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I just went through the entire Lenovo line - every laptop/ultrabook they produce - and they offer only ONE machine that:

• * doesn't have a reflective screen
• * has a centered keyboard and trackpad
• * is a 15" screen or higher, 1920x1080

That machine is the W530, and it doesn't even have the new Haswell i7 processors. It's one generation behind and they're still asking $1300 for the base configuration.

The rest of the Lenovo models have characteristics which impair usability - basically, doesn't meet the bulleted list above. In addition, they add on screwed-up keyboards, like:

• * the X1 Carbon, which instead of a caps lock key has a home + end key and replaces the function keys with an LCD panel that changes based on the application you're in
• * other models which don't have an indicator light for caps lock - I'm getting lazy and don't feel like posting any more links

I saw another, new model that was ranked 2.5/5 stars for being unable to resume from sleep mode because Lenovo ships broken drivers that conflict with each other.

Lenovo has destroyed Thinkpad.

CAPTCHA: stable

I just went through the entire Lenovo line - every laptop/ultrabook they produce - and they offer only ONE machine that:

• * doesn't have a reflective screen
• * has a centered keyboard and trackpad
• * is a 15" screen or higher, 1920x1080

That machine is the W530, and it doesn't even have the new Haswell i7 processors. It's one generation behind and they're still asking $1300 for the base configuration.

The rest of the Lenovo models have characteristics which impair usability - basically, doesn't meet the bulleted list above. In addition, they add on screwed-up keyboards, like:

• * the X1 Carbon, which instead of a caps lock key has a home + end key and replaces the function keys with an LCD panel that changes based on the application you're in
• * other models which don't have an indicator light for caps lock - I'm getting lazy and don't feel like posting any more links

I saw another, new model that was ranked 2.5/5 stars for being unable to resume from sleep mode because Lenovo ships broken drivers that conflict with each other.

Lenovo has destroyed Thinkpad.

CAPTCHA: stable

Go to Lenovo. The W530 ThinkPad looks pretty decent, or one of their other laptops that come with Windows 7.
http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/w-series/w530/

There was an X60 and an X60s which were laptops and an X60 Tablet which was actually a convertible and not a "pure" tablet.

There was an X60 and an X60s which were laptops and an X60 Tablet which was actually a convertible and not a "pure" tablet.

There was an X60 and an X60s which were laptops and an X60 Tablet which was actually a convertible and not a "pure" tablet.

Well, there's also the T540p line with an option of the same display. Also, I assume you do include the screen weight for those desktops? Otherwise it's apples and oranges, obviously.

Thinkpads are not ultrabooks.

That doesn't seem to be true: here and here, there are several Thinkpad ultrabooks listed. Now, if you said that there were no Thinkpad ultrabooks prior to the "Chief River" set of Intel's specifications, that would be true.

Even that I had my problems with lenovo (Thinkpad Tablet bootloader locked). I think that the Thinkpad brand is still a good choice.

Something that I really like from the technical point of view is that they always (almost) publish the "Hardware Maintenance Guide", so you know exactly how to disassembly the machines to add more card, replace screen, change/update hdd and RAM.

For $160, you can buy a Lenovo 7" tablet that comes with a display, battery, storage, wifi, bluetooth, etc. You can then interface with anything you like via wifi/bluetooth or a usb breakout board.

http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/tablets/ideatab/a-series/a2107/

A laptop uses maybe 6 cells which retail on amazon for about $10. So a doubling of prices would at most cost a laptop owner another $10 which is almost in the noise.

Yes, you can get extremely dangerous, garbage 18650's for $2.72. Note that they actually only have one third of the advertised capacity, though. These things are probably rewrapped worn-out or reject cells.

An 18650 of any quality at all costs more like $10-$25 EACH. You start putting no-name crap 18650's in there and you are going to have enough laptop fires to cook every weenie in the world.

Lenovo already charges $149 for a complete 6 cell battery with case and electronics. Would you like to see that rise to $298? Be my guest if you want to replace yours with a dangerous piece of garbage. You certainly won't be bringing it into my house.

