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Lenovo Unveils Android ThinkPad and IdeaPad Slates
MojoKid writes "While many tablets are slimming down (and losing valuable ports), Lenovo's new ThinkPad Tablet is on the bulky side with the hope that business professionals appreciate it. The Tablet is a biz-oriented slate with a 10.1" panel, a Tegra 2 (1GHz) chip, and most importantly, a full-size USB port. Lenovo is also introducing a $99 Keyboard Folio case, which will wrap around the device to keep it safe, but also provides a full QWERTY keyboard and an optical trackpad. It features Android 3.1, access to Lenovo's app store, a 2MP front-facing camera, 1080p video output, Wi-Fi, 3G, 16/32/64GB of storage, and a 5MP rear camera. The company also introduced a consumer targeted slate called the IdeaPad K1, and it sports a 13.3mm thin form-factor that focuses on entertainment and consumption."
Then it may read barcodes. My company is stuck on ex-symbol, now-motorola MC50 and alikes, overpriced and underperforming for today's standards. We're seeking an alternative for them, but barcode reading on iPad and such devices are clumsy, not suitable for production. Hope that full-size USB can power devices.
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barcode reading on iPad and such devices are clumsy, not suitable for production.
I don't think you are going to be much happier with the built in cameras on the new device then...
The solution is to use a dedicated hardware reader, such as the Scanfob. There may be others for the iPad as well, there are a number of choices for the iPhone that are integrated cases.
The iPad does offer a USB port dongle but like you say it can't really power devices.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Lenovo's new ThinkPad Tablet is on the bulky side with the hope that business professionals appreciate it.
I think they will. I can't tell you how many professionals that have taken one look at my iPad, and said "nah, I could never use something like that. It's not bulky enough."
$500 sounds like a low end laptop. I bought myself Clevo laptop last year that cost $3000 because I was traveling a lot. But it's freaking awesome and is still working great. However, it was 17.1" and obviously a bit too large to use comfortably on flights. I could easily think about getting ThinkPad Tablet for those flights and also to use comfortably from bed and sofa. I was already thinking about getting iPad, but this really looks better and more business oriented too.
Google+ vs. Facebook, and why Google+ will fail
Does it have a capacitive finger-friendly screen that can also do pressure sensitive (512+ levels) pen input for more accurate stylus use or sketching?
And "8 or so hours in ideal conditions" - man I hope that's not directly from the marketing department. If your marketing guys are hedging their words like that, they know damned well that it's going to go 3 hours under full use, and probably have everything turned of and in active sleep mode for 3 of the hours to get 8 hours of runtime.
I've said it before - it's going to come down to software support. The OS and drivers are going to have to handle stuff seamlessly. Apple gets away with is 'cause they offer so little functionality, there's little to break/go wrong. I want to see this work, but I'm sure as hell not going to by the first version.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Why Android tablets cost twice as much as a netbooks running Win7?
The advantages are:
USB port without needing to worry about a dongle (losing it, forgetting it, carrying it around)
HDMI out without a proprietary cord/dongle
Higher resolution camera
Android (a back button!, I don't know how you live without a back button).
I don't see it anywhere, but the USB port also might be able to power devices, which would *greatly* increase ease of use and potential use cases.
You also can't judge the trackpad until you know what it does. ThinkPad users are often considered strange for favoring certain pointing devices (the red stick), but they still find it useful.
$500 sounds like a low end laptop. I bought myself Clevo laptop last year that cost $3000 because I was traveling a lot. But it's freaking awesome and is still working great. However, it was 17.1" and obviously a bit too large to use comfortably on flights. I could easily think about getting ThinkPad Tablet for those flights and also to use comfortably from bed and sofa. I was already thinking about getting iPad, but this really looks better and more business oriented too.
So, you bought an expensive $3000 laptop just last year and are glad it is "still working great"?! Talk about lowered expectations.
So what is going to be the draw? Especially for a business, where the third party aftermarket is much more extensive for the iPad?
Ummm. It's not from Apple. That's enough for many...
Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train.
Oh stop, you're just an Apple fanboi!
/s
This tablet also has an SD card slot for storage.
