The Upcoming ThinkPad X230, X230i, T430, T430i, T530, T530i and W530?

so would these new higher res screens make a return to 16:10 on certain notebooks any more likely?

 

We seem to have this discussion in many threads. I'll just add my opinion again: to SOME people like me, it does make a big difference in usability.

Objectively you can say it's just 132 less vertical pixels. But I think for SOME people, there's a boiling frog argument here, that dropping to 768 vertical moves it below the point of convenience.

I loved my x200s but I really dislike the low resolution of the IPS screen on my x220 and can't wait to get rid of it.

 

No. 16:10 is a dying breed these days - just look at the Steam hardware survey.

 

probably, look at that intel chart though, the 2015 'MS' Notebook has a 3200x2000 prediction, which seems like an odd thing to add when the others are all 16:9, but still.

The image at the top of the article also states 2800x1800 for 13inch ultrabooks. 14:9? where is this coming from?

 

I think you are confusing resolution with what is being displayed.

Imagine the high resolution displays in the link I provided being available in the form factors we love. But also take into account the operating systems and the applications are written to address all of those new pixels.

Just because you have more pixels doesn't mean the text has to be tiny. The application has to be written to take this into account and provide the user a comfortable experience.

For example, look at a book via the Kindle app on an iPad 1. Then look at the remarkable difference on the iPad 3. The text is so much smoother and easier to read. No jaggies. But the text is the same size. So the Kindle app is using 2-3 times the pixels but providing the same size text.

And for pictures, the pixel density is much higher so you have the ability to provide better color, blacks, shading, etc.

I don't know about you, but I am looking forward to retina style displays on my hardware. Developers will write apps to take advantage of the hardware in OS X and Windows 8.

 

Well, it's quality over....eh, no quality, I guess. I've yet to see a ultraportable I'd buy instead of a Thinkpad.

 

I, for one, look forward to our new chicklet overlords. I'm sitting here looking at my X201 keyboard and all the crud that accumulates in it and I clean this damned thing religiously. Ever had to rescue a trackpoint nub from the inside of a vacuum cleaner?

As for thinness, every ultraportable I've ever had in my hands had too much flex in it and I worry about tossing it in a bag or backpack. Yeah, I like light but the X201 sturdiness is definitely a plus.

 

Be careful with vacuums. They will break your keys if it is too strong.

Regarding flex, look closely at the designs for the MacBook Air 13", ASUS UX31, and 2012 Samsung Series 9 13". They are all very rigid and I'm sure more are on the way.

 

I think we can both be right. Given a choice I'd take HD+, I just wouldn't be upset if I didn't because to me the difference is so small. Three lines doesn't for me and I think most users in my experience, tip the scale, though for some like yourself it's a deal breaker. I'd take the IPS quality over the 132 pixels. The place I want more real estate is the internet, but most browsers have the ability to make text smaller, which has the same effect as a higher resolution.

 

Haha, it was one of those "learning moments". Carpet vacs and laptops don't mix.

I should have said most ultraportables are deficient in rigidness and hence, I regard them of lesser quality than my Thinkpads. There are exceptions...if you're willing to pay the price.

Of course, most of the TPs I've owned have been built like brick (redacted)-houses.

 

That's only because of the lower cost of using 16:9 panels that can also be used in televisions.

If computer displays are going to be high resolution (which they should have become years ago), it won't make sense to use those same, more expensive panels in televisions. In that case, they can be any aspect ratio the majority of manufacturers want to put in their notebooks.

I'm hoping for 16:10, but I wouldn't be surprised if it stays 16:9, if only because it's become entrenched at this point (even though the original change was a cost-cutting measure).

 

On a side note, I wonder why they dropped the blue colour "Enter" key on chiclets.
Not mainstream enough?

 

Screen resolution is a highly subjective matter, as the heated arguments in the 16:9 display threads can attest to. Personally, I feel that the jump from HD to HD+ is far more important than, say, HD+ to FHD. At HD+. it's possible to effectively use two side-by-side windows, which doesn't work very well on HD screens. FHD is even better, but the lack of it on a <14" machine today wouldn't be a dealbreaker for me.

tl;dr: For me, it's not so much the minimal differences in vertical pixels that matters, it's the massive increase in horizontal space.

Probably the same reason the grey function key row was dropped from the T4x to T6x transition. Most power users touchtype and don't care too much about the helpful color contrast, while casual users felt that the color differences are tacky and break the unified black-box look. Personally, though, I do like the color coding--wish they'd bring back the grey 7th/6th rows.

 

Not really. That's a misconception caused by crappy software like windows and other desktop environments and even applications that make us believe scaling text, graphics, widgets or any other GUI element is impossible or too complicated.

Nobody ever said "oh noes, I cannot upgrade from an ipad2 to an ipad3 because I wouldn't be able to read the text any more". Because at least apple got their act together and fixed that. If high-res screens are one thing that we can get out of the ultrabook hype it was worth it.

 

That wasn't exactly my point; I meant that there's a lot of room for opinions where screen resolution is concerned. 16:9 versus 16:10 is one. The one I was addressing here is how "big" of a difference there was between HD and HD+ resolutions.

Fully agree that as OS-handling of higher-resolution screens improves as they become more commonplace, there'll basically be no downside to higher resolution screens.

 

They do their market research by asking average joes on the street, who prefer a mac clone.

 

More like students from university whom are already using Mac. But honestly the keyboard typing experience isn't that bad on the X1, it is just the layout of keys and missing 7th row that irks me the most.

But the Apple fanboys do like the new X1 keyboard 'a lot', so much so couple of my friends went out and bought a X1 and dumped their 13 inch MBP (but price also played a part in their migration, since Lenovo Australia were selling the X1 for like 780 dollars here in Australia during discounts).

Personally, if you are heavily invested in the ThinkPad over the years, it is slightly hard to switch over to the X1 keyboard style. I constantly mistype stuffs when i move between X220 and X1 keyboards, but you get use to the X1 after couple of days. If you are a Macbook user then you have no problem getting use to the ThinkPad.

From what i am seeing, the new ThinkPads are built to lure over the Apple MBP and MBA users by offering them a familiar user experience through the keyboards. But it will sure make lot of traditional ThinkPad user jump off the cliffs.

When i get angry at my X1's keyboard i just use this keyboard instead.

http://shop.lenovo.com/us/itemdetails/55Y9003/460/60AC6A0372B14F5BA7B12F1FF88E33C7

 

Oh my god, what have they done...


HOW COULD THEY HAVE TAKEN OFF THE DELETE HOME PG UP/DN ROW!!!!!
They took off that row and kept the freaking stupid clickpad that everyone hates.........

....that corner block was the main reason why I wanted lenovo thinkpad keyboards........
ughhhhhhh

I dont know how people use page up / down without them being in the corner.... really sad

 

For Thinkpads they probably ask companies more than average joes.

 

I really hope Lenovo didn't move the entire ThinkPad line to the new keyboards. If they did, they just lumped themselves in the same class as everyone else so there's no reason not to look more closely at Dell, HP, ASUS, Samsung, Apple, etc.

 

^^^ This.

I've been making the practical compromise between an average screen and a great keyboard when selecting ThinkPads. Should the traditional ThinkPad keyboard disappear...

 

The clickpad stays because Lenovo is unable to reclaim the space previously used by the 7th keyboard row -- that vertical space is still used by the volume, mute, ThinkVantage, and power buttons.

 

Im really getting tired of the endless complaints about the keyboards... does anyone have any more info besides the issue of thinklight availability or if the keyboards are going to change?

thanks

 

Uggh. Then just also put our 7th row there. The new layout offers zero advantages compared to the old layout.

 

This thread has been all over the place, like most speculative threads. I would just change the channel or ignore it.

 

unsubscribed

sometimes this forum is worse than the sony, and this is quite a feat, you guys might be on track to go for the crown on the aw forums.

 

People are very conservative and resistant to change... but it's a computer at the end of the day.

 

I'd like to think this is their way of giving us a way of backing out of the change by installing an older keyboard.

 

A few more pieces of info (but only old pics) here:
Thinkpad Shop - Die neuen Lenovo ThinkPad Modelle sind da!

Seems the nvidia core for the W530 is indeed Kepler..

 

It is a definite downgrade. Even if the newer keyboard has a superior typing feel, many of the useful auxiliary buttons are now gone. The Back and Forward buttons are extremely useful for navigation, and I use the Menu button all the time. The neighboring of Home/End/PgUp/PgDn keys as one group was also extremely useful. The Print Screen button on the other hand, is almost useless to me (since OneNote screen capture is great). The grouping of the function buttons in four was also useful.

A disappointing cost-cutting and aesthetic move on the part of Lenovo. I will keep my T400 for as long as I can, or limit myself to upgrading to the *20 series.

 

interestingly, T430s with NVIDIA N13M-NS 1GB Optimus, what is that card..

 

Most likely the Intel HD 4000 NVIDIA Quadro NVS 5200M combination.

 

Would the NVIDIA be 1GB?

 

Tech Specs

 

Those numbers do not really talk to me The table doesn't really tell much regarding performance.

How much better this would be than the currently used NVS 4200M?

 

Ah, this source says the DisplayPort is being replaced with mini-DisplayPort, which would be a welcome change, rather than with HDMI, which is what prior sites listed. I hope that's accurate...

 

They're really moving their main T-line to using chiclet keyboards? I don't see how that's a good idea at all. Maybe to variants but not the main business line where a traditional keyboard is preferred.

