm going to download a bunch of the free trials of pdf annotators (I'm thinking of pdf annotator and revu) to see which one I like.

[Cads]

My laptop shipped today!!!


I'm not going to bother with downloading the test windows 8 right now. I'm not very good with changing interfaces anyway.

Btw, I'm a pharmacy student and I'll mostly be using mine for notetaking. Particularily, annotating pdf. My professors use mostly pdf files (sometimes powerpoints) and I'd rather just annotate on the notes themselves than in one note. I'm going to download a bunch of the free trials of pdf annotators (I'm thinking of pdf annotator and revu) to see which one I like.

In case you didn't know, you can print to onenote from acrobat reader or powerpoint and annotate that way. I still use a pdf annotator for marking up PDFs that I don't want to associate with a notebook, but otherwise I prefer to do everything within the onenote environment.

[kaharvey2]

In case you didn't know, you can print to onenote from acrobat reader or powerpoint and annotate that way. I still use a pdf annotator for marking up PDFs that I don't want to associate with a notebook, but otherwise I prefer to do everything within the onenote environment.

If you're describing what I think you are (looking at the slides within onenote), I want to keep them in their original pdf file. My friend did that once and I didn't like it. I don't want to have to look at it with onenote interface in the way. For me it's easier to see without the onenote interface being there. I want to look at ONLY the slides of that particular file. I maximize the slides so they take up the entire screen and with onenote there'd be other stuff in the way. (It probably doesn't help that I HATE the ribbon interface that comes with office 2007/2010.)

I do not like the tabbed onenote interface for school. My friend swears by it but it's not for me. I like onenote for copying recipes while watching food network so I can tab different sections (desserts, cookies, cakes, etc.) but otherwise I really don't care for it.

[Chimuel]

New member here, long time lurker (unregistered)
Just ordered a new X220t:
Core i7-2460M
8GB RAM
160GB SSD (eventually will replace with a higher capacity and faster SSD)
Win 7 Ultimate
Fingerprint Reader
720p Webcam
6 Cell battery and Slice Battery

Upgrading from my old tablet: TX2Z
AMD Turion X2 ZM-86
8GB RAM
128GB SSD (Aftermarket)
Win 7 Ultimate
Fingerprint Reader
Webcam
Extended Battery