The Perfect Thinkpad: ideas for Lenovo ...

I thought it may be worthwhile to give Lenovo an idea about "the perfect Thinkpad". Of course we all have differernt requirements, but one wonders why manufacturers never get it completey right. Maybe somehow we can let them know. Options should be available across the board. I believe the R&D team of Lenovo would be capable of the following:

X200s
256 GB SDD or higher (for a "normal" price)
Low Voltage at 1.86 - 2.4 Ghz
Decent graphics card (Basic is fine for me)
Fit in an OPTICAL Drive (if they can get it in the X300/301 series, can't see why not)
Express Card Slot, Multimedia Card Reader
Battery 8 hours straight on 6 cell
Screen Choice (1280 x 800 or 1440 x 900, matt or gloss)
2 decent stereo speakers
An ultrabase that is much slimmer
The Ethernet & power connections on the back (like X300 series)
Weight no more than 3.2 Lbs
Webcam in the LED screens
I guess a touchpad for some
A mini power brick
A Linux OS for checking e-mail etc a la DELL
Maybe black & 2 different colours (for business I prefer black but maybe they would have more market appeal with a few more colours)
They got the keyboard sorted out, that is perfect, now some of the rest

Again if the people at Toshiba can put so much (including optical drive, webcam. LED, etc) in the frame of the SUPER light Portege R600, then Lenovo certainly has to be able to do the above. Any comments please on your dream machine. Maybe the result of it can give Lenovo a few ideas. I mean if they decide to offer all the above, at a decent price, there would be not much competition left & it would save us all HEAPS of time trying to fin the right machine, for it does not see to exist. Always compromises. J.

 

And keep or improve the battery life

 

It's always a balance between cost and features.

 

Because you can't get it right. Quality, performance, price...pick two. As ZaZ said you have to choose between features and pricing.

Anyone could potentially design the perfect laptop, but there are realistic manufacturing constraints .

 

An X301 with the 2.26GHZ SP9300 (or similar) with 6-hours of battery life (with the standard, non-protruding battery) and priced around $1500....that would be my ideal ThinkPad!

 

Agree it's between cost and features but in fact manufacturing cost across the board must be pretty similar. Look at Sony they get a lot of features in and yes they are more expensive, so is Toshiba probably. But I think at least a few of us would pay extra dollars for the machine that has it all, be it 12, 13,14,15 inch screen.

 

Don't forget ' SIZE' too. Add that to the list: Quality, performance, size, price.

You know how hard it would be to have all those things fit into a compact size? AND as the size of things DO shrink down (as history has shown), then usually the cost proportionally goes up, through the roof in many cases.

In 10 years, you will see a more perfect laptop than what is currently affordable to the average person today (as history has proven), since all the people buying the really expensive state-of-the-art laptops today are basically paying that premium for that equipment in order to lower our prices for the future, so we can buy that same stuff for a fraction of the cost, then. Meanwhile, there will always be the other group then, who will be paying the high premiums for the state-of-the-art stuff that is available at that time. This is how it works.

I always find it better myself (personal opinion), to pick a current model within your price range that has the basic 'chassis' that you desire (looking for a model which is 'modular' in nature), and then as you can afford it, you can do mods to it to bring the feature-set up to where you ultimately want it to be. For example, I bought my T61p factory refurbished (great price, great quality, factory warranty), not too loaded necessarily, but then later added in a Verizon WWAN card and WWAN antenna kit as budget permitted, added an 'N' wireless card later, added another 2GB RAM later. Then I just upgraded to the SSD drive the other day. A couple weeks ago, I put on the glossy high-contrast screen, etc. Now, it feels more like the one I had wanted or wished for. AND, there is a feeling of special personality in my machine, because I did all the work to it. I saw all its guts laying apart all over the bench when I had it down to the frame. It's like building a hot rod. You get that cool feeling like you did all the work on it so you know all the nuts and bolts of it (ok, so many people wont get what I mean here, but I like that part too - I used to be a mechanic and a dragstrip hot rodder/ performance tuner). My biggest problem in life has been that usually everything I buy is never how I want it as it is sold from the store, so I am always forced to engineer my own upgrades or piece my own readily available parts together to get things to how I want them to be. So next, I just want to figure out how to somehow get a camera installed into the lid. If T61 doesn't have the factory option for one, I may just try to find some other model laptop that has one of perfect dimension to fit under my bezel somewhere, and I might be able to run the wires for it down the canal where the wireless USB antenna wire normally routes, and cut a hole in the bezel, fabricate a mount bracket, etc. Hey, it might be doable?

