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Hardware

Lenovo "Rips and Flips" the ThinkPad With New Convertible Helix Design 143

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the watch-movies-on-your-work-laptop dept.
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.
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Lenovo "Rips and Flips" the ThinkPad With New Convertible Helix Design More

Lenovo "Rips and Flips" the ThinkPad With New Convertible Helix Design

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  • Ob Linux post (Score:3)

    by ackthpt ( 218170 ) on Monday July 22, 2013 @06:34PM (#44356431) Homepage Journal

    Does it come in a Ubuntu flavor?

  • Is there really a market for tablet-laptop (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rsborg ( 111459 ) on Monday July 22, 2013 @06:36PM (#44356453) Homepage

    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).

    • Having one device tends to be more convenient and often cheaper.

      • Re:Is there really a market for tablet-laptop (Score:5, Insightful)

        by rsborg ( 111459 ) on Monday July 22, 2013 @07:19PM (#44356767) Homepage

        Having one device tends to be more convenient and often cheaper.

        Not in this case - $1800 is more than a 11" macbook air + iPad (and those are the more expensive options for laptop+tablet).

        • Ding Ding Ding (Score:5, Interesting)

          by deanklear ( 2529024 ) on Monday July 22, 2013 @08:43PM (#44357319)

          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."

          • 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.

            The iPad can be this already, and Apple improves on this ability in iOS7/Maverick.

            • The user experience for any of these solutions is awful, even if you pick up a dedicated USB monitor. Here's a snip from the winner of the latest MakeUseOf roundup:

              Video and general usage is very laggy, though subjectively didn't feel as bad as Mini-Display. You can even draw directly into Photoshop, smoothly but albeit with a noticeable second delay between touching and having the line appear

              There are portable monitors like this one that offer an actual video connection [amazon.com]. Emulation will never work for serious usage or even watching youtube, and the existing iPad doesn't have a way to communicate other than USB or WiFi, so it's boned either way.

              If Apple ever offers an iPad with a Thunderbolt connector, that's a different story.

              • For most people I don't think the iPad connection is useless - it does allow touch control of the system, and makes a great place to dump auxiliary content you want to see - like documentation, or an email you are referring to.

                About the only things I think you can't use the iPad as a second monitor for are drawing and games. But for drawing you can just run one of the dedicated iPad drawing apps for full speed. I even had a Cintiq briefly but I sent it back when I realized for me, the iPad was more prac

                • Yeah, I can see docs. I tried it a couple of times but it was still annoying for some reason. But then again I'm a pretty strange guy.

              • Asymco was talking about doing airplay to an entire audience instead of using a projector. He calls it Air Show.

    • Both at my current job and my previous job, we have a number of people who are semi-mobile. They spend part of their time at their designated office, part of their time at designated assigned locations and a bit of time walking between various floors or facilities. Being able to convert between a laptop for their office and a tablet for when moving about would be quite handy.

    • I went from a laptop + tablet to just a Helix. I like it. Web browsing is just so much nicer on a real PC in tablet mode than on either iPad or Android. I can access all of my docs in tablet mode. For reading, this makes sense for pretty much all of them, even using desktop apps. For some, editing in tablet mode makes sense, again using desktop apps. And I can pop it into the keyboard in a second if I need to do serious editing. It's more convenient to carry just the one item around, and I don't have to shu

    • The Surface Pro is doing pretty well. RT is a flop because it can't run X86 programs, and it doesn't have the walcom tablet screen

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jbolden ( 176878 )

      I would want one of those (I own the surface pro). Frequently I want flexibility. I need the tablet to be able to act as a mediocre laptop sometimes. Tablets are just too computer dependent too much of the time. The Helix is more than a mediocre laptop but it is $2k.

      • I would want one of those (I own the surface pro). Frequently I want flexibility. I need the tablet to be able to act as a mediocre laptop sometimes. Tablets are just too computer dependent too much of the time. The Helix is more than a mediocre laptop but it is $2k.

