Lenovo "Rips and Flips" the ThinkPad With New Convertible Helix Design 143
MojoKid writes "Convertible laptops and ultrabooks had a big presence this year with the release of Windows 8. At CES, Lenovo revealed its ThinkPad Helix which it marketed as having a 'groundbreaking "rip and flip" design' that enables this 11.6-inch ultrabook to transform into a powerful Windows 8 tablet with Intel vPro technology for the enterprise. The ThinkPad Helix lets you work in four different modes: laptop, tablet, stand, and tablet+. When attached to the Enhanced Keyboard Dock in laptop mode, you'll get additional battery life and additional ports as well as Lenovo's ThinkPad Precision keyboard, a five button trackpad that supports Windows 8 features, and a traditional ThinkPad TrackPoint. ... The ThinkPad Helix features an 11.6-inch Full HD 1080p IPS (In-Plane Switching) 10-point multi-touchscreen with pen touch input and Gorilla Glass for protection. Lenovo claims the ThinkPad Helix will run for up to 8 hours on a single charge. Performance-wise, the new ThinkPad tablet convertible doesn't have a ton of horsepower, but the machine will get by well enough handling light multimedia and office app use with relative ease."
The "stand" mode is just the tablet part mounted away from the keyboard, tablet+ similarly just the tablet part folded over the dock giving it a longer battery life and more ports. It comes at a price though: ~$1800.
Is there really a market for tablet-laptop (Score:5, Interesting)
This sounded really cool about 10 years ago, but what real appeal does this have over laptop+tablet? What are the use cases where this kind of flexibility actually matters?
If I'm using a tablet I'm either on the road or at home - I never see a case for doing "tablet" style stuff at work. Considering "Thinkpad" is an enterprise brand, what need does this fill other than fulfilling Microsoft's desire to turn their Windows userbase into a tablet userbase?
I'll leave aside the fact that almost no one wants Windows8 for it's Metro interface (as witnessed by the Surface RT's spectacular sales failure).
sarcastic reception (Score:5, Interesting)
Ok, so if I take this, and then flip a coin between a desktop linux and Android for x86 platforms, I will end up with a tablet that might actually be useful?
Because seriously-- didn't microsoft learn its lesson yet about ambiguating the desktop and tablet market spaces with its metrosexual user interface? Are they *still* trying to blur that line? /half trolling
Re:Lenovo, please unlock the bootloader (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm writing this post on my Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch ultrabook. The design is super cool. The company, Lenovo, sucks green greasy double jointed donkey dicks (I think that's how we insulted each other when I was 9). This is my third X1 Carbon Touch. I ordered it because I needed a touch screen Windows 8 machine with a SSD in January. That was the single biggest waste of my time related to any purchase in my life, other than having to refinance a house. The first Lenovo machine died the second day I had it. Of course, we had their best support and warranty, since we can't afford to sit on our hands for days while hardware gets fixed. So... 10 weeks later I got a replacement machine! It was dead on arrival, however. PC Connections saved my bacon and found a somewhat working PoS Lenovo X1 Carbon touch and got it to me, and that's what I'm still using. The wifi has to be reset about every two hours, and it does not come out of hibernation properly sometimes, so it feels a lot like running Linux, rather than Windows. I didn't think it was possible for a company to piss me off more than Dell has, but I was wrong.
$1800? $1800! $1800 WTF (Score:2, Interesting)
Can someone please buy Wintel a clue. Far too late in the day, you say? Yeah, I guess you are right.
The current near cheapest ARM SoC parts from China (Allwinner, Rockchip, Mediatek) can give you FOUR CPU cores, and a GPU engine that can thump out fast 2D to any tablet resolution. When they are placed in the biggest of tablets, the only thing that should inflate the price (since a bigger tablet has more room for everything beneath the display) is the cost of the bigger display itself.
11.6" means we are talking 300-400 dollars. Sure, the ARM tab won't run Windows XP or Windows 7 (let's try hard to ignore the other versions), but that's an issue of software only. Where the hell does the other $1400 come from?
Look, I know what the Wintel infrastructure costs. High-end Intel parts cost a fortune (no-one gouges like Intel) and Microsoft wants a massive cut as well (except Microsoft), but going into the future, how the hell is crap like this supposed to compete with ARM devices. This Thinkpad even has a low resolution screen for its size compared to the better ARM devices.
When Google finally releases Android for desktops (ie., Google stands behind a standard shell/UI for desktop mode) where the hell do you think Wintel will be. Even now, cloud services should be at no disadvantage on ARM tablets. And Android for desktop will have a decent free office suite days after its release.
I love my desktop PC. I love the vast world of x86 software that runs on it. But Wintel deserves to vanish from history. The traditional PC companies have done NOTHING to meet the emergence of ARM even half way. ARM, despite its ancient heritage, is actually a delightful breath of fresh air. In the UK, the portable PC market has lost comprehensively to ARM tablets when it comes to female users. But then, outside the USA, notebooks were always horribly over-priced.
It gets worse. Devices like the Thinkpad have horrible weak graphics for AAA PC gaming. They are better at casual gaming, but far more casual software is released for Apple and Android. So, the Thinkpad can do Windows, but this matters less for more and more potential customers. Why do you think this insanely expensive device tries so hard to pass itself off as a tablet?
Ding Ding Ding (Score:5, Interesting)
The real winner in the device market will be the first vendor to offer a tablet that connects to a laptop through a true HD interface to become a second screen and input device. People don't want everything in one device... computer sales are down because everyone has one.
Give us a laptop -- we like keyboards. Give us an iPad like device -- something to lend to a visitor or a kid, or to haul on to the couch, or for casual gaming. When we plug one into the other, pop up the hard drives so we can move data back and forth, or even use the free space on the tablet as an extra bit of scratch space. Allow the tablet to become a Cintiq-like input device for the laptop, and make sure the laptop has an additional video out for a larger 4k-ish screen.
But with all of the non-Apple vendors stuck with whatever horrible idea Ballmer's team of dunces "imagineers," we'll probably end up with a lot of stupid and unusable convertibles like this Lenovo thing.
Recently I was forced to work with Windows Server 2012. And you know, I never thought I'd say this, but I miss the simple stupidity of the Microsoft Bob era in Redmond. At least Bill Gates was smart enough to not touch servers with such an infantile interface.
"Oh, the database connection seems to be down, and you need to check running processes? We've removed the Start Button to speed up the process. Simply tilt the device to the right, swipe left, and choose the Unhappy Face. Then cycle through the server managers and click the undulating cube [penny-arcade.com] -- the red one, not the chartreuse (duh). Then hope and pray we keep the same method in Smiley Server 2015."