I don't understand why publications are so focused on presenting the varying built-in storage options but not even mentioning whether a memory card slot of some type is present. I'd much rather know if the device has cheap expandable storage than know how much the company is going to overcharge me for the largest built-in storage option.
Don't underestimate nerd rage ain't going buy anything from Apple types. Believe me, they are everywhere. Not quite as numerous as the gottagetitnowiGeneration
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Yes, instead of getting 5 hours of battery life, your new accessories can activate the Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet's "paperweight mode" in half the time! That's a tremendous speed increase!
A USB port powering external devices means that those devices are draining your Tablet's battery that much faster. I don't see that being a very compelling use case.
This tablet is not x86, it is powered by a Tegra 2 ARM CPU.
I haven't used the optical drives in my MBP and Mini in years. I have used a FireWire external optical, since it's far faster and more reliable than either of the ones in the computers I hook it up to.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
At that price, why wouldnt i just buy the thinkpad edge or something? looks to be about the same size + weight. or that low end X series?
Er, because the are two completely different things? A laptop does not deliver the experience a tablet does and vice versa. How many laptops weigh less than a pound and a half yet deliver 10 hours of battery life? How many laptops for 500 dollars have capacitive multi-touch screens? How many laptops at that price have zero moving parts to break? How many laptops are an "always on" device that will continue to get your email and notifications and perform tasks even when the unit is on "standby"? Tablets in this class have built-in accelerometers and GPS, front and rear cameras, etc. And on and on.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
SD slot, no Apple telling you what software you're allowed to run, Lenovo is entrenched in many businesses, etc.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Even if Thunderbolt comes to the iPad (which I highly doubt) you will still have to buy a $50 cable for each device.
Wow. Your vision is incredible. Is getting anything less than 100% battery life a deal-breaker for you? Maybe there are people who do consider it a compelling use case. I can think of a whole bunch of powered devices that would use a very small amount of electricity compared to what the tablet is using. I'm willing to bet that there are even use cases where it'd be worth it to cut battery time in half.
Why wait? Just today, I finally broke down and joined the tablet craze by ordering an Acer Iconia 32GB tablet. Nvidia Tegra 2 1GHz dual-core processor, 1GB DDR2 RAM, 32GB flash storage, USB, HDMI, micro-SD slot, bluetooth, WiFi, 1280x800 10.1" display, Capacitive Ten-point Touchscreen, 2MP front camera, 5MP rear camera with flash Android Honeycomb.
BONUS? Available now for $450
Better late than never? Not so sure in this case. Lenovo has a lot of catching up to do to play in the same market as Asus, Motorola, Acer ...
The iPad2 already has:
USB port (via dongle)
HDMI out
A number of third party cases with integrated keyboards
Rear and front camera (admittedly slightly lower in resolution)
better battery life under REAL conditions (this states eight under "ideal").
The iPad is far lighter too. And the idea of including an optical trackpad so you can "move around the device" is NUTS on a touchscreen system.
So what is going to be the draw? Especially for a business, where the third party aftermarket is much more extensive for the iPad?
The SD card slot is pretty serious draw.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
Are you claiming you can use any old Thunderbolt accessory with an ipad2, because I don't believe that for a second. I'm sure they check for Apple's approved chip/license key before talking to an accessory just like they do for iPhone and iPad 1.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
How many laptops weigh less than a pound and a half yet deliver 10 hours of battery life? How many laptops for 500 dollars have capacitive multi-touch screens? How many laptops at that price have zero moving parts to break? How many laptops are an "always on" device that will continue to get your email and notifications and perform tasks even when the unit is on "standby"? Tablets in this class have built-in accelerometers and GPS, front and rear cameras, etc. And on and on.
Man, that sounds awesome! Can I get one with a keyboard?
Gotta buy 'em all, gotta buy 'em AAAALLLLL! DongleMon!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
No problem at all!
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
We've almost come full circle back to...*drumroll*...convertible laptops!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
"Optimal" conditions: 8 hours of battery life. This means it realistically can be expected to get 4-6 hours of "real-world" usage. Plug in a couple of peripherals and reduce your charge time to 2-3 hours of actual use - far short of the length of a typical workday.
