[GTALUG] Thinkpad choices today?

Lennart Sorensen lsorense at csclub.uwaterloo.ca
Fri Nov 14 01:08:48 UTC 2014


On Thu, Nov 13, 2014 at 12:05:50PM -0500, David Thornton wrote:
> I had a T510 which was great ( heavy but great) , I liked the keyboard ,
> and the graphics card was good enough to play games. Optical drive , good
> wireless, limited by power ( only got like 2 hours at best) . Linux support
> was also good. Performance was good. I had a dual scren dock , and the
> device could drive both via DVI.
> 
> Then I lost the 5 key and IT issued me a X240.. Lighter, newer, small
> screen, nice and snappy, no optical drive, much better battery life. I feel
> cramped on the screen. There are screen options. 1366 X 768 , 1366 X 768
> touchscreen, and a larger one 1920 x 1080 all 12.5 inches. I have the
> 1366X768 non touchscreen and I feel cramped.
> 
> I have a dock for this x240.. but the laptop can't drive both screens with
> DVI.. One has to be VGA. I dunno if that's a limitation of the particular
> dock that I got, or if that's a limitation of the video card, but after
> going Digital I can't stand VGA. Too fuzzy.

If you have a Pro dock (Which has DVI, DP and VGA), you can only use DVI
_or_ DP on the dock.  The Ultra dock has a second pair of ports which
allow DP _or_ HDMI (but not at the same time), so with that dock you can
do any combo of two DP, DP + HDMI, or DP + DVI.  If you want two DVI you
need a DP to DVI adapter for the second DP port.  With the Pro dock, you
can still do that using a DP to DVI adapter connected to the DP on the
x240 itself, and the second display connected to DP or DVI on the dock.
Essentially the pro dock only has one digital connection from the laptop
to the dock, so only one of the digital ports can be used at a time.
The VGA on the dock is a copy of the one on the laptop and the one on
the laptop does not work when docked.  The DP port is seperate though.

> So the keyboard. I have had some trouble getting my head/hands around this
> new keyboard. For one f1 f2 f3 function keys don't "work" out of the box .
> They all do their "special purpose" like volume , display changing , mute
> etc. I had to tell it : by default when I press the F1 key .. it send an
> F1!
> Also I can't get "end" to work without also pressing "Fn" . ... Which I now
> call the "effin" key if you know what I mean.

Don't then have an Fn lock option to make it always do that instead?
Often there are bios options on thinkpads to pick the settings you like
(such as swapping control and fn if you prefer the other order).

-- 
Len Sorensen


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