So for now, if I want a nice, cheap, state-of-the-art, normal-size model with all the bells and whistles on it laptop, I may have to wait 10 years, or just do my best to make all those features into the closest possible, already existing candidate

 

That is true ... build it up ... just a quick query any idea what woukd be cheaper? Putting a 128 SSD into an X200s (no clue on price) or are there 128 SD express cards ? The storage ones, don't know what there exact name is. Agree on it has to have the basics but the lighter higher end models seem to have or an express card slot or an optical drive but no way to upgrade the slots as it were.

 

I suppose you don't have any clue as to how much a 256GB SSD cost, that's why you can say that. Lenovo can't produce their own SSD's, that's why they buy them from somewhere else and put them into Thinkpads. The price of SSD's in Thinkpad, thus, is whatever the SSD manufacturer commands.
Also, I assume you don't know too much about engineering. No matter what the application is, engineers have to do trade-offs. You can't get it all.

 

Yes, I know my T61p has an Express Card 34/54 slot on it. If never looked into what's available for using there that I would like to add on.

 

can you upgrade the warranty for notebooks purchased at the lenovo outlet?

 

A 128GB SSD will run between $300 for a MLC drive with the stutter prone J-Micron controller, or upwards of $700 for a really good one.

To my knowledge, there are NO 128GB SDHC cards at present. 32GB is the current cap and they tend to cost between $100 and $200.

Verbatim recently announced some decent Express Card SSDs (PCI-Express Attached MLC) that promise 120MB/s+ reads and 30MB/s writes. Suggested pricing is $100 for 16GB, $150 for 32GB, and $300 for 64GB. However, I have not seen any of these on the market as of yet. This would be a good drive for boosting storage capacity, but I don't think it's bootable (I asked quite a few questions on this subject, as I was looking at a 16GB SLC ExpressCard SSD).



As far as the perfect ThinkPad, I think one of the x200 series is currently the closest available.

The x200s has great size, weight, and battery life, a high resolution screen, and a reasonably powerful processor. Unfortunately it does lack a webcam, stereo speakers, and WWAN.

The x200 is only slightly larger/heavier, has a powerful process, and includes a webcam/WWAN. Unfortunately, the speaker and display leave a lot to be desired.

The x200T has a reasonbably powerful processor, webcam, dual array microphone, webcam, stereo speakers WWAN, and a gorgeous AFFS+ display. Unfortunately, it is heaver and more expensive than the alternatives.

The lack of an optical drive doesn't bother me at all. I only needed it the first week to make recovery DVDs and install a few applications. Beyond that, I feel that optical storage is largely unnessary due to the capacity/price of NAND flash and hard drives.


My ideal candidate for a conventional notebook.

x200s Base for lightweight and good battery life.
WXGA AFFS+ LED display from the x200 Tablet (w/o digitizer).
Stereo speakers and microphone from the x200 Tablet.
Webcam
WWAN
NVidia 9400M (integrated, but about as fast as the Radeon 3470 in the T400)
If possible a 1.8" bay for an SSD AND a 2.5" bay for a conventional HDD.

Maintain the looks, and keep the touchpad and optical drive away. I don't want them wasting space on a portable ThinkPad.

 

Wrong thread? Give them a call regarding adding a warranty.

 

I think your expectations are a little unrealistic. Most of your ideas are simply not feasible at this time.

