Reason for T400/T500 Screen not in the Middle

Why are they like this? They are position to the right, which is odd, instead of being in the middle.

 

To accomodate the wireless antennas. My R60 is slightly off-center as well, though not as pronounced.

 

How does that explain why my X61 has a nice SLIM & SYMMETRICAL bezel while still being equipped with wireless anternnas ... hmmmm?

 

Similar question for the car manufacturers.

Why do some cars come with roof antennas and others don't?
Roof antennas are just plain ugly and impractical and can be easily damaged.

 

Yeah, it's presumably for the antennas. I really don't mind, though, and if anything the left edge gives a grip area.

Offtopic:

Radio antennas are built in nowadays, those antennas are probably for GPS. Some cars have little stubs instead, though (like the BMW sedans), but I think all cars with GPS have those.

How would you damage it though? It's not as if you'll be driving into 6-foot-tall tunnels that aren't tall enough for your antenna to fit in...

 

I've only seen those pop out or "shark-fin" antennas on cars with internal navigation and satellite radio. So my guess would be it's for those two things (as an example my fathers's Lexus is one of the few of that model without the nav system and it does NOT have the "shark-fin" antenna).


I think the off center is due to the large number of antennas in current ThinkPads. Almost all of the models available now have at least five antennas (3 for 802.11N, 2 for WWAN) compared to a single 802.11b antenna for my T40.

 

On the Chrysler 300 all the 2005-2007 cars had antennas in the rear window. Then all off a sudden in 2008 Chrysler stuck it on the roof. All the 2005-2008 cars had the same basic option/GPS. Insiders said the antenna was moved to the roof to improve reception. In 2009 Chrysler switched back to the antenna in the rear window.

 

Not every wireless standard of wireless internet has it's own antenna. If that was true then it would be a huge pain in the to upgrade an 802.11b PCI-e card to an ABG card because you'd have to wire two more antenna's, but it's not true.

 

whatever the case, it's dumb IMO. Every other notebook manufacturer manages to center their screens (at least I've never seen another off-centered screen) and every other manufacturer uses more or less the same wireless cards as Lenovo with the same antenna requirements. I just don't get it.

 

That's true. However, 802.11N depends on MIMO and the ability of using two or more antennas to achieve its benefit in throughput and range. As a result upgrading 802.11ABG to 802.11N rarely works unless you add extra antennas.

 

yea, its certainly possible to center the screen and still fit all the antennas they want to it.

 

The off-centered screen is probably not a big deal, which, however, doesn't make any less of bad design and there is no excuse for it in my opinion, but since we have gone through that many times before, now I will try to show that "feature" in a different perspective.

Some time ago, David Hill, Lenovo's vice president of brand Management & design, posted a blog about the facade of appreantly unfinished building calling it "one of the saddest architectural statements I have seen in years" while trying to explain what a great design is supposed to be.


http://lenovoblogs.com/designmatters/?p=222

As you could expect, the question about the off-centered ThinkPad screens was asked immediately, and how wouldn't it be?

So why didn't Lenovo engineers manage get the displays of the 61 series centered two year ago? Did they face budget limitations or they just chose the easier way?

I really don't want to think that the engineers working for Lenovo couldn't figure out how to do that with minimum wireless performance penalty at that time, since if that was really the case, then maybe it's time for them to find a new job.

Now the next obvious question, why does the next (current) T series still have off-centered screens considering that they "invented a method" as David Hill said? Again, is it easier/cheaper just to keep this bad design?

Well, I guess T400/T500 rean't really premuim products anymore, so they don't get such a "premium" and "innovative" feature like a centered screen. (Btw, IBM weren't immune to bad design decision either, so don't try use them as an excuse.)

Of course, those type of questions should be asked on Lenovo blogs, and I believe some of them were many times, but I haven't seen a proper answer yet. Still, you could try you luck there if you want.



I will finish this post by simply quoting on David Hill again:

Welcome to Bad Design 101, please take a seat and enjoy the show... and don't forget that once you open Pandora's box, you never know how "painful" the next "design operations" might happen to be, so don't be fooled by Lenovo's nice rhetoric.

[Other recent Bad Design 101 examples: crippled SATA bus (61 series), new flexing keyboard (400/500 series), crippled DisplayPort (all current that have one) - there have been nice rhetoric for them as well]

 

Wow. If we're at a point in our lives where we can afford to worry about whether or not a computer display is centered in its bezel then we're doing pretty darn well.

I suspect those struggling to feed their families would see this discussion as pretty silly.

 

True, some roof antennas are fugly. But not all of them On my Lex, stock roof shark-fin antenna its very subtle and functional for a better satellite radio reception



Oh yeah, we are talking about laptop T400s is perfectly symmetrical.

 

Going by the same flawed logic, you shouldn't worry about anything as someone is probably dying at the moment, and you are definitely doing pretty darn well compared to them. Any discussions would be pretty silly from their point of view either, so maybe you should only focus on breathing or eating depending on your perspective I guess.

Also, I'm not sure what "those struggling to feed themselves and their families" would say about someone that worries about a discussion he perceives as pretty silly.