This is targeted at "professional" and "workplace" usage. If the point is mobility, why would you consider being tethered to a charger every couple hours a value-add? Do you think any user is going to consider it a good thing that they have to constantly return to a charging station and charge their "mobile" device because their USB-powered peripherals are draining the battery so fast?
And by "one (proprietary) port," you mean "an industry-standard Thunderbolt / LightPeak port, which will be used to daisy-chain all the peripherals which you can't connect wirelessly," right?
By industry-standard, I assume that you mean "Apple industry standard!" Firewire 800 was good example of that: It was neat, worked well, and no one except Apple really adopted it. This limited its usefulness in contrast to the actual industry standard that was USB. Hopefully Thunderbolt is more readily adopted, but companies are already complaining about the price associated with the connector (much like they did with Firewire).
Because when you predict that in the future, technology will function exactly the same as it does today, you look kind of retarded.
There is no doubt that there have been many connector-based improvements have really occurred since USB 1.0, but have they really been worth the cost increase associated with (1) buying new connectors, (2) buying new interface cards or computers to handle the new protocol, (3) paying for proprietary dongles? I would argue no, especially since software bloat seems to have matched the bandwidth increase.
There's no doubt that I get a better screen resolution with my DVI/HDMI/DisplayPort cables, but my eyes can't see details that small anyway. And cables that used to cost $10 are now $50-$100.
This post-USB1.0 cable technology may be a win for the computer enthusiast, those of us with specialized needs and the companies, but so far I would argue it has been a big and expensive fail for the average computer user.
You are making a lot of assumptions there.
One, you assume that there are no use cases that don't cut battery life in half (since this is the basis of your argument, you shouldn't give "worst case" scenarios).
Two, you assume that it needs to last (in use) for an entire work day. I don't think I need to explain why this is a bad assumption. Maybe someone just needs to around with a USB barcode scanner taking inventory. I worked at a place that did this (though they used a laptop with a USB barcode scanner. And by the way, most laptops don't get more than a few hours of battery life).
Again, you can't argue against something's worst-case scenario. People don't look at buying something and consider how horrible it would be for a worst-case use case. They consider how useful it would be for what they need to be done. This doesn't always involve using it 8 hours a day. It also doesn't always involve high-wattage peripherals.
This tablet weighs 4.5lb.
And cables that used to cost $10 are now $50-$100.
If you cannot find DVI/HDMI/DisplayPort cables for under $10 you're buying them from the wrong places.
The specs on Lenovo.com say 8 hours of battery while on wifi.
So, Apple has a standard docking port for iPads. I hope the Android world can converge on a standard docking port as well.
Clearly the ThinkPad Tablet must have some sort of docking port, since TFA mentions a clamshell keyboard case that docks with it. Does anyone know what this is?
I have read that the Samsung Galaxy Tab uses PDMI for its docking port; can anyone confirm that?
I don't really care what the standard is; I just hope there will be one.
P.S. The worst thing about the Motorola Xoom is the lack of a docking port. Desktop docking stations for it require you to get a micro-USB connector and a mini-HDMI connector to line up and engage the sockets on the tablet. And, none of the available desktop docking stations pass through the USB! You do get HDMI passthrough but not USB, which totally sucks if you are a developer trying to work with a Xoom.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Lenovo is also filtering out all the junk apps in their App Shop, I'm hoping that will mean easier access to quality apps. You'll still be able to use the Google Market too. Lenovo is trying to make this a serious business tool, unlike the shiny toy that the iPad is.
The SD card is encrypted too.
Yes, from TFA the keyboard is $99.
For consumer use, the iPad can also read SD cards with a plugin reader (actually a few, Apple makes one but so do other companies).
Do you really want a dongle flopping around while you are walking around with your device in your hand?
However for business use, why would they want something like an SD card so easily lost/stolen to begin with?
How easy is it to lose something that is inside the device? This tablet also encrypts the SD card, so theft is not an issue. If you look at the specs on Lenovo's site you will also see that it comes with Computrace for free.
This tablet weighs 4.5lb.
Are you trolling?
