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Over the years, I have enjoyed various tablet computing. An HP PDA in the late 90’s, with not amazing Windows CE. A Nokia N770 in the 00’s with the delightful debian build. An ASUS Transformer (TF101) tablet with Android, and the detachable keyboard for added battery in the early 10’s.
All of these served different elements of the goal that perhaps many of us hope for, and no single device meets the needs for everyone.
Admittedly I am not a “normal” user, but I am average in that I hope to take notes, occasionally draw, normal productivity apps, still liking the laptop format often enough, and wishing to have enough offline context to not be “cloud dependant” for every task.
For “cloud” sharing, I try to use a personal Nextcloud instance. This often feels both eccentric for rebelling against massive, for-profit companies offereing services that are increasingly normalized as standard to pay for; while also it should be open and standard protocols for a common user doing common things like sharing files with them self.
Less average, I still develop software local on the machine, and expect some amount of ability to build and run a variety of coding projects.
The fact that my preference is a Linux machine at this point should not make a huge difference, and thankfully these days this is increasingly not an issue.
Briefly, a little background on the recent machines that lead up to choosing the Thinkpad L13 Yoga.
For the past 2 years, my primary personal computer has been an X61/X62 Thinkpad laptop [again].
I have more than 10 years of history with this particular machine, which is something of a Ship of Theseus. When I was first beginning my work at Red Hat, the company’s IT was actively switching from purchased laptops to leasing for employees. Consequently IT was emptying their inventory of scrape parts used to repair and replace parts from. From the e-recycling bins to be hauled off, there was a decent variety of parts for the Thinkpad x61 which was already more than 5 years old. From 4+ scrap frames and machines I gathered a display, keyboard, chassis, and motherboard. Online I bought the remaining battery, hard disk, ram, and drive covers. It was alive! Granted it was still not fast, but now it was an intimate relationship. This machine got decent use from me for at least five years (2013-2018).
Along comes a discovery of LCDFans/51nb, a hardware modder from China. Elusively their presence was somewhat on Facebook and across a couple of websites that were actively going offline or seemed stale. I reached out about once a year to inquire on their “X62” boards to drop-in to this X61 chassis. Eventually in 2021, Jacky reached out that there was X62 inventory available! After correspondance, figuring how to wire money to Jacky, and a couple month arrival, I had this magic hardware in hand!
New board, and newly ordered memory, was now an Intel i5-5###U @ 2.0 GHz, 32gb memory, and a 500Gb SSD. Further niceties are the micro-HDMI port (old board had VGA …). There was a little hackery needed to convert the stereo wiring of the board, to the single speaker on the chassis.
Some folks also do a display upgrade, but for whatever reason this overly dim, 1024x768 display had grown on me. Most apps and websites this days were not forgiving with this resolution, and I almost enjoyed the struggle.
The screen was 12.1" and keyboard was fullsized. This was actually great. It fit in a number of bags and satchels, even if a bit heavy and chonk.
This machine satisfied the portability and full compute, while also really satisfying the solar-punk side of keeping hardware alive for 15 years.
In January 2024, the CPU fan began dying. Research was not finding a suitable replacement. Many were close, but not exact. All were less than $10-20 USD even with shipping. Reaching out to Jacky, who offered to ship a replacement, but with shipping it was going to be $100+. I opted to try my hand at the cheaper route. This did not go well, and the fan is not functional now. Further, with age and so many deconstructions, the chassis itself is increasingly brittle and beginning to break.
While this machine is still barely functional, it’s time to retire it.
In recent years our household added an 11" iPad Pro, for the purposes of drawing on Procreate, use as a second display with the single macbook in the house, or for aviation apps (the standard in that industry). So I wanted to get in on that party and see if this tablet could suit my needs/wants. After all, I’ve heard folks say they no longer needed a laptop when they got an iPad. First off, I am not an Apple ecosystem person. Even the one macbook, not mine, in the house does not utilize an iCloud account. Even myself have been de-googling for years. Immediately the “lock-in”, and conversely the “lock-out” of Apple ecosystem is a sharp experience.
