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In about 12 hours time (8 am EST Thursday), something big will be announced on blog.lenovo.com about a new ThinkPad Design initiative (some of you may know what that is already). Please comment on the blog.lenovo.com when the blog is published, and give some feedback on what you think about the new design.
I have a T60P with a T7200, ATi Mobility FireGL V5250, and a 1680x1050 panel, so it was definitely a 16:10 panel. Blows my mind why 16:10 went away, I could always use more vertical pixels. I feel that 1920x1200 is the perfect resolution for 17" and under, for my needs anyway. No graphics card is strong enough to really drive anything higher than that.
HA. 16:10 screen. I hope it has a 1920x1200 option. The design is great, but there is one crucial thing they decided to entirely skip.....DEDICATED ULTRANAV BUTTONS. This clickpad business from the X220 onwards needs to stop. At least incorporate T420 type buttons.
If this is going to be a successor to the X300 series, I'd totally be interested. (not interested in T-series though, since I prefer to have a ~3lbs portable laptop)
It looks nice, but I was hoping the older thinkpad mentality would've gone past "design." I doubt there's going to be removable parts like traditional thinkpads with an 18mm chassis. Also, if the red-green-blue logo coloration is staying, it'd look a lot better with "TH" in red, "INK" in green and "PAD" in blue, rather than the odd looking alternating color per letter in that design.
My personal pie in the sky wishlist after reading this post yesterday included a 3:2 screen like the surface 3/Pro 3.
I'd definitely like to see them be PgUp/PgDn keys... just enormously useful for editing code and documents. The only thing the back/forward button ever did for me (on older thinkpads) was cause me to lose a form I'd filled in on a web page when I hit one accidentally.
In the interest of everyone getting what they want, they should keep the keys and allow the mapping to be set in the BIOS
.
Personally, it makes me wonder whether Mr. Hill is really all that surprised...and if he indeed is, why?
I mean, he's as close to being the Issigonis of laptop design as humanly possible.
Go back to what you do best, sir. Please.
Let the others design laptops for the unwashed masses.
You've got some work to do on the new generation of The Ultimate Business Tool Of The PC World that has lost a lot of its prestige in the eyes of many people over the last couple of years.
At least lenovo claims to be listening. Alienware talks to us, then does the exact opposite of what we want -_-
In case lenovo is listening here, I will outline a recipe for success:
Remember the T60/T60P series? Perfect chassis. Update the chipset+CPU, give us a high gamut IPS 16:10 panel, a traditional keyboard (can be backlit), just not chiclet style. Please no multicolored thinkpad logo, that just looks childish. This should be the bread and butter computer of your business.
Remember the W700/W701DS? This needs to come back. With the second screen, digitizer, and all. Keep EVERYTHING THE SAME, including that marvelous 1920x1200 RGBLED screen. Just update the CPU, chipset, and GPU with serious horsepower (aka high tier Firepro and Quadro cards). Should satisfy the people that need mobile workstations. It also had the only properly executed numpad I've worked with on a thinkpad.
Remember the X201 Tablet? It had physical ultranav buttons. Bring those back. No more clickpad business. High quality IPS display with high gamut. Update CPU/chipset and you should be golden for people that need an ultraportable.
Do this, and you will probably kill the rest of the professional laptop competitors. Slim is not always best. A little girth gives proper thermal management so that we don't end up with anemic computers.
I have owned the 600E, T23, T30, T40, T60P, T510, T420, X41T, and X220T, so I've seen my fair share of thinkpads.
This is quite exciting; if things play out well I look forward to returning to a Thinkpad in the future.
Personally, I don't see why they wouldn't take our suggestions. Essentially, we just want a reincarnation of an older model (T60p, W700, X300, etc.) with new parts. Thats a huge reduction in R&D on the chassis! Just design the new internals/screens and I bet many of us will be happier than we are now. For more "non-retro" minded customers, they can continue to be satisfied by the likes of the T4x0s and X2x0, which I believe are the best sellers.
The 2 machines I really want to see (and would buy instantly):
W560 - Return to the W510/520/530 chassis that is way more rigid than the W540 and has a centered keyboard. Put back in the awesome 1080p 95% Adobe RGB screen and offer some type of high-DPI IPS solution too. Keep the trait of being the 15" expandable workstation with best battery life.
X260 - I like the current form factor, but the lack of higher voltage CPUs, 2 RAM slots, and 2.5" bay make the X230 (or 2570p, which has similar traits) still my favorite ultraportable.
The W560 is I believe the most likely (after how bad the W540 was...there isn't even an owners presence here). Even with its old size, it is still way more portable than the ZBook 15/M4800 and way more versatile than smaller alternatives like the rMBP/M3800.
Actually George, David Hill is/was really surprised at the response. He usually reads the blog comments on the blog.lenovo.com, so this was how he gauges response to his design changes. The last time when Lenovo blog was hit with lot of response was when David announced the keyboard change some years ago. We are told that having anything around 500 comments on the blog page would be good, well we truly exceeded that within a few hours after the blog launch.
