My Dream Thinkpad....

I just got the x120e and I love the little critter, but if I could I surely would build a laptop just like it but add a few changes.

1. slightly bigger screen. Maybe offer a 13"
2. Core I5 or I7. Sorry AMD.
3. Switchable and or better GPU.

If the Edge had better GPU or the if the x201 had a decent GPU and the same keyboard that might work as well.

Love that keyboard.

 

MY dream thinkpad is one with a display that have a 14-inch, 21:9 aspect ratio and Windows 8 (Or whatever the name of the next windows release) and those Windows 8 hardware parts, and it must be thin.

Start flaming me for that radical aspect ratio now, I humbly accept them.

 

I would really like a 13" variant of the ThinkPad - maybe an updated and upgraded version of the X300/301.

Personally, I think the 13" screen size is perfect!

 

Would be tough after getting this x200s, but it would be betwen the following:

12in 1600x900 ULV quad core with the ability to get 24 hours or more on battery.

13-14in 1920x1080 ULV quad core intel/ati switchable GPU with options for integrated/discrete/switchable in bios and the ability to get 24hours+ on battery.

Both would have traditional thinkpad keyboards with an option for which mouse was built in (so I would only have a trackpoint). Docks would be offered in various forms from basic, travel, and high performance (includes GPU and extra storage). Matte screens are a MUST, and no crazy RGBLED unless it could still get 24 hours or more battery life. Build quality as good or better then my t400 and x200s.

I could go on forever but I think Ill stop there.

 

lines_of_flight, while 13" could be really perfect ultraportable, I dont like the free space on both sides of the keyboard, when I want something small, then I want it to utilize every inch of its chassis for good reason and use! On my T410 it has ~1.5cm of unused space on each side of the keyboard which is a shame IMO. I would love to see there loads of special keys and buttons, hardcore workstation style
X200/X201 are perfect in this regard - its pure keyboard and no unused space on chassis. X220 on the other hand has little bit of free space, its probably less than 0.5cm together on both sides, but its still there, I hope they are bullet proof, otherwise its unused space and ugly design IMO to some extent. I know Im greatly exagerating, but just to make an example Im sure in real life it looks astonishing! But imagine that on 13" machine, that could in some cases put me off, unless some hi quality speakers and other gizmos get inserted there After all, I want it to be as frankensteinish looking and as functional as possible, thats why I like ThinkPads most
Hehe...

 

X1 with gizmos to save the day.

 

Realistic Improvements to the X120e, remember, this thing starts at $400...
1. Eyefinity. 3x Portrait Mode Eyefinity gives lots of vertical pixels and we could always use more of those. Replace HDMI with 3x MiniDisplayPort. I don't really have much use for HDMI anyways.
2. 9 cell battery

 

Eyefinity on laptop GPUs are limited to 2 LCDs sadly. I tried to make a group of 3 on my XPS and no matter what drivers I used it only let me group 2.

In my eyes the x1X0e series would be perfect with a 9 cell and a non edge keyboard.

 

So, you are really a fan of the X200/201 form-factor huh? I do know what you mean about the tight fit of the keyboard and the frame and I agree with you. However, screen size is important to me too and I think the 13" size is the most optimal. The caveat is that after I receive my x201, I may change my mind...we'll see!

 

Here's your dream ThinkPad. Microsoft Store Online - Samsung Series 9 (13.3-Inch) - Pre-order from Microsoft Store

The X1 can't come soon enough.

 

Looks lovely! Now, if only it was a ThinkPad!

 

I sure did. I thought the small form factor was dead for me until I got my m11x. Now with my x200s I feel as though lenovo snuck into my house and got the idea for this laptop through osmosis while I slept.

If lenovo makes an MBA competitor they better make it with a non chicklet and the availability of a 9 cell. If so Id be in love too!

 

OK since we are talking of "ideal" ThinkPads...maybe the X201/200 with the battery life of the upcoming X220 (without the slice) and the latter's IPS option with and/ or without the SSD option. HDD should be 7200rpm. The machines should be offered with and without an OS (options would include Windows and/ or Linux) but it should be certified/ optimized to work perfectly on both Windows and Linux.