The device itself is tight, and nice enough. Light weight enough at 1lb (0.44kg). Roughly the framing of a US Letter size paper shape.
We did pay for GoodNotes already, so I tried that out and it is a super experience for note taking. Really a great experience for grouping notebooks, and flowing pages. A+
If I were going to lean into this, I would have to add a keyboard as well. Did not get that far before I know the iPad was not going to be suitable for me.
There was something about the enforced app-store-gateway really only enables a consumer experience. While there are no doubt “creative” apps there, and amazing humans do amazing work within these apps. But, it is still a curated, walled garden. Beautiful, but not wild. Don’t touch anything. Only look at it.
I am a tinkerer that enjoy’s not existing in a prescribed, neatly defined box.
Another tablet of comparison is that my work-issued laptop is currently a Microsoft Surface Book 3 13.5". It came with Windows 10, but more on this in a minute. Again, I am not a Windows “ecosystem” person. Regardless, I wanted to give this machine a go. With a detachable screen, and a battery in both the screen and the keyboard base, it does have an okay battery life. This means the screen holds obviously the display, but also all the compute and graphics (Intel and Nvidia). A few points on this: the screen is heavy; the screen is hot j(which throttles performance); the screen battery alone will only last less than an hour; the screen only has the Surface proprietary plug, not even USB-C. Best to keep the screen attached all the time. Thankfully, the display can be detached, flipped reverse, and closed again, to simulate a full flip around experience. Giving the experience of an 3.5lb (1.6kg) tablet. Not great.
So, on to the apps and experience. First off, the machine came with Windows 10. This is my first time touching Windows in 20 years. With my statements about heat of the screen in mind, some of the basic OS updates were causing the machine to overheat and fail. I had to reinstall once because it died in what I must assume was a crucial point of applying the update, and was not recoverable. For a while after that I would literally set a fan near the machine, apply cool packs (for kidoo boo-boos) to the back, or even put the machine in the refridgerator while it was applying updates. Already, I’m shocked that anyone would consider this a machine to be productive with. Windows 10 thankfully was soon upgraded to the new release of Windows 11, which also did away with the terrible overheating (perhaps in a firmware update of some kind).
I will say that Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) is impressive. There were various “lessons learned” as I tried to make WSL (v2) a fully comfortable workspace, and it is possible, but I found more and more little concessions and compromises that cut it short of just running Linux on the Desktop. Some changes needed in bash dotfiles to get ssh-agent behaviour working were becoming so complicated that it was taking solid focus to fix while not breaking the dotfiles for plain Linux. Further, still the VM that runs that Linux counts to the overhead on the system, which already struggles to share screen in Teams video chat while only a couple of applications are running at the same time.
I tried the MS Whiteboard app, the same GoodNotes note taking app from the iPad, Krita, and some basic web browsing as a tablet. It was an added turnoff that the note taking app that was such a nice experience on the iPad, is not able to sync across platforms! The iPad can only sync with an iCloud account, and the Windows app can only sync to Dropbox, Google Drive, etc. and not iCloud. Further, you still had to pay for each platform independently. That is a poor user experience.
Overall, the stylus/pen is laggy and not nearly as responsive as our brains expect. It is such that you would use it if you did not have a choice, but even for work it has become something I avoid because it doesn’t lead to a flowing creative experience.
Big thanks for work that almost 2 years ago, Linux became a supported desktop. Equipped with the Linux Surface project, I did try dual booting this hardware. While Linux “worked”, I was not going to install their build of Kernel, and was left with a laptop that would seize up if the screen-eject button was pressed, no working webcam, and it was a random chance on the machine suspending, freezing, or overheating when you close the lid. Leave it to Microsoft to really bring back the Linux experience of 15yrs ago. So, I reinstalled it to just Windows, powered off the machine, and now only turn it on to update when work send nag emails to do so.
