THE SCREEN IS THE COMPUTER

Last week someone sitting in front of me in the train said to me: 'Oh is that the new tablet?' I smiled and said the machine was already 5 years old. A tablet avant la lettre; however the HP TC1100 was not very successful. I loved the machine, because it is a complete machine, light and you can take the keyboard off and continue working. The screen is the computer.

After five years I decided to buy a new machine, of course I was looking for a tablet. The HP 2740p elite, looked like a good choice. Comparable to the TC 1100. A computer in tablet format or laptop, depending on your situation.

Rotation

The machine comes with Windows installed, fine but I need some extra control. Installing Ubuntu 11.04 is smooth and easy. Everything working, from sound and camera to bluetooth. A big difference compared to the installation of Linux on the old TC1100.

One thing annoyed me: the screen rotation was not working correctly. Rotation is possible using the display settings. I tried, it worked, the screen rotated from landscape to portrait, but not the mouse or the stylus. Secondly it would be much nicer if I am working in laptop mode, and turn the screen and closed lit to continue working in tablet mode, if the rotation is done automatically.

Here is the solution: magick rotation. Unpack the .tar file and place the magick rotation folder in the user home directory; run the script magick rotation. The green arrow icon in the top indicates that rotation is active and gives access to the setup. Working perfect, but still mouse and stylus are not rotation.

Looking into the FAQ it seemed that there is bug in the xf86 input (that is the screen input for tablet mode). For Ubuntu 11.04 the answer is: to update xf86-input-wacom to get portrait orientations working correctly in Natty.

The popularity of the Android tablet proves that the screen is the computer, but Android is not a complete operating system, the HP tablet running Linux Ubuntu is for me better solution.