 

VIDEO
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator HD with shared graphics memory

No dream come true for me! What is the X1?

 

Yeah, I was thinking about it today, how much can you stuff into laptop or tablet before you make it overcrowded with features that are relevant only to minority of users and which end up to take up space for the most part of buyers who would rather enjoy their gadget to be smaller, thinner, lighter and with only couple of necessary ports intead of being bloated with port-ware.
Weve had discussion regarding ExpressCard and how I rather have than not while others consider it as useless, both sides have their right's and wrong's, but I cant disagree on fact that given that even optical disk drives are being phase out in 13" and 14" machines, even ThinkPad team member recently said it (dont remember who that was on Lenovo blogs quite recently) there is very little reason for EC to stay on ultraportable non-workstation laptops.
In fact, I would prefer Thunderbolt and gadget that are optimised for it in future rather than EC port which becomes more of an artifact with its huge size and rare-usability by average Janes and Joes.

On the other hand, you cant stripp all ports off the laptop or tablet and leave it with one or two ports, one for charing and other for USB.
There must be some bare minimum to avoid crippled gadgets which cant be fully utilised unless docked or connected to numerous USB expansion devices

I really wanted X200/X201 but realised that I would have to wait for another 6 months before I would save up cash for one, so I decided to get best bang for the buck and so R400 came to be, with the idea in mind to get cheapest possible yet good enough laptop because I really needed laptop and couldnt wait any longer, been postponing for far too long I was thinking to get cheapest laptop and within year or 1.5 buy X series 12". That changed when I got my R400 replaced with well equipped T410, only thing that my T410 doesnt have is discrete graphics, the rest is there+the power is up to date so no logical reason for me to upgrade any time soon.
Well see how prices on X201/X220 change during year or two, but there should be crazy deal that one simply cant pass up to make me buy another ThinkPad and sell my T410

Ive always loved the idea of having as much power and features as possible in as small computer as possible, hence the affinity towards X2xx. Especially with 1440x900 or HD+ screens, I do hope that Lenovo will be able to re-introduce HD+ screens in their 12.5" X laptops.

13" is definitely best of both worlds, you can still have dvd drive, small weight, small size, full keyboard and enhanced resolution LCD. T410s offers the same, but its bigger than 13" which for some might seem little too be, me included.

Someone tipped you regarding X1, care to share some info ?

Even if MBA competitor from Lenovo would be targeted towards ThinkPad buyers I doubt there is a way to make it look attractive for average consumers by putting regular TP keyboard into it. Chiclet is all the rage on laptops these days, its a fashion and marketing thing, it also looks good if done properly, it could help Lenovo to boost sales on X1. Also, Edge style keyboard is rather good, didnt test it long enough, but almost as good if not as good as 7-row ThinkPad keyboard is Only thing I didnt like are small function keys, almost half the size of regular ThinkPad's. But one can get used to it easily.

 

Which parts of the X200/201 would you like to keep? The aspect ratio of the display panel? The old-style keyboard (which I do like)? The CPUs of previous generations?

 

Sorry to add another post, but regarding dream laptops and what should stay and what should go I do think that X series as well as slim iterations of T series should dump 1.8/2.5" form factor drives in favour of single or preferably dual mSata SSD's, this way allowing for either slimmer and lighter laptops or for thicker materials used in laptops to make them more durable while maintaining thinner design.

 

Sorry, I have nothing I can share at this time.

 

Well...I'd like to have the 1280x800 (min) res. I have not even seen the new res that the X220 is going to bring in, but I don't think I'd be too enamoured by it.

Further, I have only very briefly played around with a X201 in a store here and the time was not enough for me to form an impression of the KB. But if the KB is anything like the one I have on my current rig, then I'd be fine with it. Plus there are the recommendations from all the happy x201 users here on NBR! So, yes, the old-style KB is a must!

