Lenovo's Yoga Book C930 Laptop Swaps the Keyboard For an E Ink Display (techcrunch.com) 60
Lenovo has launched a laptop with an e-ink display in place of a normal keyboard. An anonymous reader writes: The Yoga Book C930 laptop follows in the footsteps of the Yoga Book A12, the convertible that was all the rage at IFA back in 2016. That device swapped the standard keyboard for a touchscreen, so the surface could double as a drawing pad. It wasn't particularly conducive for typing, but it certainly was innovative. The C930 takes things even further, swapping the Halo keyboard for E Ink. It's an interesting application for the technology, which has largely been relegated to the world of e-readers. The secondary display serves the same function as on the A12, doing triple duty as a keyboard, notepad and e-reader. The C930 will be available in October, starting at $1,000.
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Apple. Total crap.
FTFY
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You must be new here, also who uses an Apple for Yoga anyways? Are you some sort of freak?
easily fixed... (Score:2)
Just install Windows or Linux.
Difference with little distinction... (Score:2)
Some of the X series (e.g. X1Carbons) are little different than the Yoga.
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Some of the X series (e.g. X1Carbons) are little different than the Yoga.
Huh? I got a Carbon X1 for my SO. It's a fantastic machine. Light, powerful, tons of storage and a really really really nice keyboard.
And this differs how? (Score:2)
I have a X1Carbon, too. I was amazed to see how similar it is to my colleague's X1 Yoga. Aside from the hinge and screen selections, they are basically the same machine.
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Oh I though you were talking about this one with the silly non keyboard.
Yeah they're petty similar. The main thing is the X1 ends at a higher top end spec and is a bit lighter, though of course you pay a lot for that. Whether that is of value depends on your use case.
Either way though, the maxed out X1 is cheaper than my work mbp and better in all aspects except the GPU. you can get like 75% of that for under half the price with the yoga.
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It's not just the Yoga. This is an ongoing part of Lenovo's train-wreck fucking up of the excellent Thinkpad keyboard. Every year they dream up new ways to fuck it up. Let's see, where shall we put the cursor keys this year? What about Ctrl, or PgUp/PgDown, we haven't moved those for awhile. And the function keys, let's replace them with LCD app-specific keys. And why not remove the Return key just for laughs? Yeah, that's it. And then next year we'll release a new model that undoes some of the fuck
It's not a laptop! It's a tablet! (Score:1)
The former is for making something.
The latter is only and exclusively for consuming it.
Hence, the keyboard is probably the biggest feature distinguishing the two.
(And no, a touch screen is not a keyboard.)
So if you like drooling or masturbating onto surfaces with giant buttons that say "Do" or "WANT!", without specifying what, because that would not be consuming anymore, and users of such devices abhor nothing more than "having" to think for themselves, ... then get the Yoga Book C930.
Otherwise, get a compu
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The former is for making something.
The latter is only and exclusively for consuming it.
By that standard, you are misjudging this computer.
It may not be well-designed for the creation of text, but it looks VERY well-designed for the creation of visual art.
It seems like a great portable sketchbook for photoshop or zbrush. The thing weighs 1.7 pounds and has a built-in wacom drawing tablet!
You want courage? THIS is courage! (Score:5, Funny)
Why get a puny little "touch bar" when you can have a full-on "touch board"?
COURAGE!
Courage, you say? (Score:1)
"We'd like a better keyboard please"
'here, have a worse one. But it's e-ink so you can swap layouts at every keypress'
"Why thank you kindly good sir, that is useful to us touch-typists."
I'd like a *good* keyboard with a trackpoint and NO touchpad. A keyboard light is nice but all the rest is just distraction from getting ten-fingered work done. IBM thinkpads were good for that reason, but even the "anniversary" model failed in this respect. And so does the yoga. Aptly named, though. All the contortions you
"swap layouts" (Score:1)
Eh, one good thing about an e-ink keyboard : you don't only get to swap QWERTY vs DVORAK vs QWERTZ and so on.
Given it's software defined you could also put your damn ctrl and esc keys where you want. Finally have an "Fn" key on the right. Decide layout of arrow keys. Have real home/end keys if you want them.
Have silly things like Apple II, CBM 64, Amiga, ST etc. lay outs (either for no valid reason or for emulators)
And the e-ink uses no power when the keyboard is set.