        Well, you could get an Asus Transformer, although it doesn't run Windows 8. Then again, it is $1,500 cheaper than the Helix.

    • Re:Is there really a market for tablet-laptop (Score:4, Informative)

      by MachineShedFred ( 621896 ) on Tuesday July 23, 2013 @07:05AM (#44359753) Journal

      The reason we're looking at this device at my business: saving on software licensing.

      Yes, you can buy at T-series notebook and a tablet for about the same money, but you're buying two licenses of each software title now. Also, this device still checks all the boxes we were using X-series tablets for previously - namely signature capture with a stylus.

      Oh, and they have Windows 7 support, so we don't even have to train our users on Windows 8 until Microsoft relents and gives us a sensible UI.

    • Use, but not over use. This is what a lot of hardware manufacturers do not comprehend. Tablets are great for a certain, limited set of tasks. Mice are great, keyboards are greatâ¦but also only for limited things. Having a fusion of them all is liberating and very functional.

      When I taught, a convertible tablet + OneNote + a wireless projector was AMAZING. It 100% replaces paper and the blackboard. It decimates a smartboard. I could walk around anywhere in my room, using it as a tablet, making not

    • 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).

      ASUS Transformer running Android. Wouldn't think of using Windows in that kind of situation though.

      Love mine (ASUS Transformer Infinity); and yes, I do intend on writing documents, spreadsheets, etc. with it - once AndroOffice is fully useful enough. I've already written a couple letters with it, but then finished them on my laptop before sending them out. (Yes there are other office productivity suites out there; but only AndroOffice is ODF compatible. Sadly it needs more work but it is coming along.) M

  • sarcastic reception (Score:5, Interesting)

    by wierd_w ( 1375923 ) on Monday July 22, 2013 @06:37PM (#44356465)

    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: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      ... the desktop and tablet market spaces....

      Hi! I'm a MBA. The use of "market spaces" and "consumers spaces" and "table spaces" and [insert market here] spaces even annoys the piss out of me.

      As far as Microsoft is concerned - I couldn't agree more.

      BUT - I said the same thing about Apple in 1997.

      Just say'in.....

  • Lenovo, please unlock the bootloader (Score:5, Informative)

    by martiniturbide ( 1203660 ) on Monday July 22, 2013 @06:38PM (#44356467) Homepage Journal
    I had been fighting with Lenovo for the last 100 days to unlock the bootloader of the Thinkpad Tablet 1.

    http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-slate-tablets/Thinkpad-Tablet-1-Errors-on-Recovery-Menu/td-p/1055573 [lenovo.com]

    The devices is prone to brick if the software (recovery menu) gets corrupted. And can not be recovered since Lenovo has the bootloader locked. The solution that Lenovo gives you is to replace the mainboard for a software error.

    Lenovo Quality team told me that they can not release the bootloader keys because the Thinkpad Tablet has DRM software included.

    • How utterly shit-tastic!

      "Oh noes! It has the DRM in it, and if you try to *DELETE* the preinstalled software, it somehow means you might try to COPY it illegally if we give you the boot loader password! Nevermind how incredibly dumb that sounds!"

      Really, can't they compromise a teensy bit and digitally sign a FOSS bootloader replacement, if they can't just release the signing key?

      • I asked that as a proposal solution.

        To release a Vanilla android image with the procedure to load it on the Thinkpad Tablet 1 unlocking the bootloader but wiping all the DRM image software. This image can also be "AS IS" and unsupported, or even giving you the instructions to use an "AS IS" custom ROM. Lenovo has done this on the past with other tablets, but they do not want to do it for the Thinkpad Tablet 1.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sjames ( 1099 )

        Or just have actual key management where you can add your own key (The crappy DRM software is free to decide my key isn't good enough if it likes) and optionally remove their key. Or boot with no key and the crappy OS and DRM software can refuse if they like so long as my OS of choice will install and boot.

    • Re:Lenovo, please unlock the bootloader (Score:5, Interesting)

      by WaywardGeek ( 1480513 ) on Monday July 22, 2013 @06:55PM (#44356573) Journal

      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.

