Lenovo Announces the IdeaPad

An anonymous reader writes "Marking the start of news releases from this year's Consumer Electronics Show, Lenovo has dropped a major announcement on consumers - the arrival of a new line of notebooks. The IdeaPads will be the consumer-friendly companion to the ThinkPads. The announcement covers three notebooks, the 17" Y710, the 15" Y510, and the 11", 2.4lb U110. The IdeaPads will bring a number of firsts to Lenovo's notebooks, including a SSD upgrade option, dual hard drives (Y710 only), and a 17" notebook."

Comments

At Least they aren't changing Thinkpads.

[Hawkeye05]

I don't know how i feel about this, I love Thinkpads and I'm glad there not changing them to make them more consumer friendly, yet i worry this will draw their attention away from the Thinkpads.

Re:At Least they aren't changing Thinkpads.

[badasscat]

I sort of agree, with the addition that I really hope people don't outright *confuse* these with ThinkPads. Even to see a Slashdot post about them, mentioning them as some sort of adjunct to the ThinkPad line is kind of disturbing. This really doesn't even deserve a mention here, any more than a new line by Acer or ASUS would. I say that as a former ThinkPad owner.

ThinkPads were developed by IBM, produced for professionals and built like tanks. Lenovo has made a few changes, not all of them good, but basically that design philosophy is intact and a lot of the same people from IBM still work on ThinkPads. The "IdeaPad" line is a rebadge of Lenovo's *own* line (the 3000 series, etc.), which was developed wholly separately, by a different company and in a different country. If the previous lineup was anything to judge by, they're the same basic cheap junk laptops you might find from any second-tier Taiwanese or Chinese company. Adequate for most use, but not even in the same league as a ThinkPad. (I may be a former TP owner, but I'm also a *current* Acer owner, so I'm familiar with both ends of the spectrum here.)

It's not just a case of one being professional and the other consumer, which implies that the differences are mainly in the included software or security features. No, these laptops are built to completely different standards. They're as different as when IBM and Lenovo were making laptops separately. Would a new line from Lenovo have been compared to the ThinkPad in those days? Well, nothing much has changed, except that Lenovo's obviously trying to cash in on the ThinkPad name, and has managed to hoodwink sites like Slashdot into thinking the two lines are somehow related.

Re:At Least they aren't changing Thinkpads.

[jpu8086]

Drop the non-apple qualifier. ThinkPads are *the* best laptops. EOF.

Re:At Least they aren't changing Thinkpads.

[PopeRatzo]

I have to agree. I especially like the looks of the Ideapad 110. I'm not sure about this "Face Recognition Security" though. I tend to shave every 4 or 5 days, and sometimes I've got glasses and sometimes not. Sometimes my eyes are red and bloodshot and sometimes they're... well, they're usually red and bloodshot.

It would suck if I couldn't log into my notebook just because I was wearing my leather bondage hood and bridle.

Re:At Least they aren't changing Thinkpads.

[couchslug]

"It would suck if I couldn't log into my notebook just because I was wearing my leather bondage hood and bridle."

"You WILL like Face Recognition Security! Now do as your Mistress Lenovo tells you!"

Yawn

[hellfire]

Cool fruity colors? Nope
Major hype at business conference before it's release? Nope
TV ad featuring two amusing characters bantering back and forth played at all hours of the day? Nope
CEO with reality distortion field? Nope

I'm bored... moving on.

Re:Yawn

[Telvin_3d]

You say that sarcastically, but there is a big grain of truth. As someone who used to sell laptops, the market has almost no differentiation. Every three months, HP, Dell, Toshiba and the rest release new models in step. You try explaining to someone the difference between three notebooks that all have the same 15" screen, processor, hard drive and RAM. If this thing doesn't sell itself, then no one else will go to the trouble.

face recognition

[cynicsreport]

The IdeaPads have a new feature: Face Recognition. The idea is that the user can sit in front of the computer and log into Windows Vista without entering the password.
This raises the question: could one just hold up a photograph of the user to log in?

