IBM x41 tablet PC $20 minus hdd and charger, whee!

[jaqie]

Found this in the local goodwill computer store (they have a computer specific one) as a 'scraptop' (non working sold as is without hdd or charger)... they allow you to test things before buying them. Only thing I could find wrong with it was that the hard drive was semi proprietary, 1.8" 44 pin pata, and they didn't have one for it.

1.5GHz p3 mobile,, 1024x768 12.1" screen, bluetooth edr, broadcom gigabit, intel abg. classic IBM keyboard and mousenib thingie, 8 cell battery. I got an original 60gb hdd for it for $30 shipped ebay, a hdd cover and tray for $5 shipped ebay, already had a 2gb ddr2 stick, and $15 for the original ibm charger from the comp goodwill. All I am missing now is the stylus.

Windows 7 was easy but slow to install (usb dvd drive) updating took a good 12 hours. The only hitch / problem that didn't get drivers with winupdate was the gma915gc video, I had to do some tricks found online to get an hp driver for vista into it. After setting up my favorite programs and optimizing win7 a bit for old hardware I am really impressed with it's snappiness for basic tasks, it even plays 720p high bitrate videos full screen over wifi without hitching or dropping frames, after installing mpc homecinema and setting it to the overlay mode. Youtube works just as fast as my main PC, too.

It's kinda neat that the onboard hdd is actually hooked to a sata controller on the mobo through an onboard sata to pata adapter... if I wanted to I could desolder the bridge chip and solder in an mSATA connector for direct sata, I am still considering this, I don't want tp ruin this with a slip, it's a tiny square IC with tiny spacing. There is a 44 pin 1.8" to mSATA adapter available for $22 online but that would be going from sata to pata then back again, which bugs me and would hinder performance.

Being that I am housebound and partly bedridden, this is far far easier for me to use than my 15 inch widescreen toshiba pentium dual core 1.87ghz laptop... really nice when I feel too ill to get up to use my 6 core desktop.

 

[SilthDraeth]

Nice find.

 

[SPBHM]

I've been looking on ebay for a ide44 to sata adapter for my old laptop, there is quite a few options for under $5, I don't really know how much space do you have on the tablet, but on a regular notebook I think it would be easy to fit the adapter + some small sata SSD, 1.8" old HDs are normally seriously slow, it should be a good upgrade.

for $20 sounds like an amazing deal you got there, it should also be interesting to use for remote desktop or something (like splashtop), is it really a pentium 3? 1.5GHz I think it was something else... if it supports sse2 and NX bit you should probably use windows 8.

 

[jaqie]

I will *NOT* use windows 8.

The Pentium M is a family of mobile 32-bit single-core x86 microprocessors (with the modified Intel P6 microarchitecture) introduced in March 2003 (during the heyday of the Pentium 4 desktop CPUs), and forming a part of the Intel Carmel notebook platform under the then new Centrino brand. The Pentium M processors had a maximum thermal design power (TDP) of 5–27 W depending on the model, and were intended for use in laptops (thus the "M" suffix standing for mobile). They evolved from the core of the last Pentium III–branded CPU by . . . .

. . . . The Pentium M represented a new and radical departure for Intel, as it was not a low-power version of the desktop-oriented Pentium 4, but instead a heavily modified version of the Pentium III Tualatin design . . . .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_M

The centrino (Pentium M) was not a pentium 4. I can't stand netburst, but love pentium III.

Yes, I plan on putting in a nice current 60gb mSATA card, I just haven't decided if I will use the 44 pin 3.3v (as I said proprietary slightly bay) to mSATA or wire up an mSATA plug to the onboard sata controller directly.
http://www.placaware.com/?page_id=120
http://wiki.marek-walther.de/wiki/projekte/pimpmeup/thinkpad_x41_hdd_upgrade_sata
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLjB2zUKoY8

I also put a decent 8GB sandisk microSDHC (with SD adapter) into the SD slot and set it to use the entire card for readyboost. it seems to help!

 

[SPBHM]

yes, that's Dothan (it should be w8 compatible but I'm not sure) or Banias not P3
great mobile CPUs, I remember when they were released, going on the opposite direction from the desktop CPUs from Intel (high IPC, low power), even some desktop boards were made for this platform...

it certainly looks like a very limited space for the adapters I've seen.

 

[jaqie]

*sigh* I think my point went right over your head.

 

[SPBHM]

lol, about Pentium M being an evolution of p3 tualatin? about not using Win8? or about soldering it directly? I just thought it would be natural to adopt windows 8 for a touch enabled device, and in that case if the CPU was compatible or not (like the Pentium 3 mobile isn't, and I never thought it was a p4, and even northwood/willamette cannot run windows 8), but that' not what you want anyway,

 

[Fox5]

I've got the same laptop, still serves me well today compared to netbooks and low end PCs.

The device isn't touch enabled though, just pen enabled. IBM/Lenovo made solid state drives for the device, they're not bad, you can pick them up off ebay. You definitely need to ditch Windows and go with a Linux variant though (I use Xubuntu, although it handles Ubuntu ok), the hardware just can't handle Windows. Even the original Windows XP install it came with was dog slow, and between the low memory (1.5GB max) and slow harddrive, cpu, and graphic, it didn't get better with newer versions.

 

[jaqie]

The device isn't touch enabled though, just pen enabled. IBM/Lenovo made solid state drives for the device, they're not bad, you can pick them up off ebay. You definitely need to ditch Windows and go with a Linux variant though (I use Xubuntu, although it handles Ubuntu ok), the hardware just can't handle Windows. Even the original Windows XP install it came with was dog slow, and between the low memory (1.5GB max) and slow harddrive, cpu, and graphic, it didn't get better with newer versions.