      • Re: Lenovo, please unlock the bootloader (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Wow. I'm surprised. We've purchased several thousand of the non-touch model for field deployment. They have been pretty reliable so far (two months and counting...very few DOA and not more than the previous T series models. My biggest gripe is the 2 USB ports are on opposite sides: bus powered devices often require two USB powered ports, and the adapter cables they come with assume they will be closely located. The features and form factor are great for most of our users, but some need portable extern

        • You're buying the right way. Wait until a model has proven it is reliable, and then buy more than you need. If one fails, you replace it immediately, and no one minds if it takes a couple of months to get a repair. If you're lucky, and parts are in stock in Atlanta, you can get depot service that is decent. If you have to wait for Lenovo to acquire parts in China, just put the machine in a corner and forget about it for a few weeks. When I was in charge of laptop purchasing decisions for a small team o

      • Re:Lenovo, please unlock the bootloader (Score:4, Informative)

        by Alomex ( 148003 ) on Monday July 22, 2013 @09:17PM (#44357537) Homepage

        So... 10 weeks later I got a replacement machine!

        Lenovo ships every spare part by boat from China. This is a joke for machines such as Thinkpads which are meant for businesses.

        It boggles the mind that their Chinese based operations can be so stupid as not to realize the damage they do to their brand every time this happens.

        My last thinkpad was needed repairs just a few months after the two year warranty expired, then a year later one day it just died. That was my third thinkpad and the last one I ever buy.

        • It boggles the mind that their Chinese based operations can be so stupid as not to realize the damage they do to their brand every time this happens.

          Not to be that guy, but the "Chinese-based" ThinkPad headquarters are located in Morrisville, North Carolina. USA.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Alomex ( 148003 )

            From Wikipedia:

            Lenovo Group Limited is a Chinese multinational technology firm with headquarters in Beijing, China and Morrisville, North Carolina.

            The company was founded in China and used to be called Legend, and it is listed in the Hong-Kong stock exchange. In 2005 it bought the IBM PC business division.

            Back when it was an IBM company new batteries would be delivered next business day. Today they take 6-10 weeks to arrive.

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Unfortunately, this seems to be the theme these days. Send out half-baked stuff that barely works. A friend just visited and her laptop would maintain wireless connection for about 5 minutes then drop off. Long story short, HP shipped this nice shiny gorgeous laptop with Windows 8 and defective wireless drivers. It couldn't maintain a wireless connection long enough to run windows update (after finding WU in Windows 8, geez), and and plugging in the RJ45 the WU ran. However, the tolerance of the RJ45 po

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by delt0r ( 999393 )
        Well around April i got a W series. First thinkpad i ever had. Must admit that everyone raves about the keyboards for a very good reason. Its great. But the screen broke. Off course there were 3-4 other people trying to steal it from me and i ended up with 3 broken ribs. The hinges to the screen are even bent. But the rest of the laptop is fine. Will get a W series again.

    • Lenovo Quality team told me that they can not release the bootloader keys because the Thinkpad Tablet has DRM software included.

      Frankly that sounds reasonable to me. According to that forum post, they are offering you a replacement motherboard, wouldn't that be enough to restore the original functionality of the device?

      • And you have to pay shipping both ways, be without your $1800 computer for up to 3 months, and they probably wont even send your computer back to you, often they just take yours in and ship out someone elses refurbished unit.

      • Hi jones_supa

        The problem is that since Lenovo does not unlock the bootloader, I can replace the mainboard, it will be working again, but it does not offer any warranty that the software brick will not happen again. So, how many times in the future will I have to replace the mainboard because of a locked bootloader.

        Please remember that my tablet does not have any hardware problems, it is software and you are replacing the hardware because of a contractual DRM limitation.
        • In that case Lenovo should be concerned about fixing the bug that bricks the device rather than giving the bootloader keys!

    • Good thing the Helix is a Core-series CPU with vPro, and you can turn off secure boot in the firmware in about 2 seconds. I have one on my desk right now, and secure boot is disabled, and it's running Windows 7, which Lenovo has driver support for.

