Slashdot Mirror
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."
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."
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?
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.
This tablet is not x86, it is powered by a Tegra 2 ARM CPU.
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?"
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 ...
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.
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"