I had been fighting with Lenovo for the last 100 days to unlock the bootloader of the Thinkpad Tablet 1.

http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-slate-tablets/Thinkpad-Tablet-1-Errors-on-Recovery-Menu/td-p/1055573

The devices is prone to brick if the software (recovery menu) gets corrupted. And can not be recovered since Lenovo has the bootloader locked. The solution that Lenovo gives you is to replace the mainboard for a software error.

Lenovo Quality team told me that they can not release the bootloader keys because the Thinkpad Tablet has DRM software included.

Did. It's neither non-Intel, nor does it have thunderbolt. Maybe it is different for your region.

I see "Intel Core i5-3230M Processor (3M Cache, up to 3.20 GHz) on Mother Board" as description.

You can't buy a low-quality Acer netbook anymore, how sad.

How about you buy a real quality laptop instead?
For example, http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/x-series/

Which is one of the 1366x768 resolution monitors you said you didn't want: http://www.lenovo.com/products/us/monitor/lt1421/. Given that portable productivity is my main concern though, I thought I'd share my experience with it. I use this display with a maxed-out i5 Lenovo x230 which itself is only 1366x768 - something that nearly put me off buying this brilliant little machine in the first place; but in the end I knew I'd be docking into a proper monitor for any serious work.

I take the display with me if I'm away for more than a day or two and expect to get some serious work hours in somewhere. It sits quite comfortably in my backpack which goes everywhere with me, next to the notebook. Setup is quick and painless, after some custom udev scripts at least, and in Linux also don't expect to (easily) have shared clipboard/window-dragging across screens: I've only ever been able to make this DisplayLink stuff work as a separate X11 server (with some extra bits like x2x to make it nicer).

Surprisingly, it's not the extra real-estate that I've come to appreciate most: it's the ergonomics. I position the USB display above my notebook, resting on whatever I can find up and away from the keyboard so I can look straight forward at it rather than spending hours hunched down over a little 12" notebook screen where the keyboard is.

At my home office I dock into a decent workstation setup with 27" WQHD 2560x1440 IPS display, as an almost-30-year-old I'm regretting all the terrible posture/ergonomics I've inflicted on myself over the years - so I make sure I'm setup properly for any work which stretches for more than an hour or so.

I run the USB display at 16 bit colour depth to improve responsiveness over the USB 2.0 connection. This is just fine for coding/browsing/email/project-management stuff but any full-screen multimedia (movies/games/etc) is going to happen on your main laptop screen, unless you find a USB 3.0 DisplayLink screen perhaps. The LT1421 also isn't IPS, so it's not quite as nice to look at but to be honest any time I find myself setting it up for a decent coding session it's in an appropriately lit/quiet area anyway.

I own an BlackBerry Playbook ( I actually like it) and a Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 P3100. ( can't they come up with a shorter name? Sorry , I digress )

IMO, PlayBook has great software let down by the hardware. The Galaxy Tab has okay-ish software and bad hardware ( heats up after around an hour of use )

I really like the iPad but I decided to buy the Lenovo IdeaPad S110 ( http://support.lenovo.com/en_IN/downloads/detail.page?DocID=PD023081 )

I run windows 7 starter + Xubuntu dual boot-ed on it. For browsing and other light use I can use it for around 6 hours at a stretch. I rarely need to boot into windows ( mainly for office documents that won't open in LibreOffice ) and I'm not much of a gamer.

I use it to for browsing ( and I've n number of options available for browsing ) and the battery life is a 'decent' 6 hours or so.

Heck, I even do Ruby on Rails app development on it ( but that's not relevant to my argument here )

My point being if you choose a good machine ( the Dell Netbooks suck! ) you can pretty much do what an tablet computer can do, other than gaming.

The ThinkPad Helix may be the hardware answer.

Not the cheapest (by far) but if you would be buying a thin performance laptop and a tablet, this would be cheaper than buying those two devices, and it is both of those devices. With a Core i7. Sure, it isn't going to be the best performer for games, but it will smoke any of the Atom tablets out there, and Lenovo will have Win7 drivers for it if you just can't abide by Windows 8 (which I can't).