      Installing Linux would be a snap.

  • $1800 !!!!! (Score:4, Informative)

    by multiben ( 1916126 ) on Monday July 22, 2013 @06:53PM (#44356561)
    Good luck with that.
    • The era of cheap netbooks is over and this Ultrabook + Windows 8 trend has brought plethora of very expensive devices to the market. :/

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rsborg ( 111459 )

        The era of cheap netbooks is over and this Ultrabook + Windows 8 trend has brought plethora of very expensive devices to the market. :/

        It's almost like the original tablet PC never died - except there's no digitizer or stylus this time around, but we're expected to pay the same premium.

      • I saw an ad for a new 15 inch laptop at $239 the other day. I think that is why the cheap netbook is dead.

      • The era of cheap netbooks is over and this Ultrabook + Windows 8 trend has brought plethora of very expensive devices to the market. :/

        While my $1,900 crappy ThinkPad Carbon X1 Touch is a sore dissapointment, mostly due to Lenovo "support", I picked up a cheap 11" laptop for my son at Best Buy and have been pretty happy with it. It's a Asus touch ultrabook for $450. It's easily the nicest laptop I've used in this price category. I think we'll see lot's of reasonably priced touch ultrabooks soon.

    • Even worse, it's not even Haswell. $1800 for a laptop with last years technology?

  • Disable Advertising (Score:5, Funny)

    by Russ1642 ( 1087959 ) on Monday July 22, 2013 @06:59PM (#44356611)

    I could have sworn I had advertising disabled.

    • Re: (Score:1, Offtopic)

      by Hadlock ( 143607 )

      Agreed, this is obnoxious, they're averaging 1-2 a day now, and if you call them out on it your post gets mysteriously down-modded. I don't even think this is the haswell model.

      • Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)

        by multiben ( 1916126 )
        Mod-parent down. I won't hear bad things about /.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by delt0r ( 999393 )
        You could read the Title... and not click on the summary. Seriously my internal advertising filter works really really well.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by zlives ( 2009072 )

      this is not advertising, consider this as infotainment for nerds

  • That's just like the X41 tablet. You know, the one IBM released in 2005.

    Shame you can no longer build a ThinkPad worthy of the name, eh Lenovo?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Misagon ( 1135 )

      The X41 had only a swiveling screen, pen and a couple of physical buttons on top. It did not come apart into two parts.

      The two laptops serve different users. You could say that the X41 is primarily a laptop and a tablet secondarily, while the Helix is primarily a tablet and a laptop secondarily.
      The tablet is easier to carry, and might therefore be preferable if you are going away/travelling and you don't think that you will be typing much. The X41 is when you do mostly traditional computing and you need tab

    • This device is very different from the X-series tablets (which Lenovo still sells, btw).

      If you can't see how being able to remove the screen and walk off with it leaving half the device behind as a docking station is different from the tilt-a-whirl convertible, then you aren't paying very close attention.

  • 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

    I'd love to replace my current thinkpad with a unit that doesn't require a mouse. Unfortunately, laptop manufacturers keep the word 'tablet' synonymous with the word 'toy'. As long as getting rid of the mouse is a pipedream, tablets will continue to be a toy. If people want to play tablets and have ridiculous battery life, there's already a perfect platform for that.

    What lenovo needs to build is a grunty cost effective business laptop replacement that doesn't require a mouse.

    • I'd love to replace my current thinkpad with a unit that doesn't require a mouse. Unfortunately, laptop manufacturers keep the word 'tablet' synonymous with the word 'toy'..

      That's because a touchscreen is pretty much a toy. I have them on my pad and smartphone. Toylike. Toyish. Fingerprint marks all over. Handy to click on links. Awesome for Solitaire.

      Enlarging a spreadsheet cell? Not so much. And touching the screen on a light laptop, makes it kind of wobbly unless theere is a bit of mass to the thing.

