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Lenovo "Rips and Flips" the ThinkPad With New Convertible Helix Design
MojoKid writes "Convertible laptops and ultrabooks had a big presence this year with the release of Windows 8. At CES, Lenovo revealed its ThinkPad Helix which it marketed as having a 'groundbreaking "rip and flip" design' that enables this 11.6-inch ultrabook to transform into a powerful Windows 8 tablet with Intel vPro technology for the enterprise. The ThinkPad Helix lets you work in four different modes: laptop, tablet, stand, and tablet+. When attached to the Enhanced Keyboard Dock in laptop mode, you'll get additional battery life and additional ports as well as Lenovo's ThinkPad Precision keyboard, a five button trackpad that supports Windows 8 features, and a traditional ThinkPad TrackPoint. ... The ThinkPad Helix features an 11.6-inch Full HD 1080p IPS (In-Plane Switching) 10-point multi-touchscreen with pen touch input and Gorilla Glass for protection. Lenovo claims the ThinkPad Helix will run for up to 8 hours on a single charge. Performance-wise, the new ThinkPad tablet convertible doesn't have a ton of horsepower, but the machine will get by well enough handling light multimedia and office app use with relative ease."
The "stand" mode is just the tablet part mounted away from the keyboard, tablet+ similarly just the tablet part folded over the dock giving it a longer battery life and more ports. It comes at a price though: ~$1800.
Does it come in a Ubuntu flavor?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
This sounded really cool about 10 years ago, but what real appeal does this have over laptop+tablet? What are the use cases where this kind of flexibility actually matters?
If I'm using a tablet I'm either on the road or at home - I never see a case for doing "tablet" style stuff at work. Considering "Thinkpad" is an enterprise brand, what need does this fill other than fulfilling Microsoft's desire to turn their Windows userbase into a tablet userbase?
I'll leave aside the fact that almost no one wants Windows8 for it's Metro interface (as witnessed by the Surface RT's spectacular sales failure).
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Ok, so if I take this, and then flip a coin between a desktop linux and Android for x86 platforms, I will end up with a tablet that might actually be useful?
Because seriously-- didn't microsoft learn its lesson yet about ambiguating the desktop and tablet market spaces with its metrosexual user interface? Are they *still* trying to blur that line? /half trolling
I had been fighting with Lenovo for the last 100 days to unlock the bootloader of the Thinkpad Tablet 1.
http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-slate-tablets/Thinkpad-Tablet-1-Errors-on-Recovery-Menu/td-p/1055573
The devices is prone to brick if the software (recovery menu) gets corrupted. And can not be recovered since Lenovo has the bootloader locked. The solution that Lenovo gives you is to replace the mainboard for a software error.
Lenovo Quality team told me that they can not release the bootloader keys because the Thinkpad Tablet has DRM software included.
Good luck with that.
I could have sworn I had advertising disabled.
I'd love to replace my current thinkpad with a unit that doesn't require a mouse. Unfortunately, laptop manufacturers keep the word 'tablet' synonymous with the word 'toy'..
That's because a touchscreen is pretty much a toy. I have them on my pad and smartphone. Toylike. Toyish. Fingerprint marks all over. Handy to click on links. Awesome for Solitaire.
Enlarging a spreadsheet cell? Not so much. And touching the screen on a light laptop, makes it kind of wobbly unless theere is a bit of mass to the thing.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Can someone please buy Wintel a clue. Far too late in the day, you say? Yeah, I guess you are right.
The current near cheapest ARM SoC parts from China (Allwinner, Rockchip, Mediatek) can give you FOUR CPU cores, and a GPU engine that can thump out fast 2D to any tablet resolution. When they are placed in the biggest of tablets, the only thing that should inflate the price (since a bigger tablet has more room for everything beneath the display) is the cost of the bigger display itself.
11.6" means we are talking 300-400 dollars. Sure, the ARM tab won't run Windows XP or Windows 7 (let's try hard to ignore the other versions), but that's an issue of software only. Where the hell does the other $1400 come from?
Look, I know what the Wintel infrastructure costs. High-end Intel parts cost a fortune (no-one gouges like Intel) and Microsoft wants a massive cut as well (except Microsoft), but going into the future, how the hell is crap like this supposed to compete with ARM devices. This Thinkpad even has a low resolution screen for its size compared to the better ARM devices.
When Google finally releases Android for desktops (ie., Google stands behind a standard shell/UI for desktop mode) where the hell do you think Wintel will be. Even now, cloud services should be at no disadvantage on ARM tablets. And Android for desktop will have a decent free office suite days after its release.
I love my desktop PC. I love the vast world of x86 software that runs on it. But Wintel deserves to vanish from history. The traditional PC companies have done NOTHING to meet the emergence of ARM even half way. ARM, despite its ancient heritage, is actually a delightful breath of fresh air. In the UK, the portable PC market has lost comprehensively to ARM tablets when it comes to female users. But then, outside the USA, notebooks were always horribly over-priced.
It gets worse. Devices like the Thinkpad have horrible weak graphics for AAA PC gaming. They are better at casual gaming, but far more casual software is released for Apple and Android. So, the Thinkpad can do Windows, but this matters less for more and more potential customers. Why do you think this insanely expensive device tries so hard to pass itself off as a tablet?
Yawn, give me back my ThinkTank, I don't want your yuppie hipster tablet shit. By all means, go ahead and make it, but not at the sacrifice of the once-venerable ThinkPad, now hamstrung by cheap build quality and shitty, unusable keyboards.
Nutritious Hostess cupcake?