As I already said I don't think it's big deal for most people, but it's a part of series of poor design decisions that I'm not going to support in any way. Poor design is poor design, regardless of whether you find it important or not, it's a matter of principle. Next poor design decision may happen to affect you personally, and your hollow "wow" may turn into whining "aw".

I also find it perfectly normal that people are curious and question things they find strange rather than religiously accepting them. Curiosity is a sign of intelligence at the end even though it may cost your head sometimes.

 

You gave the answer yourself:

Glass fibers, AFAIK, are not cheap.

New Macbook Pro have the same issue.

 

Then I am glad you are perhaps not an engineer because under your guidance the world will evolve at a slower pace. I want our technical people in society to strive for the very best. Why shouldn't they? Its what humanity is all about anyway. Techological improvements. Why strive for mediocrity? Why live in blissful ignorance?

 

Thoughtful post. I agree.

 

Good design means to find a way to solve a problem without screwing up something else while still staying within the budget, which should have been possible when they first designed the 61 series, then they had enough time to correct that design mistake, which wasn't accepted well, with the 400/500 series, but apparently they didn't.

Bad design is bad design whether it's a result of cost-cutting measures, incompetence or actually both of them in most cases.

Btw, the regular X200, which has magnesium alloys casing, comes with a rather centered screen, doesn't it?
http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=4497

Nice try, but unfortunately an epic fail as well. The new Apple notebooks use some sort of mini-DisplayPort that I don't care about anyway, plus the fact that another company may offer a crippled port can't really be any excuse at all.

On the other hand, Dell Latitudes/Precisions that have the same Intel chipsets, the same DisplayPorts and were released at about the same time as the ThinkPads, do carry both video and audio with a simple DisplayPort-to-HDMI adapter.

It's not only that Lenovo misleadingly advertised the DisplayPort and failed to provide a proper explanation why their implementation doesn't carry audio, but they also lied on their forums that 1) it's an Intel issue 2) anyone else including HP and Dell have the same problem. Needless to say, Dell has no such issue, while HP doesn't even offer DisplayPorts on their notebooks.

 

Also i've heard n performance is not all that great, and does anyone ever use a anymore? a wireless uses a much higher freq, 5GHz+ so range is exellent.. but only in line of sight situations, eg. in a dessert. However a wireless has terrible penetration through obstructions but i've heard it's so uncommonly used that it can be good to use it in a city where most other's are on g, or n, or maybe b.

Edit:Bad design????? yeah.. that's why ThinkPads have won numerous design, ergonomic and functionality awards right? Just because they're simple doesn't mean they're designed badly. Good design isn't putting as much and glitz on the thing as you can.. it's about functionality.

 

The x200 has a centered screen because they thickened the bezel on both side
of the screen, which is IMO an uglier design.

Of course, it's not the best design ever. However, if I have to choose between:
1: a fugly design, but better performance
2: a beautiful design, but lower performance
3: a beautiful design and better performance, but more expensive
I will choose the first one, and most people will AFAIK.

Why not? Mini-Displayport is just a smaller Display port and should carry sound.
However, since Apple failed to do so, is that possible that currently implanting sound is problematic with Displayports (hardware conflicts/DRM/etc)?
Dell did it, but that does not mean that everyone can do it. And remember: sound though Displayport is disabled by default on Latitudes.



*I'm not saying that lenovo is perfect and bla. I just think that things might not be as simple as we might thought. Sometime it's not a bad idea to put oneself in the shoes of others and consider the situation in a different way.

 

nah. the point is engineers should come up with suitable solutions to overcoming the problem presented to them and meeting the design specifications. if the requirement is to maintain a small bezel then they may wire the antennas behind the screen or something, for example. its not all just bunching them on one side and cause a non-centered screens. plus, the x200 isnt exactly a standard for comparing human engineering capability in this day and age.

so your opinion is that a both sided thick bezel is uglier than the opposing scenario of having an extremely thick bezel on one side and thin bezel on the other? nah I think the latter is way uglier.

'AFAIK' is hardly admissible in court. while some people look for purely the functions of a laptop and care less about looks, others certainly prefer both or maybe even all looks. a huge selling point of macs is their looks. you can deny this all day but youd be lying to yrself.

 

So now your "argument" is "IMO an uglier design"... ?

Well, my "IMO" is completely different then, I would go for a thick but symmetrical bezel rather than a very thick one sided one as I find the former much more acceptable, plus we've got used to see that on notebooks from many brands for years, so it's unlikely to be a shock for many people.

Here we're getting somewhere, I call it poor design, and I don't mind paying more for quality and design, that's what I did three years ago and I still have a flawless 15.4" ThinkPad with a perfectly centered display and no quality issues whatsoever.

However, if I have to paraphrase David Hill shortly again, it would have been possible for a good designer to overcome the problem within the budget without loosing the "sight" of the final design result.

4: a centered screen with good performance, which is what a properly designed notebook should have.

I don't find it normal that I have to choose between a centered screen and wireless performance. What would be the next ultimatum from Lenovo? Flexing keyboard or no keyboard at all?