      • All the software has to be rewritten to take advantage of touch. I feel kind of dirty, but I actually switched to Internet Explorer on my touch ultrabook, because pinch and zoom works so well. It's weird, because scrolling with my mouse wheel will be all laggy sometimes, but if I use my fingers on the screen, it's instant and butter smooth. My eyesight isn't that good, so maybe it's of more use to me than it would be to you, but I never want another laptop without a touch screen. Once all the software u

  • ...put the fn key where the ctrl key goes.
    • Fortunately you can swap them in the BIOS and restore sanity.

    • Yeah... I've had this PoS X1 Carbon Touch for a couple of months now, and I still have to think about it carefully to hit the control key. If the machine actually worked properly, and if Lenovo support was better than worthless, my next biggest complaint with it would be the control key placement. In theory my fingers will eventually adapt...

  • $1800? $1800! $1800 WTF (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    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 talk

    • Android for desktops

      That phrase stopped me cold. Seriously... Google could pull it off, which means they're probably secretly working on it. If they can go from zero to a million apps in a few years for phones, they should be able to replace the whole Windows ecosystem in short order. They tried this Chromebook nonsense, which IMO is a joke, because who develops apps for Chrome? What they need is a seriously awesome MacBook Air competitor. A Nexus Ultra? As we've seen many times now, innovation is not forthcoming from ha

  • Lenovo - For Those Who Don't (Score:3, Insightful)

    by FuzzNugget ( 2840687 ) on Monday July 22, 2013 @08:12PM (#44357127)

    Yawn, give me back my ThinkTank, I don't want your yuppie hipster tablet shit. By all means, go ahead and make it, but not at the sacrifice of the once-venerable ThinkPad, now hamstrung by cheap build quality and shitty, unusable keyboards.

  • no buy

  • I've been reading about the Helix for over a year now and its been on sale for months, can you please tell me what your definition of 'new' is?

    • after the second slashdot dupe of this event comes out, then it will no longer be "new" around here.

      "powerful windows 8", that's a pretty funny phrase. Anything that doesn't run a true operating system can't be powerful.

    • The Lenovo marketing department only now figured out how to astroturf Slashdot. Or, alternatively, this was submitted when it was new back in May, but the editors only posted it now.

  • Powerful Windows 8 computer? (Score:3)

    by dpbsmith ( 263124 ) on Monday July 22, 2013 @08:33PM (#44357237) Homepage

    Nutritious Hostess cupcake?

    Luxurious Toyota Prius?

    Tasteful Miley Cyrus wardrobe?

    • Nutritious Hostess cupcake?

      Luxurious Toyota Prius?

      Tasteful Miley Cyrus wardrobe?

      Ugly iOS device?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mjwx ( 966435 )

        Nutritious Hostess cupcake?

        Luxurious Toyota Prius?

        Tasteful Miley Cyrus wardrobe?

        Ugly iOS device?

        Great,

        See what you've done.

        Now Priuses are Luxurious and Miley Cyrus is tasteful.

        At least this has made me feel better about cloth seats in the Toyobaru Twins (and the fact the Prius and 86 use the same wheels).

  • We get an option of a couple high end lenovo's and the 15" macbook pro retina. The shear size and weight of the thinkpad with the 170 watt power supply is basically a non-starter for people who even only travel occasionally or just to meeting rooms and back.

    Lots of people in my office learning OSX now and not because they love apple or are expecting productivity gains. One guy still loves windows so much he only boots his macbook pro into Windows 7. The lenovo hardware just sucks by comparison.

  • I'm pretty sure I read this same story on Slashdot sometime in 2003...

  • No proper trackpoint, no sale (Score:3)

    by fnj ( 64210 ) on Monday July 22, 2013 @08:44PM (#44357327)

    Lenovo, are you listening? If you continue your trend of removing the trackpoint buttons and the ability to completely disable the trackpad, you lose your edge and slide into irrelevance. Oh, and this should go without saying, but NO SALE.

    The trackpoint with actual physical buttons (THREE of them) is the only acceptable pointing device on a portable. The X301 was PERFECT.

