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.

[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.

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.

Next Up: FreedomPad

[stoolpigeon]

Freedom! In a box! What a wonderful company!

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.

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.

Re:Consumer friendly??

[Itchyeyes]

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

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: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!!!

[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.