I actually had xfce mint on it prior to installing windows 7. With the tuning I did win7 is more responsive than xmint, and is far more reliable. I just would so love to adopt linux but the lack of reliability in the apps just really bothers me. Simple things like copying my 800MB of desktop backgrounds causes the copy procedure to hang forever until I reboot... whether over wifi or gigabit. while on win7 it completes quickly and without error. then there's the media playing... it plays some media fine but nomatter the player I use it just locks the media player up trying to play many, many of my files. Linux just isn't ready, though the desktop environment definitely has it's advantages and I miss some of them in windows. Also, windows XP on this is SLOWER than windows 7, win7 is actually faster on it. If I had an extra hard drive of the exact same model, I would actually record video to prove this, but I don't and I am not about to go through the rigamaroo of reinstalling win7 again after installing xp tablet 2005 just to prove a point.

The laptop despite claims sees and runs with 2GB just fine, and even runs the integrated GMA video off of the onboard 512MB that it cannot otherwise access. the chipset is actually limited to 2GB addressable as ram, and the 512MB soldered on the motherboard when using 2GB stick is actually usable as video ram, though the gma915gc is limited to 16MB of it for some stupid reason.

For the tasks I use, as I said in the original post, the CPU and video is actually quite fast enough!

You really need to try getting off of your "I'm right, this is the only way to use this" high horse and realize you may not be right, and that there are other ways other people prefer to use the same device.

 

[yhelothar]

I used that for several years up until last year. It's an awesome internet/note taking/word processing machine. It served me well through college.

1.6Ghz Pentium-M is essentially a Core Solo. Core2Duos/Core2Quads were based off the Pentium-M, but with more cores.

It's perfectly adequate for your average day to day usage machine, and its still way more powerful than a netbook.

It makes me cringe to see 80% of my class use $1500 MacBook Pros when I'm betting this $50 machine would serve the vast majority of them perfectly fine.

 

[jaqie]

Thanks!

I think this is kinda the halfway point between c2 series and p3 tualatin. I also have many p3 coppermine and a dual p3 tualatin here, along with lots of core2 systems, so I can say it from personal experience as well as a lot of research.

The particular cpu in this one is the Dothan LV 1.5GHz part.

Yeah, it's great for basic tasks, and also for older and lighter games!

yeah, MBP is a good computer but just taking it with you and using it for that really makes me cringe too... though I have spent $70 on this and not $50.

I also had a lenovo S10 model 1 laptop when they were brand new, and I gotta say it wasn't as responsive as this. I also had an atom n330 (dual core version of that) in a flexATX mobo which I used until a few months ago for a file server system, just replacing it recently with an intel mini itx lga775 and core 2 duo 2.333ghz setup.

 

[yhelothar]

The CPUs undervolt VERY well in my experience. With notebook hardware control, I was able to get it to undervolt to UULV.

It added a good hr to the battery life on the 8-cell.

I also made $2k selling the stylus. I found this guy selling 120 of the pens for $1100 on ebay, back when the average price for them were $35 a pop.
:awe:
Good thing the value of those has plummeted on ebay. I think you can get one for about $10-15 now. $35 is just highway robbery for that dinky piece of plastic.

Also the X61-X200 stylus works on the X41 as well. You just have to saw off a small piece of plastic under the clip that prevents it from fitting into the holder.

 

[yhelothar]

lol, about Pentium M being an evolution of p3 tualatin? about not using Win8? or about soldering it directly? I just thought it would be natural to adopt windows 8 for a touch enabled device, and in that case if the CPU was compatible or not (like the Pentium 3 mobile isn't, and I never thought it was a p4, and even northwood/willamette cannot run windows 8), but that' not what you want anyway,

I tried Win 8 on it. Unfortunately, Win 8 doesn't have driver support for the 915 series of Intel graphics. So there's no hardware video decoding meaning videos run choppy and pixelated.

 

[jaqie]

The CPUs undervolt VERY well in my experience. With notebook hardware control, I was able to get it to undervolt to UULV.

It added a good hr to the battery life on the 8-cell.

I'm thinking of trying to get my hands on a 755 and seeing if it will work without any fenagling. If not I won't be too upset but 25% more cpu would be nice.

 

[yhelothar]

I'm thinking of trying to get my hands on a 755 and seeing if it will work without any fenagling. If not I won't be too upset but 25% more cpu would be nice.

Unfortunately, the CPUs on the X41T are soldered onto the mobo. I recall seeing that some people had luck overclocking by shorting some pins on the mobo though.

 

[SPBHM]

I tried Win 8 on it. Unfortunately, Win 8 doesn't have driver support for the 915 series of Intel graphics. So there's no hardware video decoding meaning videos run choppy and pixelated.

that's a shame, does the pen work well for using "metro"?
anyway, it confirms that dothan can work with windows 8, anything older (Banias, Tualatin, Northwood) from Intel (mobile) can't

I still have a Core Duo based CPU (Pentium, with less l2) which works really well for basic usage, but it uses the GMA 950.

 

[yhelothar]

that's a shame, does the pen work well for using "metro"?
anyway, it confirms that dothan can work with windows 8, anything older (Banias, Tualatin, Northwood) from Intel (mobile) can't

I still have a Core Duo based CPU (Pentium, with less l2) which works really well for basic usage, but it uses the GMA 950.

It's better than navigating with the standard desktop interface. But I still find myself using it laptop style more often.