IBM X41 or the Toshiba M200?

[WalkedAirplane]

I'm going to be purchasing a Tablet PC this weekend, and have narrowed it down to these two.

Price after IBM employee discount is almost exactly the same on both of these with comparable specs.

Toshiba Advantages:
- Higher resolution screen
- Faster HDD
- Nicer video card.
- Faster processor
- Will ship immediately, IBM has a delay on shipments right now.

IBM Advantages:
- Known to be a bit sturdier
- Battery life is better
- Lighter weight
- Screen has a reputation for better viewing angles / less glare than Toshiba.


The use of the machine will be:
- Minimal photoshop on the god (I'm a photographer, and the ability to review my shots and adjust them on the spot is a huge benefit to me)
- Notes for class
- Keeping myself busy during slow days at my dayjob - probably wont go much further than tossing Worms Armageddon on here or something though.


That's the bulk of it. I might watch the occasional movie, and I'll definitely use it for generic internet use, but thats the jist of it.

I really just cannot decide on which of the two to grab.

 

[xonik]

Have you considered the HP tc4200? Also note that Toshiba and Lenovo will have refreshed tablet offerings within the next few months. I believe Toshiba has already announced or will announce shortly the Portege M400 which features the Core Duo processor(s).

 

[tdg]

IBM.

Toshiba seems to have been experiencing a bit of quality problem over the last few years, I can't even count the number of dead Toshiba laptops I have here at work anymore. Total failure of the motherboard and/or power card and bad soldier joints have plagued many of their units over the last few years.

 

[WalkedAirplane]

The M400 inclueds a price hike, and takes away some of the advantages the M200 has over the X41 in the first place.

Not sure what IBM has coming up though, thats an interesting prospect.

I'd heard good things about the Toshiba's reliability, but your comments scare me a bit as well.

As per the TC4200, I hadnt really seriously considered it - any comments as to why I should give it a second look? Something initally kinda turned me off to it, but I'd be happy to give it another look.

 

[CubicleGeek]

I guess it depends on what your needs are. One advantage not listed in your message I would mention is that the X41T has over the M200 is lower heat. The M200 can get very hot on your forearm or lap after alot of usage, is my experience from playing with it and from people I know that own one. The X41T will only ever get warm. I personally think Toshiba has a better docking solution for the M200/M400 than Lenovo does for their X41T. I also think the M200 has an integrated CD-writer, whereas the X41T does not.

In the end what swayed my decision towards the X41T is that the portability and extra battery is much more attractive than the extra speed and docking - I have my gaming rig for my desktop needs. I've never found a need to have a CD-writer "right now" - i did buy the portable write from Lenovo if I need one on a pinch or I just share a drive over the network. This thing yields me about 5 hours of usage on the extended battery w/ wifi on and screen brightness set to highest if I use it for non-processor and disk intensive tasks like word processing or surfing the web. Yes, the construction is second to none.

The 1.8" 4200RPM drive is super slow. However, this is easily solved by maxing the RAM to 1.5 GB and suspending rather than turning off the machine. You'll only really take the hit for slow hard drive the first time you load an app and the first time you boot the PC. If you use suspend, you really only need to reboot once a week (if even, I just do it about that much by habit). From suspend it takes < 10s to return to service. Make sure you disable hibernation or it can take > 2 minutes to restore the RAM from hard disk. You're better off just shutting it off and doing a fresh boot in that case.

The slow drive might be unattractive for Photoshop depending on the size of the picture and how many layers you usually work with. If you chew up the RAM and start using a swap file, it could be painful on this drive. Again it is not an issue for me since I really only use Project, MS Office, VS .NET, Mind Manager on it to list the more hungry apps. I also know that it can play Civ4 pretty good (it gets a little sluggish when most of the map is revealed and there are alot of opponents).

Not much you can do about the wait. It took me 2 months from the release date to get mine and I pre-ordered. I'm extremely happy with the purchase. They did however, throw in the dock for free to compensate for the wait.