Re:face recognition

[Jeremy.DeGroot]

Some recent ThinkPads have face recognition as well. I recently purchased this one, and it has this feature. For those of you that are interested, it recognizes me with or without glasses, right after waking up and right before stepping out for New Years' Eve. We tried fooling it with a 4x6 photo held close to the web cam, and it didn't work. YMMV.

Re:face recognition

[dgatwood]

Try it with a camcorder w/ built-in LCD panel and I suspect you'll get different results. Use a bigger screen that can show your face at actual life size, and it is almost certain. Most decent face recognition systems can detect a picture because the perspective never changes, but unless it has more than one camera, it will likely be easily fooled by a video clip....

Re:face recognition

[yabun]

Or a rectal scan.

Re:face recognition

[dpilot]

If this were made in the US instead of China, we could have some real DHS paranoid ramblings...

Imagine a secret partition on the hard drive that holds (profiled) characteristics of terrorists faces. So the laptop keeps track of whoever is using it, checks it against its secret database, and next time it's connected to the internet, files a report with DHS.

Consumer friendly??

[damn_registrars]

From the summary:

The IdeaPads will be the consumer-friendly companion to the ThinkPads.
WTF wasn't consumer friendly about the ThinkPad? Granted, I've been a big ThinkPad fan for some time myself, but really, what are they talking about? How do you make a notebook more consumer-friendly? For that matter, how could a notebook not be consumer friendly and sell?

Re:Consumer friendly??

[Itchyeyes]

"Consumer friendly" is business-speak for "cheap crap"

Re:Consumer friendly??

[emurphy42]

WTF wasn't consumer friendly about the ThinkPad?

Its aura of "I could bludgeon you and your girly-man laptop to death with this thing, if I suddenly felt the need to do so".

Re:Ordinary Motors! Common Oil!!!

[JustOK]

I think the idea is "companion to". Plus, there are too many incidents of ThinkPad owners being arrested by the Thought Police.

Please no

[slaker]

I'd rather they give the toy computers a different name. I know they're trying to draw an association with the Cadillac of laptops, but I'm essentially certain that Ideapads are going to be missing all the things that make Thinkpads genuinely good, like titanium frames and godly support. You can look at a Thinkpad and see a serious and well constructed computer; that's not true with other business notebooks and frankly I'd rather not have to explain why an Ideapad is different from a Thinkpad, any more than I want to explain why the POS Inspiron isn't the same thing as a Latitude.

My customers love their Thinkpads, but I'm going to hate having to tell them that the Lenovos with 17" screens and bright colors on the chassis just aren't the same as the decent ones. Because I know I'll have customers (having years of experience that says "Thinkpad = good laptop") that won't understand the difference until it's too late.

No Trackpoint.

[MythMoth]

For me, and other trackpoint addicts,

No trackpoint = no sale.

Re:No Trackpoint.

[pwnies]

I used to not enjoy the trackpoint at all, and I scoffed at trackpoint users. However I quickly realized the benefit of having, and have since grown to love it on my new Lenovo X61 Tabletpc. To all the haters that I was once a part of, we don't care about your hate, we have our nub to rub.

Re:No Trackpoint.

[GeoSanDiego]

I agree. As long as they make laptops with trackpoints I will only ever purchase laptops with trackpoints.

Next Up: FreedomPad

[stoolpigeon]

Freedom! In a box! What a wonderful company!

Specs

[dankasfuk]

The specs seem to be a little behind the times (at least for the 15" model). Considering it's being touted as a multimedia notebook, I would at least expect a higher resolution (ie 1440x900) and probably a discrete video option.

Where's the Cheap Webpads?

[Doc Ruby]

We don't need all these dinkier notebooks or "tablet PCs". Because they're expensive and suck a lot of power (therefore are heavy and don't last long between charges). These portable PCs are too big, and mobile phones are too small.