About the CPUs, I have mixed feelings. SB allows for longer battery life and in general is faster and more efficient than either the 1st Gen iX chips or the even older C2D (like what my R400 has). So yeah...if it is possible to have the SB chip in the X201 form, I'd be a happy camper. But then again, there is nothing that I do or will do in the foreseeable future (say for another 3-4 years) that will require me to exploit the advantages of the SB chip (save, of course, from the battery life). So, I'd be content to move from my current C2D to say the first gen of i5's

On thinking hard about it, aside from the lack of dedicated trackpad buttons and a latch to hold the lid/ screen in place, I'm afraid I don't see any significant difference between the X201 and the X220 (aside from the battery life, the IPS option, and the different screen res.).

 

I think that will probably come in the future, right now though i don't think Lenovo is going to dump the 1.8 and 2.5 inch factors for the fact that they are selling to business/corporate environment. Having only mSATA SSD is probably going to increase the total cost of ownership too much, and reduce user's choice in purchasing the cheaper mechanical hdd form.

 

I think a 13.3" display with a 4:3 aspect ratio and SXGA+ resolution [1400x1050] or perhaps SXGA [1280x960] resolution with IPS would be optimal. Note the dimensions of the venerable 600E below (my first ThinkPad) compared with the new X220.

ThinkPad 600E with 337.8-mm (13.3-inch) TFT XGA (1024 x 768) display
Width: 300 mm (11.8 in)
Depth: 240 mm (9.4 in)
Height: 36.5 mm (1.4 in)

That 13.3" 600E is not as wide as the 12.5" X220!

ThinkPad X220 with 317.5-mm (12.5-inch) TFT WXGA (1366 x 768) display
Width: 305 mm (12.0 in)
Depth: 206.5mm (8.13 in)
Height: 19.0-34.6 mm (0.75-1.05 in)

 

this would be a *horrible* idea and would severely limit the usefulness of the X laptop for power users who need large amounts of disk space on the go.

SSDs have not been perfected yet in terms of reliability and they sure don't cut it in terms of $$$ per GB.

it's bad enough that the x220 only accepts up to 7mm drives and dropped down to a 1366x768 resolution.

 

Are you sure its a limitation of the mobile GPU, or did you hit the limit of 2 "legacy" monitors? You need to use DisplayPort monitor or an active dongle to have 3 or more screens in Eyefinity I think.

btw, the Edge style keyboard is quite nice. Played around with one, its nearly just as good as a traditional Thinkpad keyboard if you don't look down.

 

No storage technology is "perfected" in terms of reliability. SSD tech, however, has been refined to the point where it is comparable to mechanical drives.

 

Didn't the alienware m17x were able to get 3 monitors support using the eyefinity.

 

You mirrored my thoughts - and my gripes with the X220 - exactly. Although, I did missed the drive height limitation when I looked at the spec sheet. Add another check to the "Glad I got an X201" row for me.

I don't like the idea of non-standard drives, after the difficulty I had trying to find a larger capacity drive for my X41. Standards are "standard" for a reason - to provide the greatest capacity for compatibility across the board.

While I really want an SSD, a 500+gb option is way, WAY out of my price range, and until it enters the realm of reality, I'd prefer the option to get my gaggle-o-gigabytes in spindle form. I would probably toss a 1TB spindle drive in my X201 before I make the questionable "upgrade" to a sub-200gb SSD.

Speaking to the dream Thinkpad question from the OP - My X201 is about as close as I can imagine to perfection. If I were to improve it in any fashion, I'd take an IPS matte screen, a light discreet graphics option - switchable, of course, and a quad core processor, along with the insane life of the battery slice from the X220. Heck, if they make an X220 with a 1600x900 IPS screen and an I7 2820QM, and squeeze a light duty discreet GPU in there for my occasional "Graphics heavy" workday (AKA, Unreal Tournament 3 on lunch break) I'd buy it in a heartbeat. I'd even excuse the drive size issue - swing for an SSD and carry an external, or slap a high-cap drive in the ultrabase for working on heavy duty projects at home. I'm asking WAY too much of an X series with that spec idea, I know, but I'm entitled to my dreams.

Have you ever noticed how, in the movies, whenever someone is told "Don't look down" that's the very next thing that they do. Yeah.