Lenovo doesn't make SSDs (as pointed out above), they do not control the price.
Lenovo doesn't make CPUs, so you're not going to get a faster LV CPU.
Lenovo doesn't make LCDs, and I don't think any 12" screen has a resolution of 1440x900.
Lenovo's business line hasn't changed styles in... well forever. Doubt they will ever add more colours or change their style to have more "market appeal" since they don't cater to the general consumer.

They can probably put in an optical drive, but most travelers don't want or require one.
The slim power adapter is pretty small, I doubt you will be able to make it much smaller given that transformers in general have a lot of circuitry and produce a lot of heat.
I think the weight is already there at around 3lbs.

 

ahh the perfect thinkpad......

14" 1440x900 OLED display
carbon nanotube uber strong chassis
1 TB+ holodisk SSD
nuclear battery offering 12 years of permanent batterylife
low latency cellular broadband

n the list goes on.......

 

My perfect Thinkpad would be a X301 with SXGA+ LED screen + regular HDD at an affordable/reasonable prize. I really want a thin Thin kpad

 

I've only one complaint: Center the display. Human beings prefer symmetry. I'm still not sure if I should buy a T500 because of that.

Apart from that my only other wish would be a 15.4" WSXGA+ LED display (maybe IPS too) but they simply don't exist (yet?).

 

I mostly agree. Lenovo should take some steps to utilize higher-quality LED displays in more of their models, though.

And I believe the X200s does have the option of an LED 1440x900 display.

I'm glad Lenovo has not changed the style of the Thinkpad. In fact, I think they should actually bring back some things (such as the UltraNav striping).

The targeted market for the X200 has little use for a CD/DVD drive. I would not be very bothered without one - I'd prefer the (small) weight savings and room for other things, such as ports.

I would love a 15" WSXGA+ display. Unfortunately, I couldn't wait any longer, so CCFL was okay.

The uncentered display really isn't a big issue. In normal use, I would not even notice the uncentered-ness (even though I'm a very, very nit-picky person). The uneven bezels become more obvious when the display is off, though.

I would very much like to see Lenovo begin to work together with Boston Power, to produce some batteries with the new in-line technology - that would be a very good improvement.

 

I couldn’t agree more. Lenovo consumers already expect a higher level of quality—and for them to push a mediocre display is unbecoming. If they want to compete on price, let them make a lesser display an option, but they better open their eyes and remember to build notebooks their patrons actually want to buy (countless of us have cried out for this, but Lenovo is deaf here).

They publically announced they dropped the ball on this one.

 

Could it be possible to get a WSXGA+ display on a 14.1 widescreen?

 

Yeah, I think there was a poll on their design blog after the T61 series came out about the striping - users overwhelmingly wanted teh striping back, so Lenovo implemented it on their X-series this time around. But why not the T-series?

Possible? Probably. But no manufacturer I know of makes WSXGA+ 14" displays.

 

I just want lenovo put a SD card reader on X302..

that's it, then perfect!

 

Generally I like the base of the X200 Tablet. However it would be better if it could be reduced (especially the bulkier screen) down to the dimensions and weight of the X200s and integrate the battery better.

The most useful addition would be getting a 64GB (or larger) mini PCIe SSD in the box (instead of the Turbo Memory), so the "system disk" could be on SSD and still have the larger drive bay for media files.

 

Lenovo has done a great job with LED displays on their 13.3" and smaller models. The WXGA+ (1440x900) LED-backlit displays on the X200s and X301 are unique offerings (being 12.1" and 13.3", respectively). Those models are at the top of the ultra-portable class as a result.

But they've neglected the T-series and the W500. Dell has taken the lead among 14.1" and 15.4" displays, with the Latitude E6400 (14.1") and E6500 (15.4") having a standard WXGA LED and optional WXGA+ LED display. Those displays are also offered on the Precision M2400/M4400 and the M4400 also has the option of a 15.4" WUXGA (1920x1200) RGB LED.

At the moment, the only LED choices on a T400, T500 or W500 are the High-Nit T400 WXGA and the and WXGA on the T500. Hopefully there are more in the pipeline from Lenovo....