What we need are lightweight little touchtablets running VNC. That weigh a handful of ounce, unfold from 8" to 17", last a week on a charge, and cost under $100. All they have to do is display a remote tappable desktop, with mutable little speakers, maybe bluetooth headphones/keyboards for occasional use. Live on WiFi.

There's a thousand models of the "mobile desktop relacement". What we need is little devices that are just little controllers for all the media and info consumption we do when we're away from workstations, and want to do more than talk or look up some factoid on a phone. If they were cheap enough, people would buy a bunch to leave all over the place where we might just pick them up.

Surround sound?!

[DirkGently]

WTF are 4 speakers and a subwoofer doing in a laptop?

Does the ThinkPad line come with fewer gimmicks?

Sounds familiar

[NewmanKU]

Is it just me or does the IdeaPad remind you of the Jump To Conclusions Mat?

At last!

[ThanatosMinor]

A portable tool that I can use to ideate while I'm on the road. I hope it has wi-fi enabled buzzword bingo built in.

Rejected names

[Random BedHead Ed]

Faced with the task of coming up with a consistent naming scheme, the following ideas were rejected but could appear as future products:

• PonderPad
• EnvisagePad
• CogitatePad
• WeighInPad
• ConsiderPad
• ContemplatePad
• DeliberatePad
• MeditatePad
• RuminatePad
• MusePad
• GrokPad
• BroodPad
• MullItOverPad

Re:Ordinary Motors! Common Oil!!!

[Speare]

So, now the Chinese are aping the Japanese method and renamed the thinkpad the ideapad? No, they're simply ridding the Lenovo line of any trace of the old IBM culture and trademarks. Thirty years ago, IBM employees used to go to the nearest office supply cabinet, and pull out these little pocket notepads with a leatherette cover. On the leatherette cover, only the word "THINK" was printed, in gold foil lettering. It became so ingrained in the IBM employee culture that the name ThinkPad was an obvious choice for the laptop when it was released. Lenovo isn't IBM.

This is nothing new

[Cannelloni]

I've had two ThinkPads: a T22 and an X31. Both were decent workhorses but suffered from faulty operating systems (modified OEM versions of Win 98 SE and Win 2000, respectively, remedied by me switching to Debian for fun, Win XP for boring stuff...) and they didn't even ship with restore CDs (they used a dedicated restore partition with a system image on it). The right hinge on the T22 broke after a couple of years of normal use (no drops, no manhandling). The display dies on the T22 after a few weeks, the HD a number of weeks later... On the other hand, the X31 was a damn good and nippy little machine. I bought the se machines because at the time, I had to use Windows software. Now I use a Macbook Pro... No reason to run Windows or by a Windows machine any more. The MBP is the bomb.

Re:Ordinary Motors! Common Oil!!!

[foobsr]

Think does come from

"Thomas J. Watson coined the motto Think while managing the sales and advertising departments at the National Cash Register Company, saying "Thought has been the father of every advance since time began. 'I didn't think' has cost the world millions of dollars." In 1914 he brought the motto with him to CTR, which later became IBM." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Think

Think about it, it seems obvious.

CC.

Re:Seems like it could be a winner.

[pionzypher]

I always thought that they looked really dorky and clunky. A friend had one he wanted to sell( a T23, back in 2004) for a reasonable price. I was impressed with the solid build they had and the little features (the led on the top of the screen for night sessions was great). It worked well with linux and took a hell of a beating. I finally trashed it this last year. I was a little sketchy on getting another one now that Lenovo had taken over the reigns, but figured I'd give it a shot. I grabbed a lenovo R61i from Compusa @ their going OOB sale for fairly cheap and have been very happy with it. Ubuntu 7.10 booted right up and detected everything perfectly. The only thing I haven't used or tried to get working is the fingerprint scanner.

All in all, still a solid laptop brand from my experience. It will be interesting to see how these home user styled boxes fare. I wish more B&M stores carried the brand though. Compusa was the only one in my area that had them.