There are, of course, differences. The ThinkPad Tablet is clearly targeted at a business audience. So where the IdeaPad is all smooth lines and curves, the 1.57-pound, 14mm-deep ThinkPad Tablet is all black and features squared off corners and more visible buttons.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
Didn't they drop the x120?
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
What 4.5 pound weight? It weighs 1.57 pounds.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
Don't know about US equivalents (domestic air flights I guess) but in the UK internal business travel is often by first class rail - with power sockets. That means in a UK business-meeting type day you might spend 3hrs on trains with sockets, 4 hours in offices with sockets and 3hrs in various in between places (taxis, waitng rooms, lobbies) on battery power. In this sort of setup, battery life is much less important than (if you really need to) being able to power/charge a useful peripheral.
And of course if you're driving, you can charge the device off the cigar lighter socket.
It would be pretty unusual here to go more than an hour or two without a handy mains socket.
Sounds like a huge market for Silly DongleZ. Collect dogs and horses and goatse^W Apple Consumers!
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
WHY? When you already have 64Gb of storage
Where can I get this tablet you speak of with 64GB of storage for the price of this Lenovo ThinkPad?
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
Why dont any of these tablets have handles? Seriously... I have a tablet and would just love something on the back or side to attached something a bit more grippy than flat smooth plastic. I've already lost one due to a slippery dry hand on a cool day.
my motorola xoom uses the same tegra 2 chip (tegras are dual-core ARM chips + GPU) and it gets 10 hours of video playback using _software_ codec. using optimized video files than play using hardware acceleration, i get 12 hours out of it. web browsing, i can get a comfy 12 hours too.
using sparingly, i got a whole weekend visiting my mother and still had some 10% of the charge when i got home.
tablets are great on the battery side. i don't know how much one can get from an ipad2, but being apple, the number might be even better.
What ? Me, worry ?
$500 sounds like a low end laptop. I bought myself Clevo laptop last year that cost $3000 because I was traveling a lot. But it's freaking awesome and is still working great. However, it was 17.1" and obviously a bit too large to use comfortably on flights. I could easily think about getting ThinkPad Tablet for those flights and also to use comfortably from bed and sofa. I was already thinking about getting iPad, but this really looks better and more business oriented too.
So, you bought an expensive $3000 laptop just last year and are glad it is "still working great"?! Talk about lowered expectations.
I bought a relatively expensive laptop almost 8 years ago, and it's still working great, too! I regard this as good value...
It has a gorgeous 17" 1920x1200 screen (not that shortscreen 1920x1080 that infests the market nowadays) with every pixel still working. Running Lubuntu with compiz goodness and adequate performance/speed, despite its lowly specs: 1.6GHz Celeron, maxed out with 1GB RAM, ATI Mobility Radeon 9600 graphics. Still using its original battery which gives about 2 hours with fairly bright screen and network in use. This laptop is unlikely to be replaced until the shortscreen nonsense leaves us - those extra 120 vertical pixels are actually quite valuable.
FWIW, it's an early Sony VAIO VGN-A117S. From the days when Sony hardware meant something (in a positive sense).
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
I replaced the optical drive in my ThinkPad T510 with a ultrabay caddy that holds the stock hard drive. The stock hard drive was swapped out with an SSD. I like that the ultrabay is hot-swappable for the times I may want to burn a disc too. In the next few years we'll probably see the optical drive start to go the way of the floppy, Software will probably become a download only sort of thing, Apple is already doing this with the new version of their OS.
No problem at all!
I have this thing and it's amazing. I get about 24 hours out of it (with the keyboard dock) from full charge to nothing (made it through a 3-day weekend with medium use).
Thank you for helping us help you help us all.
The think pad has the same style for about 20 years now. Yes there were tweaks here and there slimmer lighter... But still the black dull matted plastic shape. I am happy the Lenovo Tablet follows that design.
Businesses don't want noticly fancy they want the borring drab color system so they can look really good with it.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Does that netbook have GPS, 3G, IPS display, active digitizer, accelerometer and both front and rear camera's? Didn't think so. It also comes with Computrace for free and it looks like it comes with free accidental damage protection. I'd say it is a pretty good value considering what all you get.