And I didn't say that centered screens are beautiful, that's ridiculous, they are just normal - you won't find people that hate them, but you will definitely find many that actually hate the off-centered ones.

And in general, I don't think that ThinkPads should be cheap mass market products, result of series of poor design decisions and cost-cutting compromises. So if you are a "cheaper the better" type of a guy, then you are talking to the wrong person. Perhaps, Lenovo should have offered a 100$ option for a centered screen as people suggested for non-flexing keyboards before if they really couldn't do it for the same price, and if you want to make it even more ridiculous.

Btw, "AFAIK" and "IMO" don't constitute arguments.

Awesome logic. If someone fails to do something, then it's perfectly acceptable for everyone else to fail as well, so we should just watch and applause people's incompetence and poor decisions. Frankly, I'm not sure if it's even worth talking to you anymore.

So are we talking about poor/cheap/easy design again? If they really couldn't implement the DisplayPort properly, they shouldn't have done it at all and could have gone with HDMI instead, as they did with the SL series.

You missed the point in your desperate attempts to blindly advocate Lenovo.

DisplayPort is supposed to carry both audio and video, moreover Lenovo did advertise that it does on their site and documents. To make it even worse, after the whole that fiasco and many disappointed customers, Lenovo haven't even removed all of their false advertising and is still on their site:

Not only that but they lied to their customers that it's a universal issue as I already said, but you ignored that part of my post, of course.

First, Lenovo shouldn't have lied that DisplayPort carried audio. Second, Lenovo should have informed people that their DisplayPort implementation isn't fully functional as people have no way to know that and they are buying mobile workstation for DDC work. Third, Lenovo shoudn't have lied about or even commented on other companies and their products.

Congratulations sefk, you are advocating a company that is cheating and lying to their consumers, which I had already told you anyway. If that isn't brand fanaticism, I don't know what is.

It works with a simple DisplayPort-to-HDMI dongle as I already said, don't make me bring the whole Dell section here with your intentionally misleading posts, since you seem to have known about Dell, but you just tried to see if your Apple BS would fly, it didn't.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=4637198#post4637198

I have seen your posts here and on lenovoblogs before, and I have never seen you to consider the situation in a different way. It's all the same every time, you are always trying to advocate Lenovo, no matter what. The worst thing is that you almost always set strawman arguments, so maybe you have to take your own advice this time.

 

yea, a rather ironic and historically repeated fact, is that blind fanatics do more harm than good for the brand they are surposedly rooting for in the end. its like north american auto manufacturers. you have a few voices out there blindly supporting the auto products here while level headed and just people have been saying all along that the products are of low quality compared to japanese/german autos. nobody listens of course and then before you know it all of the companies had to go chapter 11. you can trick yourself, but you cant trick the mass population who will figure the flaws by themselves even if you try to sweep the problems under a rug. yes, lets keep up the blissful ignorance.

 

Maybe i am in the minority here. At first time i also felt awkward to see this off centered screen. But after few month using R400, i kinda get used to it and eventually did not bother it.

Now i think it kinda give some aesthetic and sparkle to the overall boxy design. It gives a techie look... well maybe that just me...

 

This thread has gotten out of hand completely. Yes it is a less than ideal design and yes it can be designed such that the screen is centered. However, the questions are, does it matter? and if so, how many people will buy some other notebook as a result? Well as seen in this thread the off-centered screen does bother some people. However, it is likely that the majority of users are not bothered by this, else there would be a huge drop in sales and a huge uproar. Lenovo can't satisfy everyone. Also, moving the screen a few millimetres to the left is not going to significantly improve ergonomics or productivity, so it is purely aesthetic. Aesthetics is not exactly one of Lenovo's top priorities.

Again, yes it is not the best design and yes Lenovo's engineers/designers can come up with a way to center the screen. Why haven't they? Who knows. But, it really comes down to "does it matter to most people?" and if it does, "are you willing to let go of a few millimetres of aesthetics for performance/functionality?", and finally if not, you should probably be looking at other notebooks.

 

I really don't see how a screen that's slightly off center makes any difference. I look at what the computer is displaying, not the screen itself. I sometimes feel like some of the complaints here are so trivial. Then again, happy users don't have issues to post about.

 

Isn't it nice how "probably not a big deal" turns into endlessly scrolling rebuttals that accomplish nothing considering that a manned mission to Mars is more likely in our lifetimes than changing the opinion of another forum member?

I have a T500. The off-centered screen bothered me at first in pictures. It no longer bothered me by the time I bought it. Lenovo eventually got the hint that their product wasn't up to the standard set by the T60 and released the T400s, which is arguably their best T-series design to date.

 

When Lenovo's closest competitors can all implement centred screens and non-protruding 6-cell batteries on 14 inch business notebooks with better screens, you know that Lenovo's engineers obviously haven't been trying as hard. They've spent too much time obsessing over "fixing" the keyboard (which eventually made it worse). Seriously, the T400, besides the switchable graphics and relatively cheap price, is decent, but not as superior as people here like to make it out to be.