 

Suffice it to say it's essentially a slower Quadro 1000M (the low-end W520 card), with roughly the same power consumption. I'd guess it would be about, er... 10-15% slower. It may rival AMD's A6-3650 in graphics performance; I don't know how much that memory bandwidth is going to handicap the card.

Well, join the club; most of the posts since page 1 have been about this.

 

The only gripe I have with the chiclet keyboards is the replacement of the Page Back and Page Forward buttons with Page Up and Page Down (sorry to tread on some peoples' toes). Personally I never use Page Up/Down since I don't ever need to use it for what I do, but the Back/Forward buttons are something I use all the time.

 

There is nothing about the GPU architeture or size of manufactoring process. Do you think it's still 45nm and Fermi cores? Or new Kepler core? Thanks

 

The core clocks have been reduced. Guessing it's still 40nm Fermi.

 

I hate this recycling and renaming. They make a GPU core and they slightly overclock it and than they sell under a new name. Rubbish.
Anyway I will upgrade when Haswell comes out. The Ivy bridge are just a bit stronger sandy bridge, its not worth it, and by that time there will be kepler quadro cards(Hopefully)

 

spec x230 ??????????????????????!! usb3.0*2 / ee3.0

Pretty much everything you need to know about the 230.

But there's no hinting at a higher res. screen.

Though it does say HD-premium, which, unless I'm mistaken, also applies to the 220 w/ ips.

Glad to see the backlit keys option.

 

Wow really? Ivy Bridge supports USB 3.0 and you only get two ports with it? These parts I do like:

• Cooler & Quieter Thermal Design with Dual Vents
• Improved noise keyboard noise suppression
• Dolby Advanced Audio 2.0
• New 6th-Row Precision Keyboard with Backlit Option

Now all it needs is the Core i7-3612QM as an option...

 

We lose the Thinklight as well. I don't use backlit since I can touch type, the Thinklight is useful for illuminating much more than the keyboard. Sad to see it go, though it's probably a better laptop for normal users that want good keyboard illumination. Oh well.

2 USB3 is decent for a laptop with 3 ports. It be nice if they were all USB3 though. I'm guessing they are keeping the Sleep and Charge USB as USB 2 for an unknown but probably legitimate reason.

I'm somewhat interested in what they did for a cooler and quieter design with practically the same chassis.

 

I bet most people here can touch type, but maybe not reach for the perfect Fn+X key combo for any given function. Fn+F4 is easy enough, and so is Fn+PgUp, and Fn+Home/End, but for the less common ones a keyboard backlight is very useful. Whether the layout tradeoff is worth it is a different story.

For my desktop I have an unlabeled Das Keyboard, and I usually preferred a backlit keyboard on laptops until I got my X220. I hope I get a chance to try the [XT]?30 to see if it's the best of both worlds or not.

 

The grouping makes finding F# keys easy. Which they removed.

Though I personally like their choice to move backlight to Fn+Space though. Fn+PgUp was always pretty awkward for me.

 

Fn+PgUp I think was designed from day one for the ease of hitting the keys at the edges of the keyboard to get the light on. At least that is one of the explanations behind the swapped Fn/Ctrl in thinkpad lore...

Anything + space is better for a hotkey though. I use ctrl+space to launch a terminal and ctrl+win+space for a superuser terminal. Anyone can be half asleep (or worse) and reliably hit that combo.

 

Thunderbolt support at a later date? Intel officially launches Ivy Bridge CPUs Really Intel? What does that mean? No thunderbolt ports in early IB models? That was the main reason I was considering an IB notebook, other than HD4000 graphics.

 

The nVidia NVS 5200m is the same card as the GT525M with lower clockspeeds.. I hope they don't go 64bit bus again.. I see the 5400M is the same card just with a 128Bit bus. You will get slighter better performance out of this config and I can't see more heat being a problem since it's the same exact card with the same exact power requirements. I hope they go this route, but then again my T420's 4200M is a little bit more powerful then the IntelHD 3000 in my 2720QM. Some people say it's not worth the cost to get the nVidia card but you are not really paying for the gaming performance per-say. although I get 60FPS all day in COD4 while only getting 15-20 on the Intel HD card at full res so there is a difference.

the NVS 5200M is about twice as powerful as the 4200M. Spec wise.. who knows what lenovo will do to it because I predict the cooling system to stay the same (inthe T420 and T520) since the CPU will be more powerful yet use less power.. we will see. I am mostly interested in the keyboard too but a close second is the GPU. The screen is perfect for my needs and it doesn't bother me that much.

I bought an E520 recently for a family member and the keyboard is probably what lenovo is planning is putting on the newer Thinkpads. Looking at this thread and reading the measurements and how the new keyboards look, it is probably what they are going to feel like.. and.. it's not that bad..