Okay I'll bite on this because the way this is presented is a bit of a slanted statement. It's accurate, but disingenuous by what it implies. TCP/IP offers very little functionality, it only does one thing... and it does it really really well. Because it does it so well, it frees up developers to innovate on top of it. Therefore trying to say iOS offers little functionality distracts from the idea that despite this, it's doing very very well for businesses who want to easily expand on the product and provide services to people who want to use iPads and iPhones in their business and personal life, simply because it does what little it does very well. Apple lets other people expand on the functionality.
It doesn't come down to software support, it comes down to the experience. Windows has the software support already, and it's on a decline because the market is saturated and Tablets are changing the computer paradigm. If you think pressure sensitive pen input support is the make or break feature for the tablet market at the moment you need to go back and study the market again.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Fine then; few business apps require even 8GB (I believe that's the lowest model). Point still stands.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Agreed. I use mine a lot and the battery just goes and goes. I bought the keyboard but frankly used it only twice. An amazing bunch of tech for only $399 for the tablet.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
The odd part is that the iPads are all unlocked, and the Android tablets aren't.
Lenovo has posted an excellent video showing off this tablet on YouTube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXFexk6k39M
Lenovo is entrenched in many businesses, etc.
That is the single reason I have seen that makes any sense as to why it might actually get some traction.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Android (a back button!, I don't know how you live without a back button).
I do not live without a back button. I live with a device where the back button is placed where it makes sense, an infinite capacity to place them in the best location.
Now if we were talking about phones, you could possibly argue that a whole button consuming real estate makes some sense because at least it's located in a single place. But on a tablet that you can rotate, the whole physical button thing breaks down utterly. It's a big reason why the Android specific tablet requirements dropped physical buttons, because on a tablet you cannot have a physical thing located conveniently for all orientations.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
better battery life under REAL conditions (this states eight under "ideal").
FWIW, their "ideal" conditions explicitly include "WiFi on". And so far all Honeycomb tablets have offered ~8hrs of regular use in practice (generally speaking, you get 1 less hour than iPad for the same tasks), so there's no reason to believe that it's not the case here.
The iPad is far lighter too. And the idea of including an optical trackpad so you can "move around the device" is NUTS on a touchscreen system.
Not at all. There are many things that are far more convenient with a mouse - document editing, for example (think selection... the one that is in iPad drives me nuts when any precision is needed), or when using remote connectivity - RDP, VNC, or whatever else (this tablet has Cisco terminal services client built in).
I have an Asus Transformer, which is a similar concept - it has a trackpad rather than optical trackball in the keyboard - and there are many uses for it. Basically, think of anything that's more convenient to do on a laptop than it is on a tablet - and that's your use case. With keyboard, this thing is a laptop for any practical purpose.
You also forgot one important thing: the OS itself - with features such as full-fledged multitasking, and a true shared filesystem which is directly accessible. You might not care about these, but many others do.
I don't understand why people ask "I don't see any advantages, so why not just get apple?"
That is not AT ALL what I asked. I asked the question every tablet designer should be asking themselves from the start "What are the reasons I would get this instead of an iPad?". I am pointing out the features highlighted in the article, and saying they do not appear to be enough because the iPad already has them - they are not things making the device unique enough to gain traction in the market.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This is DDR-1 SO-DIMM right? Many of the laptops of this generation state in their specs that their maximum amount of RAM is 1GB (being 2x512MB) As a matter of fact, it seems that these usually do support two modules of 1GB. I have tested this personally in two cases: a Compaq N800c and a Packard Bell E1 245. Both specced max 1GB, both work perfectly fine with 2GB.
Just saying, in case it would be useful.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Few business apps require a tablet *AT ALL*.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
My latest Thinkpad has 9 hours of battery with the standard battery, 12 hours with the travel pack. The lastest Thinkpad Edge E420 has 7 hours on the built-in battery (not expandable).
So: No, not 8 hours, only 7.
Does the USB-port dongle for the iPad even allow most USB devices? The one for the iPhone only allowed very specific protocols, and specifically NOT generic file transfers, the most common use of high speed USB.