I'm told that if you use it with the keyboard attached, you'll get 10 hours of battery life. Waiting to get my hands on one to put that to the test.

Indeed, there's little reason for anyone to buy a new PC anymore. I'm typing this up on a Core Duo 1.8Ghz with 3GB RAM. It's maybe not as snappy as my primary machine with an i7 and 8GB and awesome switchable VGAs, but it's still sufficiently capable for web dev and graphic design and certainly any office tasks. But I have a hard time believing that Windows 8 as no role in this ... it's a massive dose of WTF is this shit?

Then enter the proliferation of tablets and smartphones, and suddenly a lot of people have no reason to own a fully-fledged computer. Why buy an over-featured device that will just add complication? If all you need is something for email and dicking around on FaceTwitstagramtrest, a tablet or smartphone is all you need. They are devices with interfaces designed for consumption with little interference of features. This is why mobile software mostly sucks and desktop software is so much more fully-featured. They are necessarily limited by their interfaces.

If PC makers expect to live through this transition, they need to refocus their efforts to users who actually use their computers as computers, not glorified TV sets. No more shiny-ass, overstyled, glitzy shit laptops would be a nice start, ie.: go back to making this tidy, understated and decidedly square, business-looking sort of thing, stop removing useful features, give us the form factor we actually want and stop making the godawful shiny, plasticky lumps of crippled shit that laptops are today.

Oh, and please, please, PLEASE give us our 7-row desktop-style keyboards back! How does anyone actually manage to get anything done on these bullshit 6-row monstrosities?

Oh, and can we have the red X button back to get the * out of this new * that we didn't want to be in in the first place?! and this forum wants fewer junk characters :) - it apparently doesn't realize how frustrated consumers are!

Indeed, there's little reason for anyone to buy a new PC anymore. I'm typing this up on a Core Duo 1.8Ghz with 3GB RAM. It's maybe not as snappy as my primary machine with an i7 and 8GB and awesome switchable VGAs, but it's still sufficiently capable for web dev and graphic design and certainly any office tasks. But I have a hard time believing that Windows 8 as no role in this ... it's a massive dose of WTF is this shit?

Then enter the proliferation of tablets and smartphones, and suddenly a lot of people have no reason to own a fully-fledged computer. Why buy an over-featured device that will just add complication? If all you need is something for email and dicking around on FaceTwitstagramtrest, a tablet or smartphone is all you need. They are devices with interfaces designed for consumption with little interference of features. This is why mobile software mostly sucks and desktop software is so much more fully-featured. They are necessarily limited by their interfaces.

If PC makers expect to live through this transition, they need to refocus their efforts to users who actually use their computers as computers, not glorified TV sets. No more shiny-ass, overstyled, glitzy shit laptops would be a nice start, ie.: go back to making this tidy, understated and decidedly square, business-looking sort of thing, stop removing useful features, give us the form factor we actually want and stop making the godawful shiny, plasticky lumps of crippled shit that laptops are today.

Oh, and please, please, PLEASE give us our 7-row desktop-style keyboards back! How does anyone actually manage to get anything done on these bullshit 6-row monstrosities?

Like we talked about before there is a latency problem inside computers too, because of buffer copying that comes up on big screen + lots of stuff + lots of frames.

This is irrelevant, and Wayland does not add anything for improvement of those things what X doesn't already do.

For example what OSX does on the retinas with building virtual screens and then compressing them to get 2x size for text and 1x size for images wouldn't be possible on X11, with today's hardware.

This is completely wrong.

I doubt there are hundreds of millions of people that don't care about touch, heck I doubt there are more than a few million.

On a desktop? How many people can touch their desktop screeens with any result other than leaving finger smudges and looking stupid? Touchscreen interfaces are for phones, tablets and kiosks, not desktops. Phones, tablets and kiosks also not known for being used to run large numbers of UI applications remotely.

