Lenovo X60T and Windows 8 Consumer Preview

I spent about 2 to 3 hours to install and set up Windows 8 Consumer Preview on my Lenovo X60T Tablet PC.  The installation was a success, and I learned a few things though out the process.

First of all, forget about the touchscreen feature on X60T.  It's a joke compare with resistance digitizer like iPad or even the Eee Slate.  The experience is just terrible, and you have to really press your finger before it can sensored.  It suddenly reminds you what using a Pocket PC with a stylus is like, only that you lost your stylus, and now you have to use your finger to perform those control.  It's a torture to the finger.

But the biggest problem is that through out the switching between finger and stylus, Windows 8 Consumer Preview will get confused, and eventually IGNORE the button click all together.  After more than half hours of struggle, I finally give up, and need to do something to STOP the touch screen detection.  This was when I realized that the setting was NOT available by default.

Windows 8 Consumer Preview with all the latest update actually installed all the hardware drivers for  X60T.  The problem is that the following are missing:

• Hardware buttons, like screen rotation.
• Fingerprint authetication
• Manual turning off of "MultiTouch", which means allowing you to touch of touch screen (thus stylus only)

To solve the "MultiTouch" problem, I went to this page, install the drive, reboot, and then load up the "Touch Panel Properties" page, and simple check off "Enable Touch Panel".  That's it.  No more confusion and lost of button click.

ThinkVantage Fingerprint Software 5.6 does NOT seemed to work X60T .  I tried a while, and then gave up.

For hardware buttons, I installed the Tablet Button Installation (7jgk06ww.exe) and that gives me back those screen orientation rotation buttons.

Because there was no real multitouch, the power of flicking your finger to scroll around selection, using 2 finger gesture to zoom and shrink, and other stuffs that makes touch an enjoyable experience are all gone on Windows 8 running on Lenovo X60T.  In fact, some apps like Store even does NOT support stylus tap on the tile, and I have to switch back to using mouse and mouse button.  It's pretty obvious that in order to enjoy Windows 8, you HAVE to buy some new hardware.

This is absolutely NOT the time to buy Windows 8 hardware

As development on touch based Metro-inspired application rampant up, I found a need to buy another Metro 8 ready machine so that I can let our user experience expert bring it with her to show off the new user experience, while I have another machine to continue our touch based development.

So I started looking around.  The first candidate is Samsung Series 7 Slate 700T.  This is supposed to be the flatship product.  Here's the problem:

• The model that has ALL of sensors like accelerometer and such is NOT available for sale for general public.  You can get Samsung Slate 700T, but it does NOT have all the sensors like GPS, accelermometer and such to let you fully develop Metro app with all the scnearios.  Such, at least 700T has 10 point touch senor, but this is just good enough for me.
  
• 700T has only ONE USB port, which is ultra shitty on beta R&D situation, because when you install Windows 8 consumer preview, you need one USB port for connecting to external USB DVD Drive, one port for USB keyboard and one port for mouse (since bluetooth maynot be working properly for beta softward like Windows 8 Consumer Preview).
  
• Based on ZDNet, there are still tons of problem getting all the hardware working with Windows 8 Consumer Preview.
  
• All these carp and still cost me US$1300+ ?  This is insane price for an inferior product.
  
  

Because of all the negative stuff I figured out with 700T, I decided to look around and find other options.

The problem is, once again, in order to get all the Metro 8 experience, I need a device that has ALL THE SENSORS.  And all those devices just DOES NOT exist.  Even those there are some promising hardware coming, like this desktop, they are simply NOT HERE yet.  Also currnet generation of touch screen does NOT provide as many touch point as the basic Metro 8 requirement spec.

So my final conclusion is simply turning my Lenovo X60T as a Windows 8 Client.  And just let our UX expert take my Eee Slate away for demonstration.

On a related story, I found out that my Lenovo X60T couldn't install the 64 bit version of Windows 8 Consumer Preview.  So I am now downloading the 32 bit version.

That's how I fixed the HTC Desire cable sync problem

Sometimes cable sync will failed on my HTC Desire.  What I meant was that I might plugged in the sync cable, and the computer (Windows 7 machine) will not recognize the existance of the connection.  Based on my observation, the problem is not on the computer, but on the HTC headset instead.  The solution is rebooting my HTC Desire phone, and in most case that should resolve the problem.