This is DDR-1 SO-DIMM right? Many of the laptops of this generation state in their specs that their maximum amount of RAM is 1GB (being 2x512MB) As a matter of fact, it seems that these usually do support two modules of 1GB. I have tested this personally in two cases: a Compaq N800c and a Packard Bell E1 245. Both specced max 1GB, both work perfectly fine with 2GB.
Just saying, in case it would be useful.
Thanks for the suggestion, but I have tried, and it seems that Sony only provided enough address lines for 1GB in this model. It has two RAM slots (one is a real bugger to access, 40+ screws and some delicate manipulation of clips and suchlike), and works fine with 2x512MB or 1x1024MB RAM module, but with 2x1024MB modules it gives a RAM error on boot. I went back to the original 2x512 RAM modules, and returned the 1024MB modules to the shop.
Interestingly, the laptop's standard RAM was 512MB (2x256MB), and I purchased it with the upgrade to 1GB (2x512MB). As delivered, it had 2x512MB installed, and the unused 2x256MB modules were in a nice box. Why? Beats me. No sane person would want to down-grade, so I assume it was a packaging issue.
The 1GB RAM is not a real inconvenience, as it's plenty for running any programs. The laptop is used for document processing, email, browsing, graphics (Gimp+Inkscape+BibblePro), and is quick enough. When it had Ubuntu with Gnome, it was more of a slug even without Compiz than it is today with LXDE+Compiz. RAM usage is also much less with LXDE+Compiz than with Gnome without Compiz. Of course, for any video processing or handling large batches or raw photos, we use one of our quad-core desktops (where the overhead of Gnome+Compiz is nonintrusive).
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Ah, I'm not contradicting you. As far as I can see 1GB is plenty if you're running Ubuntu or Windows XP and for most tasks a 1.6GHz processor is just fine. That's my experience, but I'm probably biased as I'm a dumpster diver (and I love it). I'm typing this on a new machine, but it's a nettop. Atom D525 with 2GB RAM. According to the Gnome task manager, it only uses 40% for programs, meaning that I'm using less than 1GB.
Have you tried with 1x512MB and 1x1GB? That might just work. I have another laptop (which I bought January 2007), which is specced 2GB RAM max. It came with 2x512MB. I replaced it with the specced max. When I got hold of 2GB modules (this is a DDR-2 laptop), I tried. It boots but only detects 2.4GB. So sometimes there really is weird stuff going on.
Anyway, glad to hear there are other people like me who don't buy in the upgrade treadmill anymore.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Have you tried with 1x512MB and 1x1GB? That might just work.
Alas, it was the first one I tried - 1GB in the easily accessible slot, and 512MB in the other slot. Of course it gave a boot error, and I went through the rigmarole of accessing the other slot (under keyboard which must be completely removed and then under two other daughterboards which must also be removed???), and discovering that 2 identical 1GB modules (which each work fine alone) also results in a boot error. My suspicion is that Sony did not build the extra address line into some connector or perhaps the firmware deliberately baulks at more than 1GB.
It's not a big issue, but every year or so I scan the available laptops. It seems there are a few with 1920x1200 screens, but they're double the price of comparable models with 1920x1080 screens.
Actually, my laptop at work is a Dell M4400 with the 1920x1200 screen (slightly smaller in inches than the Sony), but I would not regard it as an adequate replacement for the Sony. It has a much faster dual core CPU, more RAM, better GPU, and so forth, but accompanied by an appalling hardware failure rate. Out of six laptops in our group for a bit more than a year, there have been 2 motherboard failures, 1 hard disk failure, and mine had a display failure. They are mainly desktop substitutes and have been pampered rather than suffering the usual laptop abuses, so there is no excuse for such shoddy hardware. There's no way that shit would become my personal laptop...
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
I'm sure they check for Apple's approved chip/license key before talking to an accessory just like they do for iPhone and iPad 1.
The iPad can use any USB keyboard over the USB port, not just apple branded ones.
There's no reason to expect that any Thunderbolt device connected to an iPad that supported Thunderbolt would not be treated the same... especially displays.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley