New toys (for work) =================== Recently I have got two relatively nice things for my work: * the 24" 1920x1080 EIZO LCD (FlexScan EV2450, I think) * the Lenovo X260 laptop (with Win10) It's stuff for my work so some incarnation of the Windows is unfortunately necessary here (I do more manager-alike work than research). But there are some positive moments: * the EIZO is really nice (my previous HP-branded screen was also 24" but with resolution 1920x1200) and with older technology (the new one is an IPS with LED backlight). Even being a realy low-end EIZO, it is still better than anything that my colleagues (and bosses...) have. * the X260 is not comparable with my old good X61s in the terms of ergonomy (the keyboard, the screen height and proportions) but it's still the best writting device which man can get today. Actually, I don't thing that 1920x1080 on a 12.5" screen is a good idea but it works less or more acceptably. The applications behave and look near as strangely as the applications on my Ubuntu tablet with the Convergence feature (some of the do have small fonts, some of them have large ones, they are totally inconsistent). On a big 24" screen the most of stuff is OK. I also have tried to use the Xorg server to import the screen from our Ultra 40 server. IT works as expected which is nice (it can make a very pleasant illusion of an UNIX workstation ;-) ). Hardware-wise, the X260 is not as bad as it can look for the first moment: * there is a backlit keyboard (but no IBM-style lamp, unfortunately), * it has TWO batteries and one of them is replaceable (a large-capacity one is also available - there are claims that it can allow 17 hour of battery life), * the keyboard has near normal layout and the F1-F12 keys can work as F1-F12 and not as stupid multimedia and function keys (their function can be sset in the BIOS), * there is a set of USB ports (three normal full-size USB ports), a wired ethernet port and both the HDMI and the mini-DisplayPort connectors (no VGA, unfortunately). The interesting thing is that sound of the X260's internal speakers is very poor but it external speakers are use (even these tiny that are built-in the EIZO) the sound became aceptable.