Before CES 2015, i only knew David on facebook and his role as VP of Design for Think and Corporate Identity. So i was lucky enough to get David to have dinner with one another person on a private table on the last night of CES. During the dinner, i found out that David Hill didn't know how much diehard ThinkPad fans are out there, he thought i was an odd ball in having so much appreciation for ThinkPad and its rich history and heritage. I also mentioned you George to David, and i said there are many ThinkPadders whom are way more passionate than me, and have the full experiences with the rich ThinkPad history starting with the very first model. I told him i was late to the game, having only bought my first ThinkPad in late 2003.
Also, i mentioned that i don't really agree with all the design changes that happened recently with ThinkPad, and many ThinkPadders share the same sort of view (just didn't have a proper channel to communicate to the top echelon of management). Many ThinkPadders are keeping their old classic style ThinkPad live for more than a decade (eternity in modern computer standards), so that they can appreciate the rich computing history that goes into each machine of the old. So learning from some TED talks that i watched, rather than endlessly talking about how i disliked the changes that happened in the ThinkPad, i made an analogy by using Porsche 911 as an example (which is something David always talk about).
Basically, i mentioned that we should get back some of the classic stylings in ThinkPad, much like the round headlights made a come back in the latest iterations of 911 (so that was my way of explaining that we can have the 7 rows keyboard). Using the car analogy further, i also told him that for Porsche the 911 isn't the most profitable car model in the Porsche lineup, the Porsche SUVs are, which looks nothing like the rear engined 911. But 911 car model is the hero car in the Porsche lineup, and it is what gets people excited and generates the most buzz among Porsche car owners. So taking this further, i said we should have a retro styled ThinkPad, which ThinkPadders like me would adore.
Obviously, David had the same feeling about this project all along, he just needed someone to sort of say yes it is a great idea, just do it (don't sue me NIKE). Obviously, there was some changes between CES 2015, but core idea behind the project is/was the same. Let the ThinkPadders have a classic/retro ThinkPad style that they love, let this be the ThinkPad that we can be proud of.
This is a triumph for ThinkPadders for our ideas, and we should rejoice that we never gave up our crazy idea for ThinkPad design with classic design styling. ThinkPadders have been really amazing in the amount of support they showed for the idea. Truly amazing! I have been a ThinkPadders for some years, and have been buried in the forum community for a while, but i did not expect the amount of positive responses given for the Retro ThinkPad design idea.
Next step would be poll, which should be released soon.
I guess that's what happens when one lives in their design lab without much of *real* one-on-one contact with the actual users of their products.
Well, one thing is certain: Mr. Hill - as well as higher-ups in Lenovo - got an earful (eyeful?) from the aforementioned blog this time around. If Lenovo knows how to sift through the comments after it has conducted a proper survey - which I'm very much looking forward to - there will be money for them to collect, without having to re-invent the wheel, and while managing to look as they're doing everyone a favour at the same time. It's a win-win if they - and I'm NOT referring to Mr. Hill. here - prove to be smart enough, that is...
Wow ! I leave the forum for several weeks and this news comes up ! This is fantastic ! David Hill sounds like a really nice person, who not only loves his work, but is also willing to please the customers as well. I still use my T61 as my everyday laptop, since I refuse to upgrade to a W550 ( even though it's newer in probably every way, but to me, newer isn't always better ). I think if this Retro-Thinkpad design actually happens ( and is NOT over like $2,000 or some astronomical amount like that X300 was when it first came out ) then I might FINALLY upgrade my 8+ year old daily driver.
Everything I saw in the blog I loved. Everything from bringing back the old school island style keyboard, to the DUEL LED ThinkLights, to . . . well, basically everything. Now that David knows there is SO many of us that want the old style back with newer tec, hopefully this project will have the green light.
So how long do we have to wait for this magical ThinkPad? I hope to see it before I give up on ThinkPads and get something like a Surface Pro 4 (yay for 3:2 screens!). The last 16:10 screen Lenovo made was the T410 and this thing is slowly dying on me.
Actually, there is. If you're in the US and don't mind moving to Raleigh, North Carolina, then you can look at and apply for jobs here:
http://www.lenovo.com/jobs/ca/en/
I consider myself an average consumer who wants to buy a quality product that is upgradable and offers onsite service for my personal use. I have owned two Thinkpads,and have been very happy with the quality of the machines. The first being a T30 and my current machine a T410s.
Did anybody else notice that the latch mechanism is also back in the renders? He doesn't talk about it in the post, but it's there in the pictures. I would welcome the return of the latch!
I'm really excited with the options mentioned in that survey. It's too bad there was no mention of screen preference. So I emphasized 4:3 / 3:2 and the importance of vertical pixels.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.
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