But even if every desktop user didn't care about touch rather than about 1% or so... the touch market is 3x the size of the desktop/laptop market and while the desktop / laptop market is stagnant in users and shrinking in terms of sales the touch market is growing 16% per year globally.

X11 is intended to be used on desktops and workstations -- it does not matter what is or isn't in demand elsewhere. X11 also happens to work perfectly well on touch-based devices as long as it does not run remote applications. This is a perfectly acceptable limitation, and it still leaves X superior to all other display systems in all uses that they do and don't cover, but X does. Quite an accomplishment, really.

As for touch being to no other sources of input, no. The goal for the next generation must to be support the next generation of Windows hardware like: http://www.lenovo.com/products/us/laptop/ideapad/yoga/yoga-13/

If running multiple touch-based applications remotely while displaying on this device will be too laggy, I won't lose any sleep over that. I am sure, Windows users will enjoy Maya Touch Edition, Photoshop Smudge Studio and Altum Fat Fingers Edition, running locally on that device, but this is not what remote functionality in X is for.

We already had this. The RDP protocol has been developed. The intention is to unify it with KDE and Gnome.

No, there is no such effort, and it wouldn't work even if there was. There are remote desktop viewers and kludges that accelerate them -- worse than remote X is accelerated by already existing wrappers.

Wayland's approach is to do that.

Wayland's approach is to pretend that someone else's amateurish efforts that produced no code whatsoever, will provide a replacement for functionality that already exists in X, and implemented much better than those efforts can possibly produce.

If your willing to address the fact that X11 doesn't solve the high latency problem then something needs to be done to address high latency.

Most of remote X11 uses are over low-latancy local networks. There is no latency problem there. Over high-latancy links, there are already wrappers, and things can be easily improved further within X infrastructure, in a nice, compatible way. Touch interface is irrelevant because it's not used remotely.

Frequent round trips need to go. That has to happen. X11 cannot work without frequent round trips. This isn't a complex argument.

No.
It will be nice if applications had an option to avoid round trips by delegating UI elements response to the device closest to the user. However even if implemented, such things will never cover absolutely everything, so there must be a way to do straight remote UI by default, a

None of this affects remote GUI over low-latency LANs, as X11 already provides instant response over them, with less lag, better desktop windows management, and better use of accelerated graphics hardware than all alternatives

Like we talked about before there is a latency problem inside computers too, because of buffer copying that comes up on big screen + lots of stuff + lots of frames. For example what OSX does on the retinas with building virtual screens and then compressing them to get 2x size for text and 1x size for images wouldn't be possible on X11, with today's hardware.

I don't care about touch interfaces on a desktop, and neither do hundreds of millions of people. Touch interfaces are great for devices that have nothing but a shiny glass surface for the input device. Desktops don't have this limitation.

I doubt there are hundreds of millions of people that don't care about touch, heck I doubt there are more than a few million. First off there are only a few hundred million desktop / laptop users to begin with. 85-90% are on Windows and thus are in the process of being optimized for dual usage touch. Most of them own touch based devices, as a result of these touch based devices they have been decreasing the purchase rate for the last 4 years to buy more touch. The Apple crowd most certainly cares about touch, as evidenced by their high ownership levels of touch tablets, which is another huge chunk.

But even if every desktop user didn't care about touch rather than about 1% or so... the touch market is 3x the size of the desktop/laptop market and while the desktop / laptop market is stagnant in users and shrinking in terms of sales the touch market is growing 16% per year globally.

As for touch being to no other sources of input, no. The goal for the next generation must to be support the next generation of Windows hardware like: http://www.lenovo.com/products/us/laptop/ideapad/yoga/yoga-13/

Right now Wayland does absolutely nothing for remote access, Wayland developers merely argue that it will be possible in the future.

We already had this. The RDP protocol has been developed. The intention is to unify it with KDE and Gnome. Wayland's approach is to do that. Wayland itself is not taking this on because from Wayland's perspective RDP is going to look like local execution. Wayland is not trying to achieve a similar effect with a better result by using a different approach than X11.

___

If your willing to address the fact that X11 doesn't solve the high latency problem then something needs to be done to address high latency. High latency is the norm for remote execution. Whatever remote execution system exists needs to work well in high latency not low latency situations. Which means full on remote execution isn't possible but rather some sort of shared execution model. KDE and Gnome can accomplish that by forgoing the idea that it remote execution is going to be generic but rather allow it to be intelligent and GUI specific. Then you introduce sharing so the remote execution subsystem doesn't tie you to the desktop, that is you can use a Gnome app remotely KDE and visa versa. That is the solution.

Frequent round trips need to go. That has to happen. X11 cannot work without frequent round trips. This isn't a complex argument.

The first Apple cost $666.66. Inflation adjusted, that's $2717.44 according to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics.

The Commodore 64 cost $595 in 1982. Inflation adjusted, that's $1431.49.

Today's cost for a Lenovo M92 "Tiny" desktop is $749, which in 1980 dollars is $266.00.

Still think a computer can't be had for the same price scale?

Today's T series have pathetic screen resolution, and plastic roll cages :-(

I've got a T510, which had a Mg roll cage and a 1920x1080 screen (which was fine three years ago, and unfortunately still about the best you can hope for).

Compare how they announced the changes to the T410 and T510 series:

These are still black, rectangular ThinkPads that stand for traditional ThinkPad values like rock solid durability, long-term stability, and great keyboards. I consider this a good thing.

Hell, they changed they key layout in 2009, affecting three keys and wrote a blog post to defend it, actually citing some usage data. Nowadays they redesign the keyboard and indicate it was based on user feedback from people who were not thinkpad users.

I'm not sure why they've decided to turn the Thinkpads into expensive Ideapads, but.. Wait, that's probably why.

I suppose I'll just have to stretch my T510 as far as it will go.

Today's T series have pathetic screen resolution, and plastic roll cages :-(

I've got a T510, which had a Mg roll cage and a 1920x1080 screen (which was fine three years ago, and unfortunately still about the best you can hope for).

Compare how they announced the changes to the T410 and T510 series:

These are still black, rectangular ThinkPads that stand for traditional ThinkPad values like rock solid durability, long-term stability, and great keyboards. I consider this a good thing.

Hell, they changed they key layout in 2009, affecting three keys and wrote a blog post to defend it, actually citing some usage data. Nowadays they redesign the keyboard and indicate it was based on user feedback from people who were not thinkpad users.

I'm not sure why they've decided to turn the Thinkpads into expensive Ideapads, but.. Wait, that's probably why.

I suppose I'll just have to stretch my T510 as far as it will go.

Just bought one of these with a view to making it our standard laptop deployment

Thinkpad Edge 530

Has a decent trackpad, and a trackpoint. Also a matte screen, nice form factor, pretty cheaply made but no worse than the equivalents from other manufacturers. Came with Windows 8, UEFI and secureboot enabled, no COA, license embedded in the firmware. But I gather that's the standard way of doing things now. It's been downgraded to Windows 7 Pro (legitimately) with only a small amount of frustration.

I linked to an older model. The current Lenovo ultra is 1600x900.

http://shop.lenovo.com/us/laptops/thinkpad/x-series/x1ultrabook

I have a Lenovo Thinkpad T500 brick that I made this way three months ago. I was running into a few weird Windows problems--everything was fine on Linux--and "upgrade the BIOS" was a stock troubleshooting suggestion. After a decade of happy Thinkpad ownership I didn't think this was risky. On the first reboot the update did something to fry the TPM chip. It worked fine before, never again afterward. Boots hung for about 10 minutes as the BIOS tried to talk to it, I stopped that only by disabling it there. And then the next week the computer stopped POST altogether. The laptop had been running fine for 3 years at that point. I've seen a few similar reports at the Lenovo forums; it's not just me. The only people who resolved this were still under warranty, the rest of us haven't considered it cost effective to pay for a fix.

I tried to jump two major point releases at once here, from 1.20 to 3.24. My guess is that QA wasn't done on this much of a jump at once. Maybe 1.X->2.X->3.X or some other two step sequence would have worked. The Thinkpads have been disappointing is several ways recently, so I can't really say this surprised me.

