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The ThinkPad Goes Ultrabook — ThinkPad X1 Carbon Tested
MojoKid writes "The venerable Lenovo ThinkPad, with its little red TrackPoint nub, has gone the way of the Ultrabook. If there's one small dig ThinkPads have taken with regularity over the years, it's that though there's a ton of quality and substance built into these machines, style was not a hallmark of the brand. The all new ThinkPad X1 Carbon could very well change the utilitarian stereotype of Lenovo's business-backed line-up, however. As the name suggests, the ThinkPad X1 Carbon is built from carbon fiber material throughout its chassis and internal rollcage. Its 14-inch display drives a native resolution of 1600x900, and its keyboard, arguably one of the nicest features of the ThinkPad line, is backlit and even more refined with contoured key caps. Battery life hits a max of about six hours on a full charge, and the machine weighs in at 3lbs and .31-inches at it thinnest dimension."
Many customers, self included, prefer it.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Please, no. If I wanted a MacBook Air, I would get a MacBook Air; but I hate that style and love the more macho Thinkpad style.
I'm so glad it doesn't have a shiny screen too.
Max.
I'd rather have page up/page down there than the back/forward buttons that were there before - I've hit the back key and lost everything that I was typing into a webpage far too many times with those damn things. Aside from that though, the layout isn't really that important, you'll get used to it. The big problem with the keyboard here, and the keyboards on these really thin laptops in general, is the stroke depth. They're just far too shallow. I'm sure that's why they moved to the chicklet style, it's better suited to a laptop with no vertical space, but it's still crap.
Tip for other laptop designers (or designers of any product): figure out what your product is best known for, the good stuff, and when you're doing your redesign don't screw with that. What are the selling points for Thinkpads?
1. Solid, durable construction
2. A no-nonsense utilitarian aesthetic
3. Excellent keyboards that are comfortable to type on
If it has to be a little thicker to accommodate a good Thinkpad (TM) keyboard, that's not a drawback - that's a selling point.
So this new Thinkpad weighs the same as my X200, but has no Ethernet port (with a stupid adapter instead), no swappable/replaceable battery, soldered-on RAM, and a weird keyboard layout which puts the Home/End keys far away from the Page Up/Down keys.
If that's the new trend for Thinkpads, I'm afraid that after all these years with various X* models, I will I will have to look at other brands.
The year 2000 called, it wants it 128gb hardrive back.
Hell, I miss my 1400x1050 14" T60p! It's pretty sad that the only way to get 1000+ vertical pixels is in a 1080p display, which is too high a DPI to be comfortable on less than a 15" screen, but a 15.6" 16:9 panel makes for an absolute monster. Lenovo could have kept making the 4:3 machines ad infinitum--see Panasonic and the ToughBook line. But they decided the extra profit was worth lessening the product. Sad. Unfortunately, so did everybody else. Heck, Apple's the only mainstream company that even uses 16:10 panels anymore.
No. A nicely proportioned beautiful woman is "sexy". Electronic gear is most certainly not and never will be.
I'm very sorry, but you are clearly new here.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!