    Touchpads are complete and utter garbage. Ones with only soft buttons are even more crappy. What I really want is for this abortion to be completely removed and the keyboard relocated to its proper place and the front of the base, but if it HAS to be there to cater to losers, at least it must be completely disablaeble so I don't brush it when I am attempting to type, damn it.

    • Hear, hear !

      That's an imperative. Other laptop vendors should listen too.

    • I would love to have a mini trackball on my laptop, though. :) That would enable playing 3D games without the requirement of an external mouse.

    • The trackpad on X1 Carbon and Helix (same part) does have a physical button - it clicks down in the same vein as Apple's trackpad.

      Unfortunately, it's not nearly as tuned nor responsive as Apple's offering, so it still sucks.

    • It says a lot about the commoditisation of the laptop market that Lenovo's edge is an unpopular but efficient pointing device.

  • If it wasn't for the fact that these thins all have absolutely garbage specs, and cost almost twice as better spec laptop or a laptop AND a tablet. AND we have to suffer through windows 8 ...

    Seems they need to drop the 1 out of that price

  • Not Sure What To Say (Score:3)

    by PaddyM ( 45763 ) on Monday July 22, 2013 @09:03PM (#44357429) Homepage

    As I sit here typing this post with my TC1100, the computer which got me to use Windows XP as my primary operating system, the computer which runs Windows 7 decently enough, which I purchased used for $850 about 8 years ago. It works like a boss. It has 1 problem with hardware overheating which can be resolved by tilting the screen towards you as far as it will go, and then it just works. Just works. Originally priced at $2400 back in 2001/2002. It has a trackpoint, and enough space for all the keys in all the right places except for page up and page down. The only form of laptop which doesn't burn your legs because the battery floats in space (a battery you can replace without shutting down completely). The only laptop with a proper trackpoint and excellent stylus support. A beautiful 8.9 inch screen over 180 degree viewing angle which has the option of VGA-outing to some big screen you want to use at the same time. In that same time I've worn out a Vaio laptop and a brand new Lenovo laptop (which stopped working in 1 month). HP the company is bleeding revenue seeking to redefine itself, when it had the quality answer 10 years ago. I know this Lenovo in comparison is trackpointless and will only last just past the warranty period if you're lucky. I don't know what to say really.

  • ...to the Extreme, Bro!

    Peace out, Yo.

  • I'm not sure I agree with the original poster's "Performance-wise, the new ThinkPad tablet convertible doesn't have a ton of horsepower". It comes in an i5 with 4GB RAM and an i7 with 8GB RAM flavour and both have large SSDs (180GB and 256GB respectively). Last I looked, those are mainstream business PC specs. I am typing this on the i5 model of the Helix and I have to say it's an impressive machine. Tearing off the tablet portion (where all the guts are) for media consumption and re-docking it for busi

  • Lenovo, cut the crap (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Lenovo, just bring us X61 back, will ya ?
    This new keyboard is awfull, good old IBM styled keyboards are not available even as an option. (jeesh, this could be a revenue source on it's own)
    This 16:9 screen since x200 is absolutely pointless to me - no 3:4 options ?

    All these blumps with Thinkpad series over the last decade just shows us, how genius IBM engineering was, and how long does it actually take to kill a really marvelous piece of engineering.

    Once, Thinkpad was an alias for solid, bullet-proof work ho

    • Indeed. The only thing IBM screwed up is put Fn key in the wrong spot... besides that, great keyboards/laptops.

  • I was thinking this was the Haswell release of the Thinkpad Helix. Turns out, /. is behind by 4 months and just learning about the Helix. *facepalm* It hurts.
    But yes, IMHO its the best convertable out there by far.

    I'm waiting for the Haswell version however, and i hope its 16" 3200x1800 and sports a better GPU. I don't mind the weight and size.

  • Use this combo for a majority of my on-the-go meetings, email, note taking, document creation, and light duty spreadsheet work. 90% of what normal business folks need. How do they even hope to compete with this price / value proposition and with the reviled Win8 interface? They've lost before they started.

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