First off, FUCK BUYING OFF THE SHELF SYSTEMS! All these brick and mortars are going to do is sell you a craptastic system at an inflated price. And of COURSE all they'll sell you is Windows 8.

Dell

HP

Lenovo

Toshiba

Samsung

Sony

Sager You can still order their products with Win7. The configuration app gives you the option.

MSI MSI laptops still come with Win7. There's a push for Win8, but they come with Win7 by default.

Acer still sells Win7 laptops (just no way on the web to filter for them, so I can't provide a definitive link).

That should be enough to get you started.

ThinkPad T430 is available with 1600x900.

Get a Thinkpad. I just got a W530 with a 1920x1080 screen, one of the few you can find outside Apple. It has great Linux support, even down to the silly fingerprint reader. I can easily get 7 hours or so on the battery with the recommended tweaks. There's a whole wiki just for Thinkpad stuff.

It ships with Windows 7, but you never have to boot into Windows. You can blow away the whole drive, "recovery" and "boot" partitions, and never look back. It has a conventional BIOS in addition to UEFI (disabled by default; leave it that way), so you shouldn't have any issues there.

It's a tank, it's not terribly sexy like an ultrabook, but it's great if you want a desktop-fast Linux-friendly workstation laptop.

The big PC maker's online storefronts have a consumer and business section. Your milage may vary but the business section of say, Dell or Lenovo, tilts towards good build quality, OS flexibility, and less crapware. Finding a Win7 machine is no problem at all.

http://shop.lenovo.com/us/laptops/thinkpad/x-series/x230

Try the install disks here, http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/downloads/detail.page?DocID=DS002748. They say they're for Thinkpads but work on most newer hardware. IIRC they're self-extracting zip files.
Here is a site with lots of links, some don't exist anymore but it'll give you a start for googling. http://web.archive.org/web/20060926004818/www.warpupdates.mynetcologne.de/english/site_contents.html

Let's see... chiclet keyboard, move to 6-row keyboard layout (no more grouped F-keys, no Del/Home/End/PgUp/PgDn grouping), and this abomination (coming soon!):

http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/ThinkPad-T431s-User-Guide-amp-Pictures/m-p/993279/highlight/true#M73300

Non-removable battery, trackpoint buttons nixed (they're now integrated in the top of the trackpad), an even bigger trackpad (aka space-waster)...

Two more generations and we'll be looking at black MacBook clones.

Ummm, it's an ultrabook. How many ultrabooks have removable batteries? As for the bigger trackpad, well, they could have used a smaller screen, which would have allowed a smaller case or used this screen with a lot of plastic around the trackpad instead. I do agree, though, I don't like trackpad buttons at the top of the trackpad instead of the bottom (where my thumb can hit them). However, if using the trackpoint, having them at the top of the trackpad works out pretty well.

Goddamnit, I feel like an idiot posting this 10 times, but everyone keeps saying Thinkpads are fine... they're not:

http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/ThinkPad-T431s-User-Guide-amp-Pictures/m-p/993279/highlight/true#M73300

I for one am freakin terrified (I love my Thinkpads)...

Try a T530, with the 6-row tictac keyboard... and then look here:

http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/ThinkPad-T431s-User-Guide-amp-Pictures/m-p/993279/highlight/true#M73300

THAT is where Lenovo is taking Thinkpads.

As a fellow T520i user (btw, swap out the display for the 1080p one... it's AWESOME!), let me be the first to say: We're fucked!

Let's see... chiclet keyboard, move to 6-row keyboard layout (no more grouped F-keys, no Del/Home/End/PgUp/PgDn grouping), and this abomination (coming soon!):

http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/ThinkPad-T431s-User-Guide-amp-Pictures/m-p/993279/highlight/true#M73300

Non-removable battery, trackpoint buttons nixed (they're now integrated in the top of the trackpad), an even bigger trackpad (aka space-waster)...