The US-market X200s has a standard LED-backlit 12.1" WXGA+ (1440x900). In most markets (Western Europe and Australia, for certain) the X200 and X200s have the same WXGA (1280x800) display.

 

The specs should also include a free magnifying glass.

That used to bother me somewhat, but I got over it before I bought my laptop. It was already present in the T61, and once I crossed that generation, there was no looking back. I never notice the screen positioning when actually using the laptop, and my personal stance has always been that I don't have the only T500 with the screen like that.

And I want it for $10. Zimbabwean.

 

I'm definitely for the hybrid storage idea. I spent quite a lot of effort trying to figure out if either a ExpressCard or mini PCIe SSD would work as a boot drive. Every answer I got implied that ThinkPads do not support booting from this kind of interface. As a result, I just went with a 64GB SLC SSD as my only drive and am trying to figure out how to make do with the space (it wouldn't be much of a problem if Vista didn't like 30GB+ just for itself ).


The main reason the x200 Tablet is heavy is because of screen thickness and the rotating hinge assembly. The base is actually quite light and compact. If a non-rotating display was used, I think the x200 Tablet could be converted to a <3.5lb (w/ 8 cell) 13.3" notebook.

That being said, I quite like the convertible nature of the tablet.

 

Wow, I didn't know the X200s had a WXGA+ screen! I wish hard drive manufacturers would focus more on making smaller drives. You could physically fit in 2x 1.8" drives into a 12" laptop - say one Samsung 64GB SLC and one (what's the biggest size...) 250GB hard drive... I think the problem with booting from other than a standard IDE/SATA port has to do with the ancient BIOS, too bad UEFI never picked up, I rather liked it.

Jon, try using Vlite for a clean and small install. I fit Vista Ultimate and all my programs in my 24GB partition.

 

Back to Zephir ... No I don't have much of a clue about engineering but explain to me why Toshiba gets an optical drive, SSD etc...all in an R600 package that weighs less than a KG? I am saying if they can do it then Lenovo can do it. Look at Samsung gets in the X360 another very light weight. a 13 inch screen as well, SSD, express card slot etc ... ok they did not get the optical drive in ... on SSD yes I know Lenovo has to buy them, but I may not have a clue about engineering as you put it, but I do have a clue on profit margins on computer products so my answer to you is YES they can do it and will not be cost prohibitive ... they will just have slightly less of a profit margin. So let me get this straight they can send men in outer space, but they cannot get an optical drive, an SSD, an express card slot, 3 USB, a DVI, etc in one computer ? Hang on let me look at SONY ... Gee they seem to get into a computer with 11 inch screen, or most of it. Yes I am being sarcastic cause I can see what other "engineers" can do ... so I don't think it is a big step to take

 

Apart from the above I fully agree with JonLumpkin's assessment. One does not need an optical drive but it's something a lot of people would want... Have a look at Toshiba R600: optical drive, SSD, WXGA with webcam (and it is thinner I think than even the WGXA+ Led screen on the the X200s). Express Card slot, SD card slot (handy for those of us who do have to send pictures quickly), in a 2.4 lbs package ... OK only one speaker but that is pretty amazing, and good batery life as well. I think Lenovo has to at least be able to match these specs in a similar machine. Yes true Lenovo is stronger, but I do have a Portege R205 that has fallen a couple of time, that has travelled 1,000,000 miles everywhere and still going, just too slow now, and I do prefer the Lenovo Keyboard. Am just saying to those on here who say I am dreaming that other manufacturers like Toshiba & Sony seem to be ahead of the game when it comes to fitting more in a light package. Other than that I concur with the conclusions of JonLumpkin. And the 256 SSD yes is a dream but by next year I am sure it will be a reality at an affordable price.
And also regarding the ultrabase for X200 I am sure than can be slimmed down.

 

Both the Portege and Vaios feel significantly more flimsy and flexy compared to Thinkpads. You really aren't going to find many Toshiba or Vaios still in use 10 years down the line, but Thinkpads keep on truckin'.

