X Slate

Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet leaks out with Honeycomb, IPS screen, optional stylus and keyboard folio? -- Engadget

• IPS
• stylus
• keyboard

I'm thrilled!

 

Also have the X1 coming out (?) but with one issue for many. Battery is not User replaceable by my read and that isn't good

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 confirmed, faster-charging integrated battery detailed -- Engadget

 

They are both solar powered.

 

no trackpoint?   looks fake.

 

back of it looks cool.

those buttons on the front look odd though.

 

If this photo is really dated to 2009, we should expect a bit different design by now. ;-) Anyway, if Lenovo will make a reasonable slate, I will reconsider buying a HTC Flyer for this purpose. ThinkPad being my primary love, and HTC being the manufacturer of my most reliable mobile devices, apart from notebooks.

 

I have played with the flyer. Im also a massive HTC fan but the flyer just feels like a big phone with the way sense is layered into it. I walked away really wanting to like it but the more I thought about it and the more I played with other tabs; the flyer just kinda annoyed me. The sense ui kinda just got in the way. Unlike M$ if you dont like all the extra gui crap you can turn most of it off. With flyer i didnt see a way to do that. of corseby the time the flyer does come to the market it may look totally different. shrug.


There are so many tabs coming out this year I think you will find one that suits you way better than the flyer. so just fyi. Also HP is coming out with another win7 tab so they tell us under neither their webOS so that's one I'm looking for.

ym

 

thinkpad version of Ipad, lol

 

no, its a thinkpad tablet. not a thinkpad version of the ipad.

apple was not the first to market with a tablet.

 

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IBM created some great products but they did not market them properly and they lived a short life.

Apple reinvents the wheel and does a great marketing job, they ended up cornering the market and takes the credit of others.

 

you're completely forgetting to factor in timing.   timing is everything.

also, i don't want to see this spiral into another apple vs. lenovo discussion.   we've had enough of those lately.

 

This new lenovo tablet should not be in the Thinkpad line because it is not even Windows 7. It is just another Android tablet, it should be in lenovo's phone line.

 

yes timing is important too....... i just lament that Lenovo has been so slow with its own tablet laptops, U1 still hasn't been released yet. Would be great if the X slate gets launched at iPad's price range.

 

agreed on all points.   with the tablet market being so flooded though, i would rather see a polished product than a rushed one.

but, this discussion is purely academic since a thinkpad slate tablet has neither been confirmed nor denied officially.   some of the rumors have been rather entertaining though.

 

" We won't do a tablet OS until its distinctive" - said Mr. Highfield from Microsoft.
I think guys in Lenovo have been searching for a 'killer application' for its tablet too but eventually decided to start offering tablets together with other Android players.
The leaked This is my next slide seems to testify to this scenario.

Ditto!

 

If this think has a trackpoint in "laptop mode" and is easy to carry with the keyboard like and ipad + keyboard I think Id get one. Granted I dont have a use for a tablet right now, but just to buy into the tech to hopefully help ensure other models in the future would be worth it.

 

I've seen a lot of comments about the possibility of a Wacom pen or other digitizer (other than N-Trig). Anybody have any information on this? If they really made this and it had a Wacom pen, this would be one of the best tablets on the market.

Bronsky

 

Heck just the ability to use it in "laptop mode" makes it better then all other tablets.

 

I almost never use my slate with a keyboard. If you're going to tote a kb around, you might as well get a 'vert tablet like the X220T. Plus, there are already a few tablets that have a notebook base like the Acer and Asus tablets.

Bronsky

 

I don't think Android tablets stand a chance against Windows8 ARM Tablets, in my humble opinion.

 

As others have said problem with Windows 8 arm tablets would be the lack of apps considering Windows world is tied to x86. Android and iOS would right off the bat have better apps and app support vs Arm based Win8 tablets.

I personally was thinking about going with something like the X220t route, but if this has Wacom or the like pen support I may go with the next version with quad core tegra 3 or something cpu.

 

Well for me I would have the slate for basic tasks like email, web surfing, games, ssh, etc where I didnt want to pull out a workstation laptop. For the more serious tasks I would pull out a w520 or something to the likes of that.

But for now I have an x200s that works out for both and I can, slowly, run 3 VMs and a host OS. For now...

Im interested to see the functions of this OS. If it can compile and run cygwin bash shells your comment would very well be true for me. Oh and it must have instant on and get android like battery life.

While I prefer android, I think it would come down to the capabilities of windows 8 tablet OS. I would hate to use a watered down full OS on cell phone /tablet hardware as it would be quite painful.

 

I think the bigger question could be, even if Windows 8 is quite capable, will current Windows developers recompile their software for an ARM based windows os, and/or will the OS be compelling enough to lure current mobile developers to this.

 

A prospectively tight integration with the other Microsoft franchises (Windows 7/8 and Xbox), and availability of the already quite capable hand-written OCR should help.

PS
But this is off-topic!
Thanks to the dedicated keyboard, we can still talk about the 'X Slate' here, on the laptop forum, I hope?

 

I cannot comment on mobile windows support as I dumped WM 6.1 in 2009. Im interested, but more so in an andorid honeycome thinkpad.

I just hope that the keyboard isnt chicklet and comes with a trackpoint option.

Its not off topic we are debating the honeycomb on the slate and its capabilities vs windows 8 tablet.

 

I think the deciding factor between iOS/Android/Windows 8 on tablets will be who ever gets to a fully functional (and compatible) office suite first. That is if tablets are racing to become the end all, be all device. If they aren't and they just stay entertainment devices, then Windows 8 ARM will have no niche to fill and will be DOA.

 

Thinkfree that was on my samsung epic 4g was an awesome andorid office suite. But I agree that a full office suite would make tablets a bit more competitive with netbooks.

 

I think Office Web Apps + handwriting OCR should be enough to start with...

 

That kind of thinking is exactly what killed the UMPCs right at the beginning. You can't just use desktop software on a tablet. Software needs to be written from the ground up for tablet input.

Windows hasn't been successful anywhere where they could not leverage their monopoly. Phones, tablets, servers, supercomputers, ... nothing. Windows 8 on arm isn't going to change that.

 

You were among the naysayers when MS introduced the Xbox console, weren't you?

 

Track point on a tablet ? Now that would be an eye catcher, plus lots of commets as well. I like that idea

 

I would like to think WM and pocketpc were successful, or how else would have that lead to Palm to use WM OS for their phone after years of making Palm OS device, or Sony eventually move from Palm OS and Symbian to WM(and now Android too). Microsoft can do an ARM based Windows(they did it with CE, and WM so this shouldn't be too hard); but, getting windows developers to make an ARM based version, and mobile developers to develop for the MS platform maybe the real challenge.

As for UMPC I dunno if the software was the reason they were killed, I think most of it had to do with price. Some of them cost $1300 and were kind of slow, and not really pocket friendly(like some people assumed they were), like the Sony UX line.