Two more generations and we'll be looking at black MacBook clones.

You must not have heard the latest news... Lenovo is nixing the trackpoint buttons in favor of a bigger touchpad (seriously!):

http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/ThinkPad-T431s-User-Guide-amp-Pictures/m-p/993279/highlight/true#M73300

I'm typing this from a (freakin awesome!) Thinkpad right now, but if these changes are implemented into the main T/X/W series lines, I'm gonna be typing from a MacBook Pro pretty soon...

Couldn't get it to boot...unfortunately I'm one of those charlatans that made the fatal mistake of buying a computer with UEFI and no way to turn secure boot off (HP p6-2142), I can't get it to boot anything other than Windows 7, Ubuntu or Fedora. And I was hoping to use FreeBSD...

:-( Secure boot is a nightmare. On top of some UEFI bioses not having the option to disable it, another option is required to enable "legacy boot" mode; where "legacy" in this case means "anything other than Windows 8". Some bioses allow disabling Secure Boot, yet still don't have a "legacy boot" option. :-/

What I'm really dissappointed by is that some manufacturers (Lenovo, for one) don't seem to include anything about UEFI bios settings in their documentation for laptops they sell. I recently had to do an install on a Lenovo P500, and on this box getting into the UEFI bios requires pressing a separate tiny button on the side of the laptop while the laptop is off. See the text on Page 20 and the diagram on Page 5 of the following document (which doesn't ship with the laptop):

      http://download.lenovo.com/consumer/mobiles_pub/ideapad_z500p500_ug_v1.0_july_2012_english.pdf

Matthew Garrett has a signed "shim" for Grub which the other distributions which will let them boot even when the "secure boot" option is enabled; so OpenSuSE will have this solved soon. Hopefully Debian soon will as well.

      http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/20522.html

Please look it up. Note that both the weight and matching screen resolution are non-negotiable. A laptop that's +1lb heavier or relies on 1024x768 max resolution will not count as a MacBook Air equivalent.

Let's compare the 13.3" MB Air:
1400x900 screen
2.96lbs
7 hours usage

vsThinkpad X1 Carbon:
14" 1600x900 screen
2.99lbs
8 hours usage
So, better or equal in every respect. Not only that, if you don't mind an extra 0.4lbs you can get it with a touch screen.

Errm, let's ignore that you think that heavier is better in a notebook. Your problem is that you blindly believe the battery time Lienovo gives. http://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/laptops/lenovo-thinkpad-x1-carbon-touch.aspx

Battery Life

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch UltrabookClick to EnlargeThis is going to sound disappointingly familiar to anyone who has read our reviews of Windows 8 Ultrabooks, but, like the rest, the X1 Carbon offers below-average battery life. In the LAPTOP Battery Test, which involves continuous web surfing over Wi-Fi on 40-percent brightness, the X1 Carbon Touch lasted 5 hours and 52 minutes. That run time is not only 18 minutes shorter than the typical ultraportable (6:10), but nearly 2 hours behind the X1 Carbon powered by Windows 7 without touch (7:45). ... Better scores came from non-touch ultraportables, such as the UX31A (6:28) and the MacBook Air (8:10).

IOW:nope.

Please look it up. Note that both the weight and matching screen resolution are non-negotiable. A laptop that's +1lb heavier or relies on 1024x768 max resolution will not count as a MacBook Air equivalent.

Let's compare the 13.3" MB Air:
1400x900 screen
2.96lbs
7 hours usage

vsThinkpad X1 Carbon:
14" 1600x900 screen
2.99lbs
8 hours usage
So, better or equal in every respect. Not only that, if you don't mind an extra 0.4lbs you can get it with a touch screen.

The iPod touch is significantly thinner than an iPhone (and cheaper). An iPhone does not count as iPod touch substitute, why should an Android phone?

Unlike iPhones, Android phones come in a whole variety of shapes and sizes (and prices).