The Apple style chicklet keyboards come in third for comfort behind the amazing Thinkpad keyboard, and the IBM model M. My only gripe with most chicklets is that there isn't enough resistance - not as much of a problem on a quality system, Apple seems to have it down pat, but typing on my Google Cr-48 can be aggravating. There's next to no key response. I had the same issue with the X100e's keyboard when I tested it a while back. I'll have to give the X120e and the Edge a try before I can pass judgement. I will still stand by the fact that they are ugly, though.

 

Maybe all the rage for consumers trying to aspire for apple products, but for the rest of us that use our computers for more then watching youtube at the coffee shop a solid keyboard is needed.

After using a chicklet extensively on my wifes macbook and playing around with laptops I support at work I just dont see the allure of that style of keyboards. PITA to use and I shudder whenever I need to use or work on one.

Like I said I had an eyefinity laptop and tried several drivers and was not able to get a larger group then 2. I tried dell, ati, modded and none offered more then 2 LCDs. I had HDMI, VGA and DP used. Come to think of it I never tried DP and HDMI together.

I never was able to try it when I had one, but I think they are one of the only laptops that can triple monitor without a splitter or vidock.

 

not true. read the reviews of SSD technology on the serious tech websites and you'll find that they're not recommended for high # of writes, etc.

i'd love to have a high-capacity SSD in my laptop for VM use and ignoring the fact that they're not available yet in 500+GB capacities, mechanical drives are still the way to go ATM for this type of use.

eventually (i hope) SSDs will get there, but we're not there yet. for light or casual use which is what the typical laptop user are, SSD's are probably OK.

 

Most users don't do that many excessive writes, so it would take at least 3-4 years to notice any degradation in performance. And given the average consumer would buy a new notebook then, SSD may gain more traction.

 

SSDs have gotten alot better over the years. They may not last as long as cyclical HDDs, but they are definitely long lasting enough to outlive your use for the system. With the newest generation Im pretty sure they will outlast a system outside of those extreme rare users that keep their system forever. Are SSDs ready for extreme read write situations? No. But then again they are currently designed for OS drives where read writes are more normal then say a server drive.

 

There is no other way than solid storage if you want your laptops to become smaller, lighter, slimmer, faster and longer lasting on a charge, SSD or other future solid state storage technology is the future of home computers.
Mechanical HDD's are quite a bit larger than SSD's, plus you cant put HDD in every free corner of your laptop while with SDD's you can, if its necessary, stuff tiny SSD card where there is place for one.
Im not talking about enourmous read-write cycles or TB's of storage. Most probably dont even use their laptops for such needs, needless to say that most consumer laptops come in HDD sizes that are already covered by SSD's, except for the price of course.
And as already mentioned, given how often people tend to replace their laptops, SSD reliabiltiy isnt much of concern, especially with its tech going up and prices down.
Sure, Id love to have 80Gb SSD boot drive in form of mSata and 1TB mechanical storage drive, both in one laptop, which slowly becomes a reality. But mechanical drives are severely limiting ultraportable laptop dimensions to some extent weight also, you cant go thinner than what your HDD allows.
Imagine SSD thats as thin as your camcorders SD card, thats not that far from today.

 

The price disparity is still a major issue, especially when you start to look at higher capacities. Another issue - the general userbase will not view a 128GB SSD as an upgrade over their current 250/500gb spindle drive. Convincing the general public that the speed of an SSD drive is actually worth the extra investment is going to be a massive hurdle. Bigger numbers=better to the average consumer.

Before SSD's catch on, both the size and price disparities need to come more in line with reality. Once a manufacturer can offer a 500GB SSD for a reasonable price bump over a 500GB spindle drive, I think that the general public will begin to embrace SSD. As it stands, SSD's benefits are known to a small segment of "Enthusiast" type users, and there's even a large segment of us who can't live with the compromises, even for the extra speed or potential weight savings. I don't doubt that the inevitable future is SSD, I just don't think that the all-SSD future is anywhere near as close as some of us might hope. When price/capacity/availability are in that perfect harmony to make SSD the industry standard, I'll be more than willing to take my .5 inch thick X series with 40 hours of battery life with the extended life battery.....which will make it .7 inches thick. Ahem....sorry....I was dreaming again there.