Re: Courage, you say? (Score:1)
Most Apple users would provably settle for anything where dust doesn't jam up keys
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Courage will be when apple copies this idea. And claims it innovative!
Too late, Coward!
Apple already filed a Patent Application for this about a month ago. There was even a Slashdot story on it:
https://www.slashdot.org/story... [slashdot.org]
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If they can wire in an electrode to my brain that makes me feel tactile feedback this would be awesome. Oh yeah, and it has to work.
Apple's "taptic" engine works quite well. I was using their touchpad and it's amazing how much they "click" even though the touchpad doesn't actually move anymore. Push down and you feel it click, let go and it clicks back.
If anything, that might work for tactile feedback if done right.
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As soon as the "Touch of Genius" TouchBar was announced for the MacBook Pro, I've been waiting for Apple to stick two iPads together with a $500 Jony Ive hinge and call it a MacBook.
Lenovo beat them to market. At least E Ink is better than a tablet style touch screen. I guess.
I'm sure this will be more awesome when Apple finally invents it.
Typing on a flat surface... (Score:5, Insightful)
Typing on a flat surface is something that certainly takes some getting used to.
I wonder up to what point are we slaves of custom. I mean, if we had moved directly from handwriting to touchscreens, without the middle steps of the typewriter and keyboard, what would the input methods be like?
Perhaps a type of shorthand, written with a stylus. Or circles of different sizes depending on the frequency of each letter. Or mixes of finger movements and finger positions...
I feel that we are constrained by the keyboard. That we have adapted to it, more than it to us. I suppose that nowadays more words are written in flat screens than in any other system. It's time to end the dictatorship of the keyboard.
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Touchscreens fucking suck for any real typing that you want to do; there's no tactile feedback to tell you where your fingers are, so you're constantly having to break focus to look at the typing surface. Plus there's a far greater chance for mis-typing, which will slow you down even further.
I feel like your opinion on this matter comes from a person who's never actually done any real writing... Try this on a touch keyboard, then again on a regular keyboard, [typingtest.com] and post your results. Assuming that you're hones
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I have to agree that the basic keyboard concept is far faster for text input than any other existing method, and it maintains a shallow learning curve (anyone can just start, poorly, using it; that's something shorthand, gestures, and chording can't compete with).
HOWEVER, I feel like it was more of a philosophical question. If we never had typewriters, and went straight to a touch style device, what would have come of things? I think that's an very interesting way to look at it, and I often find complaints
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*Machine Learning* Is about tracking you, nothing more.
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if we had moved directly from handwriting to touchscreens, without the middle steps of the typewriter and keyboard, what would the input methods be like?
I feel that we are constrained by the keyboard. That we have adapted to it, more than it to us.
It's time to end the dictatorship of the keyboard.
The keyboard has one huge advantage over other types of input: SPEED and a close second which is accuracy.
Nothing else is currently close. Voice could possibly come close to the speed if it could get the accuracy up.
If you could invent an input method that had the same speed and accuracy of a keyboard then you could likely
easily replace the keyboard. Noone is in love with the keyboard but it's the best we have currently.
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Voice could possibly come close to the speed if it could get the accuracy up.
That won't happen until we get some kind of standard on spelling vs. pronunciation. Here's an example...
I was listening to some music on my Sirius radio and heard a song I liked. I made note of the artist on the radio display, Gina Clowes. How is that pronounced? I have no idea. Does that rhyme with "house", "hose", or "haws"? I made my best guess on the pronunciation and said to my Echo, "Alexa, play music by Gina Clowes," and hoped for the best. The response was something like, "I can't find music
Re:Typing on a flat surface... (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps a type of shorthand, written with a stylus
This was already tried and wasn't particularly successful with Palm's Graffiti [wikipedia.org] and other earlier handwriting systems. Probably the fastest available entry device (short of some kind of imaginary telepathic device) would be a stenotype keyboard (good stenographers can average between 6-7 words per second), but the learning curve for those is rather steep. Gregg shorthand allows a skilled scribe to record text at comparable speeds with just a pen, but using a far more limited character set that's difficult to integrate into a lot of computing tasks. Other visually-driven systems like Dasher [inference.org.uk] are quite efficient and especially suited for disabled users, but entry still isn't anywhere near as quick as a traditional keyboard.
