First TP360CSE impressions.....

[<eranian@chorus.fr>]

Hello,

I've just recieved my TP360CSE laptop. It's been quite one month since
I ordered it. It is produced in Scotland ! It comes in a rather small box.

This is a 4Mo/340Mo configuration. It comes installed with a few software
packages. These include:
	- IBM PC-DOS 6.33
	- Windows 3.11
	- Lotus Organizer
	- Lotus CC:mobile mail
	- Lotus CC:Mail (I have to check that)
	- Acrobat Reader (??)
	- Flight Disk
	- Lotus ScreenCam
	- CoSession...


The first problem is that all this softwares come WITHOUT ANY INSTALLATION
DISKS. Not even for DOS nor Windows. There's nothing for Thinkpad and 
IBM Vesa software also. I called IBM for this because I thought it was a 
mistake from them. In fact, it seems the French (but also European) are the
victims of a marketing decision. Although we are legal users of the software 
we cannot have the distribution disks without money ! This is really an 
amazing situation !! Moreover, the Lotus software comes without any 
documentation but just the licence registration card. 

I spent part of the week-end backing up my disk on floppies using the only
available backup utility (CPBACKUP). There is approximatively 80Mo of
software installed, I let you appreciate the number of required floppies !!

Apart from this, my impression are rather good on the overall performances
of the system. The screen is pleasant although it's only a Double Scan one.

I intend the re-partition my disk to install Linux. I will keep a small
portion of disk for DOS/Windows. I will perhaps install OS/2 Warp if
there is enough room left.

Concerning compatibility of Thinkpad with Linux. I installed kernel 1.1.75
on a bootable disk. I configured LILO so as to append the option
"floppy=thinkpad". Everything booted nicely and the floppy drive can
be accessed with no problem. I also tried to boot *BSD based operating
systems. The NetBSD-1.0 bootdisk went through with no problem. I did not
go any further with it. The FreeBSD-2.0 floppy went through but there is a 
problem with the keyboard as reported by someone on some news channel. 
In any cases, the hard drive was successfully detected and the correct 
geometry was reported.




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 St'ephane ERANIAN			| Email	eranian@chorus.fr
 Universit'e PARIS VII			|	eranian@litp.ibp.fr
 LITP - Laboratoire d'Informatique	|
 Th'eorique et Programmation		|
 2 place Jussieu			|
 75251 Paris cedex 05			|
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