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IdeaPad U1, What We Wanted the iPad To Be

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the i'd-use-one-of-those dept.

Xanator writes "With the announcement of the iPad, the Lenovo IdeaPad U1 Hybrid appears to have gone unnoticed, but maybe we ought to pay it more attention. It's a netbook with a removable screen that turns it into a tablet (switching OS from Windows 7 to a tablet OS within 3 seconds), and it appears to offer what many of us wanted from the iPad. Quoting Engadget: 'When docked, the U1 looks and feels like any other laptop, with an Intel CULV processor and a 128GB SSD running Windows 7 Home Premium. You actually wouldn't know there's a slate hiding in there — until you pull it out and watch it switch to Lenovo's Skylight UI, a process that was smooth and quick for us. Lenovo says the goal is for the full switch to occur in under 3 seconds.'"

7 of 401 comments (clear)

  1. But what did Apple want? by RobinEggs · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What We Wanted the IPad To Be

    People keep talking as if Apple really missed the boat with iPad, but the truth is they only missed the boat for hard-core, tinker-happy nerds...and they've made a very specific point of missing that boat for at least the last decade. They're marketing to fanboys who want it to be trendy and 'just work', not to nerds.

    So it's nice that this might be what you hoped for from the iPad. But why did you hope iPad would be what you wanted in the first place?

    1. Re:But what did Apple want? by friedmud · · Score: 5, Insightful

      - Price - Yes! Compared to an E-Reader like a Kindle DX for the same price... I'll take a device that can do hundreds of things well over a device that can only do one.

      - Battery Life - Yes! It gets 10 hours of battery... what more could you want from a device that does so much?

      - Connectivity - Yes! Wifi and 3G (admittedly expensive). Also.. you can connect a camera to it using USB or SDCARD (bottom of this page: http://www.apple.com/ipad/specs/ )

      - Usability - Definitely! Millions of people already intuitively know how to use one. Navigation is simple... interacting is simple. How would you make it more usable... and what the hell is a "test editor"?

      - Multitasking - No. I agree here... I hope it comes in OS 4.0... but it's not a show stopper for millions of people currently using iPhone OS devices....

    2. Re:But what did Apple want? by Draek · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Or they simply didn't like it. Why is that concept so hard to believe?

      --
      No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
  2. nice, but by orient · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Lenovo will, certainly, build a more affordable and compatible/open device than Apple. Their advantage will be the price, but Apple has the advantage of their OS and well known applications.

    --
    Laudele lor desigur m-ar mahni peste masura.
  3. Nice headline by sootman · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Who is "we"? I'm pretty happy with what the iPad is. Also, I'm happy to pay half the cost of an IdeaPad, and get it 8 months sooner.

    --
    Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
  4. I don't want a tablet that's a computer by bwalling · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I don't want all the bother of a computer. I already have that. For a tablet/slate, I just want to run a few apps/games and get online. I want it to be easy. I don't really want to mess with the file system. I don't want a browser that's vulnerable to malware. I don't want to have to mess with drivers. I don't want to have to manually drag and drop or copy my music or pictures from my computer to my tablet (or worse, dick around with file sharing over a network). I just want the damn thing to do apps, games and Internet without any fuss. I bet the iPad will do that and do it well. I just wish some of the competitors actually understood that concept.

  5. For the same price: iPad + MacBook Pro + 2 iPods by gig · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Lenovo was talking $1999 for this, and there is no availability date.

    For the same price you can get an iPad, a MacBook Pro, an iPod touch, and an iPod shuffle. Then you have a desktop OS, a tablet OS, a pocket tablet OS, and a microscopic music player. You have 3 screens. All 4 items work simultaneously. The Mac is carved out of a block of aluminum and feels like it. All you bookmarks and contacts and music and photos sync between all of the devices automatically. The 3 devices with browsers all run HTML5 apps, and the Mac also runs BSD, Java, Python, Perl, PHP, Ruby, as well as Mac apps. A single iPhone app purchase puts the app on both tablets. A $50 Mac app runs other Intel operating systems in a window at full speed and with 3D graphics.

    Just because you are a nerd that doesn't mean you don't have actual work to do. The action is in the software, not some convertible geegaws.