Keyboards have become the dominant entry method not only because of history and commonality, but because we use our hands for so many things that the control loop between the brain and our hands becomes exceedingly refined over our lifetime. I'm not a particularly fast typist (about 80 wpm), but I don't really have to think at all about *what* I'm typing - the traditional keyboard does a good job of keeping your hands where they're supposed to be, and most touch typists get to the point where their hands more or less run on autopilot. This is even more so with a keyboard layout that attempts to optimize movement (like Dvorak). Chorded keyboards are more efficient still, but that's basically what a stenotype machine is. The more complex the key actions become, the closer data entry becomes akin to playing a piano, with the attendant difficulty.
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Palm's Graffiti actually worked very well if you put even a fraction of the time learning to touch type into learning it.
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Yes, it did - I owned a IIIc myself and was relatively quick with Graffiti. "Wasn't particularly successful" wasn't meant to imply "Graffiti didn't work", rather that it didn't fare well against newer smartphone entry systems and that it's unusual to find Graffiti in use today.
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Typing on a flat surface is something that certainly takes some getting used to.
I wonder up to what point are we slaves of custom. I mean, if we had moved directly from handwriting to touchscreens, without the middle steps of the typewriter and keyboard, what would the input methods be like?
Perhaps a type of shorthand, written with a stylus. Or circles of different sizes depending on the frequency of each letter. Or mixes of finger movements and finger positions...
I feel that we are constrained by the keyboard. That we have adapted to it, more than it to us. I suppose that nowadays more words are written in flat screens than in any other system. It's time to end the dictatorship of the keyboard.
If any of those happened first, we'd be hearing about the miraculous "keyboard" invention that blew them all out of the water.
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Typing on a flat surface is something that certainly takes some getting used to.
I wonder up to what point are we slaves of custom.
The primary reason we use a keyboard is because we use an alphabet. The alphabet serves as a major constraint in keyboard design, so you would need to address that you make any crazy changes. But that isn't really the issue...
We don't write with our fingers in the sand (or equivalent) for a reason. It is less efficient and more uncomfortable than current technologies. Try it on a touchscreen program that recognizes your handwriting. You will write incredibly slowly, messily, and you will hurt yourself
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Typing on a flat surface is something that certainly takes some getting used to.
I wonder up to what point are we slaves of custom. I mean, if we had moved directly from handwriting to touchscreens, without the middle steps of the typewriter and keyboard, what would the input methods be like?
Perhaps a type of shorthand, written with a stylus. Or circles of different sizes depending on the frequency of each letter. Or mixes of finger movements and finger positions...
I feel that we are constrained by the keyboard. That we have adapted to it, more than it to us. I suppose that nowadays more words are written in flat screens than in any other system. It's time to end the dictatorship of the keyboard.
Exactly!
Ever since I was a kid, I envisioned such a device. There are a bunch of applications for a device like that, and no, a laptop with a conventional touchscreen is not the same thing.
Techcrunch (Score:2)
Holy crap that Techcrunch website is a piece of shit.
Scroll to the bottom of the article you're reading and it puts you on their index page and you have to hit 'back' to get back to the article you were reading.
Which cunt thought that was a good idea?
They beat Apple to the punch (Score:4, Insightful)
A laptop with a keyboard worse than the MacBook Pro.
Impressive.
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The Yoga has no keyboard but what I really want to know is, does it have a headphone port?
I know how to plug in a keyboard if I need one but I can't figure out how to go plugging in a set of headphones without a 1/8th inch diameter socket.
Just so I'm clear, I'm not a fan of either iterations of touch input devices. I'll pile on with the bashing.
What I'd like is a keyboard that has the keys in a nice vertical and horizontal layout and not cost a small fortune. The only reason the keyboards way back when ha
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A laptop with a keyboard worse than the MacBook Pro.
Impressive.
Actually, no, they didn't:
https://www.slashdot.org/story... [slashdot.org]
interesting (Score:1)
Wonder if it's possible to disable the main screen then use only the e-ink display as the primary one for Linux, while using a full sized USB keyboard. Battery may last four days then...
Can't wait (Score:2)
Give me one giant touchscreen (Score:2)
For my uses, touchscreen typing is fine for casual
What a terible idea (Score:2)
I mean you essentially downgrade your laptop to a tablet by throwing away your most important input device, the keyboard.