 

Hopefully Lenovo will manufactor Slim Thinkpad with 21:9 Aspect Ratio screen.

The win!

 

LOL@Pochi

@Knight0 Well, Im not saying that SSD's or alikes will take over the world tomorrow, but its going to happen sooner or later, as you said, depending on price, the cheaper the sooner.
I do realise that in order to bring consumers into SSD market not only will SSD have to be priced accordingly but also their read/write cycles should be on par with regular HDD's. Nobody wants to save movies and music and documents on huge SSD and then loose it all one day just because its been used "too" intensely for multimedia or pro audio/video stuff.

 

I'd really like to get a cheap SSD and test this in a real world, if somewhat extreme usage. One of these days when I have the money to spare, I may pick up one of the "Microcenter" SSD drives on the cheap, toss it in a spare rig, and see how much continual rewriting it takes to really slow it down. I suspect that even low end modern SSD's suffer a lot less from this than the early generation. When I have some spare technology money to throw around, I might just try this test out.

 

x301 is the perfect form factor, but it wont be coming back anytime soon ... You would think they would bring something in that size...

 

Apparently, the 13.3 inch sizes conflicted with the 14.0 inch laptops and 12.5 inch laptops. But personally i like the 13.3 inch with WXGA+ it has the perfect resolution and form factor.

 

Agree, putting a IPS screen on a 13" would be perfect.

 

x2xx, but thin like the x301 I can just imagine how light it'll be.

 

Its called an x200s. Mine without the battery weight makes me think its not a real computer yet its built like a tank.

 

And physically switching the ctrl and fn key locations (no bios option).

 

Hmmm. I wonder if Lenovo considered that.

 

Not in the near future. The have increase the 12.1 to 12.5 and decrease 14.1 to 14. 13.3" is stuck in the middle with less than an inch difference, there too much overlapping and will make it hard for customer to choice their right size.

If they do indeed make another 13" it would be in the same price range as the original x301, but that is not something that Lenovo wants to, with the current market of ultra-premium laptop and their experience with the x300(x301).

 

+1. <3
I thought I'm only one.
Shame that our dream won't come true, as none of lcd manufactures are producing 4:3 panels...

 

4:3 is likely gone for good. But categorically dismissing the notion Lenovo would do another 13" is a bad bet.

 

I can't help but think I should wait another year to see what all can and will improve.

The biggest problem for me is laptop graphics. I'm eager for the day when laptop GPU's are good enough that I can break away from desktop gaming for a while. I want something that will let me play Battlefield 3 when it comes out later on this year. With Optimus, I was actually kinda hoping we'd be seeing that with this year's Sandy Bridge refresh.

My next notebook will require Blu Ray and USB3.0/Lightpeak of some sort. Gotta have standards.

Will we ever get the option for backlit keyboards? I wouldn't want the Thinkpad keyboards to change the way they feel, which IMO overall Lenovo has the perfect laptop control scheme. I don't want a ThinkLight. I know some of the Edge series had backlit keyboards, and they're a major selling point for the Apple's laptops. I just want to see it on a laptop with hardware that I desire.

If it were a 14" high-image-quality with great viewing angles, matte, reversible touchscreen that allowed us to make it into a tablet PC if we wanted, USB 3.0, SSD (a given), HDMI-out, 720p webcam like what we got with the refresh, some media buttons, and a button that lets the user turn only the monitor off. That would be laptop nirvana for me right there.

Soundcard-quality audio with GOOD speakers, quad/hexacore CPU or better, options for ultrabay battery, really good battery life.

A man can dream, can't he? I suppose I'll be waiting for... what would it be, the T430, or the W530? Undoubtedly powered by the next generation of CPU's, and hopefully Optimus will have caught on big-time... I'd like to think that hybrid graphics switching will stick around for good. Any chances of Lenovo releasing more new laptops this year? Oh well, I suppose this does give me time to sell my desktop and save up for a new laptop.

But DANGIT Lenovo, you were so close!!! Shut up and take my money!

 

My dream TP is W701ds. It's so damn sick.