I haven't, but it surely look like crap. Supposedly the top of the line model, but
The keyboard is all wrong, their chiclets may not be that bad but the layout is awful.
And what about the display? I shines like glass, I don't want to see my face on the display, I'm not a vampire!
It's like they made this model to experiment introducing changes that will make the thinkpad just like a macbook with no rounded corners, I hope nobody buys it because I don't want future thinkpads to be cheap apple clones.

A while ago they introduced some small and well studied design changes (T400 keyboard, new touchpad). But, WTF is this? Find out why people choose your computers and improve it, don't fuck it.

I haven't, but it surely look like crap. Supposedly the top of the line model, but
The keyboard is all wrong, their chiclets may not be that bad but the layout is awful.
And what about the display? I shines like glass, I don't want to see my face on the display, I'm not a vampire!
It's like they made this model to experiment introducing changes that will make the thinkpad just like a macbook with no rounded corners, I hope nobody buys it because I don't want future thinkpads to be cheap apple clones.

A while ago they introduced some small and well studied design changes (T400 keyboard, new touchpad). But, WTF is this? Find out why people choose your computers and improve it, don't fuck it.

Meanwhile, the reality of Lenovo on customer design feedback is suck it up, we'll tell you what you want It's all the arrogance of Apple without any taste!

Or they wouldn't have articles like this: http://blog.lenovo.com/products/why-you-should-give-in-to-the-new-thinkpad-keyboard#disqus_thread

Lenovo has already started to mess with the ThinkPads. It used to be that the keyboard layout was a seven-row deal with the keys sensibly placed and spaced. What they have now is a six-row deal with the function keys squashed together and the keys from the seventh row scattered about seemingly at random. Howls of protest went up about it and the result was this condescending blog post from Lenovo telling people to just deal with it. Here's a selection of commentary.

And before Transformer was the Lenovo IdeaPad S10-3t, which is still being used here daily, and quite liked. It runs Windows 7 most of the time, but I dual boot Linux on it sometimes... specifically Kubuntu with the plasma netbook interface. Linux works pretty well, the main thing missing for me is "long tap" support -- lenovo and/or windows detects long presses and pops up context menu (like mouse middle click). Interestingly the S10-3t extremely rarely gets the screen flipped around to tablet mode. It turns out the clamshell is more convenient 95% of the time. Even reading in bed with it... just sit the laptop on the bed beside pillow and have the desktop rotate the display (or use FBReader's built-in display rotation). It sits up nicely with no hands needed, while you lay comfortably reading.

The full size lenovo keyboard is very nice on such a small thing; being able to touch click/drag things is icing on the cake.

They also do something screwey with the boot sector.

Errrrr, no. For one thing this actually takes effort which hardware manufacturers are not prone to actually putting in, for another I didn't think they give a crap about supporting any Linux operating systems

Actually Lenovo are often pretty good about supporting Linux - e.g. they provide information and often drivers and support. I don't think the M92p is a model for which they do this though.

Todays portable lightweight low-power CPUs are yesterdays Workstation CPUs with 4 times the power. Apple has been trading off processing power for energy efficiency, design and small enclosures for quite some time now. It's one of the main reasons for their success. F.E.: I'm typing this on a 5 year old x86 mac mini, for which I have yet to find a competing non-apple product that matches it.

Yer Olde Desktop Setups are quickly going the way of the dodo. Fanless thin clients are as powerfull as a full-blown decked-out workstation in 2004, internal storage on HDDs is just plain silly once you've used an SSD device and you get highpower 4+1 multicore cpus in 199$ tablets with a batterytime of 8+ hours these days.
It sure wont be long before apple pushed out iMacs as thin as a slim screen, with 8+ cores for processing power. It could very well be that their ARM variant is the way to go for them.

However, Intel isn't exactly lagging behind in the low-energy CPU game either, and you can allready get viable Atom desktops. It might very well be that come the time Intel is up for the task of lowering their energy requirements for their CPUs and Apple stays with Intel.

There is interesting things to come, and I wouldn't be surprised if Apple would lead the innovation here once again.

OMG WANT : http://www.lenovo.com/products/us/tablet/thinkpad/thinkpad-tablet-2/