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.

Comments

Is there really a market for tablet-laptop

[rsborg]

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).

Re:Is there really a market for tablet-laptop

[rsborg]

Having one device tends to be more convenient and often cheaper.

Not in this case - $1800 is more than a 11" macbook air + iPad (and those are the more expensive options for laptop+tablet).

Lenovo, please unlock the bootloader

[martiniturbide]

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.

Re:Lenovo, please unlock the bootloader

[WaywardGeek]

I'm writing this post on my Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch ultrabook. The design is super cool. The company, Lenovo, sucks green greasy double jointed donkey dicks (I think that's how we insulted each other when I was 9). This is my third X1 Carbon Touch. I ordered it because I needed a touch screen Windows 8 machine with a SSD in January. That was the single biggest waste of my time related to any purchase in my life, other than having to refinance a house. The first Lenovo machine died the second day I had it. Of course, we had their best support and warranty, since we can't afford to sit on our hands for days while hardware gets fixed. So... 10 weeks later I got a replacement machine! It was dead on arrival, however. PC Connections saved my bacon and found a somewhat working PoS Lenovo X1 Carbon touch and got it to me, and that's what I'm still using. The wifi has to be reset about every two hours, and it does not come out of hibernation properly sometimes, so it feels a lot like running Linux, rather than Windows. I didn't think it was possible for a company to piss me off more than Dell has, but I was wrong.

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[Russ1642]

I could have sworn I had advertising disabled.