Full Circle Magazine FR

One of the big benefits of a tablet is the fact that they’re thin and lightweight. This is not the case for the 2005 Xplore iX104C2 – which weighs in at just over 4.6lbs, and is more than an inch thick. In fact, the iX104C2 feels like it belongs more on a tank than in the hands of an IT technician. There are a number of versions of the iX104C, the latest of which contains an i5 or i7 processor. The C2 model appears to be the first generation of tablet that Xplore came out with. Boasting a 733MHz Pentium M processor, the IX104C2 is woefully out-of-date. Rather than send them to electronic waste or try to ebay them, we decided to put Linux on them and see what use we could make of them. Our donation came with a bunch of car adapters, but we found a 19v 3.42A adapter to plug into the iX104. First boot turned up the dreaded “Time and Date not set” error message, normally this is an indication of a bad CMOS battery. (In this case that actually wasn’t the case, but because the machine had not been charged for some time, it lost the time and date. After leaving it charging for a few hours it booted without issue). Did I mention the iX104C2 is extremely sturdy? We weren’t about to tear one apart before trying Linux on it, so we attached a USB keyboard and pressed the F1 key to continue.

On the iX104C2, the F2 key will get you into the BIOS if you hit it before the operating system starts to boot. This particular model of tablet came with Windows XP. Ours came with 2 restore CDs (and a GPS module CD), but, looking at the molded plastic all around the tablet, there’s no CD/DVD drive to be seen. We use a PXE server at work to install Xubuntu. Installation was a matter of enabling network boot in the BIOS and pressing F12 for a boot menu during startup. Our installation automates most of the steps required to install Xubuntu (partitioning, user name, password, date and time), but prompted us to select whether we wanted to install via ethernet or the recognized Intel wireless interface. The iX104C2 is thick and sports a full-size ethernet port, a VGA port, 2 USB ports, a headphone and line-out jack. Our model also had the optional GPS unit attached, and what looked to be docking pins on the left side of the case. Docking stations exist for the iX104C2, but the unit came without the docking station. Booting Xubuntu takes about 45 seconds, what you might expect from a low-resource Parallel ATA disk-based system. Our implementation of Xubuntu includes GIMP. GIMP loaded after a few seconds.

Drawing in GIMP with the iX104C2’s stylus was a positive experience, though I worked with only a 64 x 64 pixel canvas (pixel art sprite for a game). The toughest part was saving the file. I tried enabling Xubuntu’s on-screen keyboard, but it didn’t work (this may be the fault of our implementation of Xubuntu). Attaching a USB keyboard solved the problem, but who wants to carry a USB keyboard with a tablet, let alone an almost 5 lbs tablet? Xubuntu was surprisingly responsive considering the iX104IC2 is only a single core 733MHz machine. Wireless worked “out of the box” with no extra driver configuration needed. Our battery life showed about 1:30 hours. When new, the iX104IC2 battery lasted around 3½ hours, not particularly long. The very odd occasion our IT department has had our ISP out for a service call (usually to replace our cable modem), we’ve seen them carry an iX104IC tablet. This got me thinking that although they’re old, bulky and heavy, they might actually be useful for our IT technicians who sometimes are called to troubleshoot wireless issues at different buildings (wireshark anyone?).

About the same time the iX104IC2s were dropped off, we had a client bring in a long range antenna they bought off Ali Express that they wanted set up with their system. We didn’t get a chance to test the antenna, but if it worked with Xubuntu, combined with the iX104IC, it would make an interesting machine for mapping wireless access points throughout a city (war driving). Things that didn’t work out of box with the iX104IC2: almost all of the buttons on the bottom of the iX104IC2 except for the Windows key. The Windows key opens the whisker menu, but the brightness button, trackpoint, lock, and programmable function keys, didn’t do anything. In the first screenshot, there’s a youtube video playing. If you install a Firefox add-on to set youtube videos to default to 144p, you can actually watch a video, but any other setting, including the default, just plays the audio with a stuck image – this isn’t at all useful for video playback.

The stylus works well for the most part, and you don’t have to even touch the screen, just hover over the area the cursor should move to. I had a bit of a problem closing windows with the stylus, but opening the whisker menu, and clicking icons, wasn’t problematic. I mentioned earlier using the stylus for pixel art, it seemed to work really well, moreso than an old Wacom tablet I once used with GIMP. Not surprisingly, the stylus is actually made by Wacom. I wouldn’t recommend going out and buying a used Xplore iX104IC2; they’re ancient, heavy, and replaceable by just about any newer 10 inch $100-plus tablet out there, but they are kind of neat. I like the idea of mapping out wireless access points in the city just by driving around and seeing what it, plus the antenna, can pick up. I also like it as a pixel art device, though it is a bit on the heavy side. The iX104IC2 won’t pass the spouse test at home; we have enough devices around, but we might just end up using them at work – troubleshooting the wireless issues in different buildings.