This is in no way a walled-garden like the iPad, and there is space to tinker
No love lost for this machine.
Since the New Years kicking off 2024 I really set down to read reviews, search for what is out there, and scour enough forums, reviews, and comments to arrive at an articulation of what I think I am looking for and what even exists.
Things I aspire to experience with a computing device:
I am no gamer, but having heard from folks that use a Steam-Deck or similar device that can be multiple experiences, super portable, and dock in as a desktop experience even sounds intriguing. But the gaming form-factor is not for me.
Further, renewable, replacable, or upgradeable parts is a dream. Like why can’t more companies get with the trend of drop-in boards to update from an hot and hungry Intel to a board with an ARM Snapdragon? That would be dreamy.
Not in a huge hurry, but wanting to get a feel of the state of things.
This thing looks pretty OK for specs, and A+ for the company trying to work upstream to make the hardware compatible in the community. But the device comes in at $999 and is only 8Gb of RAM and still an Intel chip.
Granted I’m not in a hurry, but Purism has a reputation for not shipping for a long while. Like even 6 months. That’s really not acceptable.
Otherwise:
Sure, it’s cheap ($99-210), but also it is a project… The RISCV ones sound like even more of a project.
At 8Gb, 10.1" (1280x800), detachable, 0.5kg tablet and 0.4kg keyboard. That is again on the lighter-duty side, but I appreciate the flexibility.
https://www.fydetabduo.com/ (wasn’t showing in well in archive.org …)
This one looks fancy, but was only in pre-order status, and they’re not accepting more orders just now.
499 GBP, detachable, 8Gb, 12.35" (2560x1600)(500 nits), 0.7kg tablet and 0.7kg keyboard
I might would have tried this at the beginning of the year, but as of writing this there is more information on their site and some models are avaiable for order, I have to say I’m glad I passed on this one.
This looks great! With keyboard and stylus, it would come to around $799. But also appears to be in pre-order status with nothing available. I put my email in their system to be notified once they’re shipping.
16Gb, Intel N200 alder lake, 12.5" (2880x1920), 2lbs
All around I was ready to order this one! Sadly during the time of my search it never came available.
Though, this summer (2024) they sent email of availability and are now shipping. Further, this StarLabs looks like a great firm I will keep my eyes on!
I got very excited about this one … like really wanted to pull the trigger. But my 🕸spidey🕷 senses were firing off, so, I decending into the forums. And it has just too many quirks … Otherwise it sounds almost too good to be true. From the reviews even on Windows the machine can be too quirky to be reliable.
$350, 12Gb, 2-in-1, 10.51" (1920x1200)(250nits), 2lbs/0.92kg
I wanted to believe, but glad I moved on. If you chose this dragon-filled path, here are some reference points I found in my searches:
This laptop came out in 2021 or so, and was built from the groundwork of the X1 carbon, except it’s a detachable screen. Early forum posts look like it was quirky for Linux, but by the end of 2022 everything worked as expected except the rear camera. That’s fine.
12.3” (1920x1280)(400 nits), detachable, 16Gb, 1.6lb tablet and 0.75lb keyboard
Again I got super excited about this as an option. I even submitted an order on NewEgg.com for a refurbished model, but a few days later they refunded my money and said it was “no longer in stock”. Venturing to eBay was not something I was going to do for now.
Really, Thinkpad should reintroduce this model, and put a Snapdragon CPU/GPU in it! It could be an impressive device!
16Gb, 2-in-1, 13.3" (1920x1280)(300 nits), 3.17lbs
PC Mag dis a review that does an fine summary.
This one is not my first choice, but after facing availability issues with the others, it became the winner by default. Further, despite not winning on every category, I consider it a bonus to by something used and get more life out of it, than buying something brand new.