I mean just compare the lid of a thinkpad with a portege or vaio. Yes the Thinkpad has a bulky lid, but it is extremely stiff unlike the lids of a portege/vaio which bend like a piece of paper.

Basically what you're describing is what Lenovo tried to do with the X300.

 

The x300 came very close. If the optical drive were abandoned in favor of a second 1.8" drive bay, a 34mm ExpressCard slot, and a SDHC reader it would probably do the trick. I would also like to see larger batteries (the 6 cell on the x300 has a very low capacity compared to the 6 cell on the T400 and x200), a higher quality (e.g. AFFS+) display, and a docking connector. If you're going high end and trying to make a "halo product", you might as well go all the way right.

The lack of ExpressCard, SDHC, and the small battery (as well as the price at the time) is why I opted for the x200 over the x300.

 

I agree with the above ... abandon the optical drive or make it an easy in/out slot for a second HDD slot ...and a longer battery and an express card slot, SDHC but would still offer also 1280 x 800 resolution for those of us without hawk eyes ...

 

4:3, SXGA+, Flexview

 

Oh geez, let me see what the Sony TZ, TT and Toshiba R600 have in common. Oh that's right, they all have ULTRA LOW VOLTAGE PROCESSOR. Using an ultra low voltage processor means less heat output, thus they can manage to build a smaller chassis, thus cram the DVD drive in. Let's look at the X200 and X200s, one is normal voltage processor and one is low voltage processor (which benchmarks have shown that is as powerful as the normal voltage processor). Have you tried the Sony TZ? If you have you would know that it is very very hot if you use it for about half an hour. I can use my X200 for 8 hours and it doesn't even get warm. More spacious chassis means better heat management, and that's with a normal voltage. Once you go to ultra low voltage processor, you're also sacrificing on performance.
Again, it's not about how much you can cram into a notebook. Heat management, cost, portability, battery life, etc... are things that are at play when you design a notebook. You can't have it all.

Also, let's see where the optical drive is. Hmm, on the R600 and the Sony laptops it's on the right side. Let's see what's on the right side of Thinkpads. Oh, that's right, it's the harddrive. What's it's there for? It's for EASY HARDDRIVE UPGRADE! Do you have any idea on how difficult it is to upgrade the harddrive on the Sony TZ? You have to open the whole laptop to change the harddrive. I would take easy upgradability over an optical drive any day. That's why a Thinkpad is adequate for me. It may not be for you, so you should get an R600 or a Sony laptop if you love them so much.

 

zephir:

A little off topic,

how did you put a L7700 processor in your X61t, I thought the processor was soldered to the motherboard?

now if we could figure out a way to use mini-pcie SSD's in these notebooks, all will be solved

I have almost the exact same X61t as you (except the wireless card), I love how quiet and cool these notebooks are!

 

Well, I don't think anybody can unsolder the processor
I bought a new planar for it. Apparently it's a planar so new that Lenovo hasn't recorded the part number yet. It's a new revision of the board, so it's much cooler than my previous planar. Also, the battery life increases by about half an hour, so it is also more power efficient as well. The speed increase is appreciated as well, since it's a low voltage CPU.

 

Zephir. Point taken, but a lot of us are normal business users who do not really take their machine apart. I have no qualms with the chassis of the X200 or X200s quite the opposite. All I was alluding to is OK Lenovo has more space there to work with, so at least what Jonlumpkin proposed should be possible. I mean if you make it as thin as Macbook Air then of course you simply will run out of physical space for anything, but they still have a pretty fast processor in that machine. If you compare the Sony Vaio TT to the X200/X200s then the latter two are a size bigger in terms of chassis which allows more space for heat issues. Is there such a huge difference between a ULV of 1.4 Ghz (Toshiba) and the 1.86 LV in the X200s? I mean yes the full speed of X200 in a Sony chassis ...agreed, far too hot.