Luxurious Toyota Prius?
Tasteful Miley Cyrus wardrobe?
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
The real winner in the device market will be the first vendor to offer a tablet that connects to a laptop through a true HD interface to become a second screen and input device. People don't want everything in one device... computer sales are down because everyone has one.
Give us a laptop -- we like keyboards. Give us an iPad like device -- something to lend to a visitor or a kid, or to haul on to the couch, or for casual gaming. When we plug one into the other, pop up the hard drives so we can move data back and forth, or even use the free space on the tablet as an extra bit of scratch space. Allow the tablet to become a Cintiq-like input device for the laptop, and make sure the laptop has an additional video out for a larger 4k-ish screen.
But with all of the non-Apple vendors stuck with whatever horrible idea Ballmer's team of dunces "imagineers," we'll probably end up with a lot of stupid and unusable convertibles like this Lenovo thing.
Recently I was forced to work with Windows Server 2012. And you know, I never thought I'd say this, but I miss the simple stupidity of the Microsoft Bob era in Redmond. At least Bill Gates was smart enough to not touch servers with such an infantile interface.
"Oh, the database connection seems to be down, and you need to check running processes? We've removed the Start Button to speed up the process. Simply tilt the device to the right, swipe left, and choose the Unhappy Face. Then cycle through the server managers and click the undulating cube -- the red one, not the chartreuse (duh). Then hope and pray we keep the same method in Smiley Server 2015."
Lenovo, are you listening? If you continue your trend of removing the trackpoint buttons and the ability to completely disable the trackpad, you lose your edge and slide into irrelevance. Oh, and this should go without saying, but NO SALE.
The trackpoint with actual physical buttons (THREE of them) is the only acceptable pointing device on a portable. The X301 was PERFECT.
Touchpads are complete and utter garbage. Ones with only soft buttons are even more crappy. What I really want is for this abortion to be completely removed and the keyboard relocated to its proper place and the front of the base, but if it HAS to be there to cater to losers, at least it must be completely disablaeble so I don't brush it when I am attempting to type, damn it.
I used to have ThinkPads, given to me by my employers. Now, for my personal use as I no longer have a work-issued laptop, I've ended up getting a Dell Latitude E6400 on Ebay, and I really like it. The keyboard is quite good for a notebook, and just as good as the T-series Thinkpad I used to have. The design is much more attractive, and it even uses real metal for much of the exterior, rather than plastic.
Unfortunately, your last line is correct: the successor to this, the E6410, was just as good (really only a slight update to use the Core i5/i7 CPUs instead of the Core2Duos), but after that they went to the E6420 and E6430, and they're shit. The E6420 changed to a crappy rounded shape, is much uglier, and there's a horrific looking orange trim ring around the keyboard for some insane reason. It looks ridiculous. The E6430 changed the butt-ugly orange ring to gray, but otherwise is pretty much identical, and still butt-ugly. Worse, these switched to the shitty wide-aspect-ratio screens, so you lose vertical pixels with these new "improved" models, as compared to the old ones (no, you don't get more horizontal pixels either); the whole change was really a cost-cutting move along with a move to "update" the aesthetics to make them ugly like everything else in the consumer space has become these days.
So if you want my recommendation, get a E6400 or E6410 (or their 15-inch brothers the E6500/E6510) on Ebay off-lease. They're dirt cheap, and there's tons of cheap parts available from vendors on there. Just be sure to get the higher-res screens, and unless the screen res isn't important to you, don't get anything from the official Dell refurbished seller on there ("delldirect" or something like that), because they never list the screen res. Avoid the newest models, though this seems to go for everything these days.
If it wasn't for the fact that these thins all have absolutely garbage specs, and cost almost twice as better spec laptop or a laptop AND a tablet. AND we have to suffer through windows 8 ...
Seems they need to drop the 1 out of that price
As I sit here typing this post with my TC1100, the computer which got me to use Windows XP as my primary operating system, the computer which runs Windows 7 decently enough, which I purchased used for $850 about 8 years ago. It works like a boss. It has 1 problem with hardware overheating which can be resolved by tilting the screen towards you as far as it will go, and then it just works. Just works. Originally priced at $2400 back in 2001/2002. It has a trackpoint, and enough space for all the keys in all the right places except for page up and page down. The only form of laptop which doesn't burn your legs because the battery floats in space (a battery you can replace without shutting down completely). The only laptop with a proper trackpoint and excellent stylus support. A beautiful 8.9 inch screen over 180 degree viewing angle which has the option of VGA-outing to some big screen you want to use at the same time. In that same time I've worn out a Vaio laptop and a brand new Lenovo laptop (which stopped working in 1 month). HP the company is bleeding revenue seeking to redefine itself, when it had the quality answer 10 years ago. I know this Lenovo in comparison is trackpointless and will only last just past the warranty period if you're lucky. I don't know what to say really.
after the second slashdot dupe of this event comes out, then it will no longer be "new" around here.
"powerful windows 8", that's a pretty funny phrase. Anything that doesn't run a true operating system can't be powerful.
Lenovo, just bring us X61 back, will ya ?
This new keyboard is awfull, good old IBM styled keyboards are not available even as an option. (jeesh, this could be a revenue source on it's own)
This 16:9 screen since x200 is absolutely pointless to me - no 3:4 options ?
All these blumps with Thinkpad series over the last decade just shows us, how genius IBM engineering was, and how long does it actually take to kill a really marvelous piece of engineering.
Once, Thinkpad was an alias for solid, bullet-proof work horse. I'm not sure what does it stand for nowdays...