Gateway M285-E Laptop Notebook Convertible Tablet

[thatstrangeguy]

I have the opportunity to get a Gateway M285-E Laptop Notebook Convertible Tablet PC Core Duo Intel Video as seen here for pretty cheap now i am going to up grade the ram and a few other things. pretty much modernize it for use today. Any way it comes with a Gateway M285 285-E Tablet Laptop Stylus Pen to make the tablet part of it all work. now i know that in windows you need the drivers for the pen and its systems to make it work as a tablet. now dose any one out there have or have hear of another person trying to use Ubuntu on a system like this is already available for Ubuntu. if not would i be able to install the drivers in question in wine to make the whole thing work in wine standers or m i a hopeless dreamer lol just kidding let me know thoughts comments questions let me know thank you

[jerrag]

I happen to be an owner of one of these little gems. Now I don't know if it is just mine or is with all these, but I can't get ANY sort of Linux to work with it. I had a duce of a time finding a version of Windows XP that would work with it. I finally found a fellow on Ebay that had a restore disk for it and managed to get that working. I did have Vista working on it, however it locked up all the time. When I finally got the XP restore disk for it, it did work and all the pen stuff worked OK too until I upgraded to SP3 then it became a laptop as none of the pen screen rotation keys would work, and I couldn't get it to rotate at all even using the video driver. I solved this by removing SP3 and running it with Just SP2 installed. Now it works OK but EVERY time I try and get any sort of Linux on it, it will work for a few minutes then lock up to such an extent that it has to be restarted.

Like I say, it may just be something in my unit. You do have to download a driver in order to install Windows since it has an early SATA card and needs a driver in order for the board to see the hard drive once windows starts during setup. It wasn't a problem with Linux however once it was installed it locked up all the time. I did go on a few linux boards and most thought it was a video driver problem but I didn't have the patients to work with it just resorted to using XP and letting it go at that.

[MASONTX]

I have a Fujitsu T4020, and I put Ubuntu 10.04 on it. Everything works and it is a fine laptop or convertible tablet, if a little heavy to use as a tablet. On the other hand, I have a 7' Midi tablet with Android 2.2, a Fujitsu St4120, Fujitsu St5032, and a Viewsonic v1000, which I haven't been able to get any flavor of linux to work pro;erly on. They either wont boot from a usb drive (Midi) or if they boot, lead to 1 of 3 states, depending on version of linux tried. 1) boot fine, but no tablet functions, requires a usb keyboard and mouse, 2) wind up at a screen with hundreds of vertical lines, 3) tell me it is dropping to low level function, and leaves me with a blank screen and a #prompt. I believe it is a function of not recognizing the screen resolution and type, but it may be a pen driver issue, not sure.
I tried about 30 different linux distro's, though most were based on debian or ubuntu. Best advice, is try it and see if you can load linux on the tablet, but keep windows tablet on it as a back up.

[thatstrangeguy]

I have windows vista on it and it wotk's fine but in ubuntu I can't get a respons

[MASONTX]

Have you used a usb keyboard and mouse and loaded the wacom drivers for it?

[jerrag]

I finally found a Linux that works OK in the laptop mode anyhow, the lattest live CD from Open SUSE 12.1 seems to be working great. I haven't explored getting the pen to work as of yet, I am just thrilled that it isn't locking up on me at every turn.

[MASONTX]

Look in the repository for wacom drivers. My ubuntu install on a convertible uses them for the active pen.