 

I've been thinking about "the normal business user". Isn't there one processor or one machine that a normal business user can get it without sucking in a bunch of engineering types? I don't care a thing about business, but I buy business machines because they don't have a lot of fringe decor about them. I've never played a game in my life. Performance is very important to me. The business types aren't. Can't we have a machine that are just for computer types and not have their basic design determined by business types? Their are enough computer types around now. The reason the I ask is that the two types has different interests and talent that don't go into making a good combined processor.
-Renee

 

Bring back the old logo and the red stripes for touchpoint buttons on T series!
Also make it do this:
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Any business type user will be well off with an ULV processor. Unless you use photoshop or CAD design software exclusively, you're not going to notice the bottle neck of the CPU. I can't use something like AutoCAD or Matlab for the TZ, but I can sure as hell surf the web, do simple document editing, and prepare spreadsheets. Too bad its heat management capability is close to zero. After about one hour or so, you have the feeling like it's about to melt.

 

perfectionseeker,
It's really not about being able to take your machine apart. It's about being able to do some simple upgrade to improve the performance of the machine. Two such upgrades are RAM and HDD upgrade. If you are not familiar with opening a laptop, then all the more reasons for these features to be there, so almost anyone can do these upgrades painlessly.
The ULV processor's TDP is 10W, while the LV processor is around 18W, I believe, so it's almost double the wattage. But you don't need the chassis of the NV processor, and that's why the X200s is lighter than the X200.

 

• The TDP of the Atom (e.g. N270 [IdeaPad S10]) is 2.5W
• The TDP of a ULV C2D (e.g. SU9300, SU9400 [x301]) is 10W
• The TDP of a LV C2D (e.g. SL9300, SL9400 [x200s]) is 17W
• The TDP of a MV C2D (e.g. P8400, P8600, P8700 [x200]) is 25W
• The TDP of a NV C2D (e.g. T9400, T9500, T9600 [T400, T500, W500]) is 35W
• The TDP of a Mobile Quad (e.g QX9300 [w700]) is 45W

As you can see there is a clear correlation between TDP and size. A small notebook (e.g. the x200s) would have trouble displacing the heat of a Medium Voltage CPU. This is especially true if you want to maintain the low heat/noise that is a hallmark of the ThinkPad series.

If you compare the x200 with the x200s and x200T, you will notice that the base of the x200 is marginally thicker, and the heatsink is MUCH larger. This is to handle the extra heat generated by P8600 CPU.

Tradeoffs between size, weight, and CPU/GPU performance must be made. As a result, a "Perfect ThinkPad" is effectively impossible to make.

 

My perfect ThinkPad:

X301 base (maybe a bit thicker) and form factor
Intel C2D P series (P8600 2.4Ghz for me)
nVidia 9300M graphics card

impossible of course

alternatively they could try a 13" version of the X200 with an optical drive?

 

Realistically, it would be nice to get a mobile workstation that was actually mobile (14 inch) and loaded like back in the good old days with the T40/41/42/43p:

I'd die for something like this:

W400 Mobile Workstation
14" 1680x1050 100% adobe gamut LED LCD
THIN LCD Bezel
Whatever quadcore intel cpu (if tdp allows)
512MB NVIDIA 770M or ATI FIREGL V5750 @ Full clock speed
Switchable Graphics
Rubberized finish all over the body and not just LCD (like x300 and 600x)
Red stripes back on the pointer buttons
Backlit (stiff as t4x) keyboards
Instead of the magnesium LCD rollcage, bring back the carbon composite chassis of the 600x for better wifi reception (also great because stuffs will just reveal the black composite underneath rather than the silver magnesium.
Chassis as stiff as a 600x or t40 and truly 1" thin.
DVI or displayport
9 Cell Battery (instead of the 7 for the new 14 inchers)
Good old red green and blue IBM logo
Asymmetrical with all the tapered creases and folds a la T40
Slim 90V power adapter

 

The x200s is what I believe to be the perfect laptop. Rugged, great performance, great form factor, great keyboard and great battery life. Now add more battery life to that sucker.

 

Taking it literally - imagine, how many people you've made now waiting for this sad moment... :wink: Thus, to save you life, I would vote for the aforementioned X302 with UltraBay SD/CF card readers and WSXGA+...