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Lenovo Shows Android Laptop In Leaked User Manuals
itwbennett writes "PC maker Lenovo accidentally posted manuals on its website showing an Android laptop called the IdeaPad A10. Lenovo spokesman Chris Millward said the company had planned on making an official announcement for the device, and that 'the product has not been canceled. It will be going out to the market.' Launch dates and pricing to come, but specs show that it could be a budget product."
With all the painful attempts to turn my high end multi-headed large monitor computer into a phone, (Unity, Gnome Shell, Win8) it is nice to see some turnabout!
ipad for short?
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
has arrived. Android on PCs and Linux on tablets are both wonderful for innovation; and doomsday for Microsoft.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ewanspence/2013/01/12/the-nightmare-that-keeps-microsoft-awake-android-on-the-desktop/
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
I demand restitution! My BS-o-meter has exploded as it scanned over "accidentally".
The BS density was so high that the main sensor melted and is now a tiny puddle in my desk.
If all you want is a keyboard for your Nexus 7, it's a solved problem.
No it isn't. The Android 4.3 update broke the ZAGGkeys Flex and several other Bluetooth keyboards that worked under Android 4.2, mistakenly recognizing them as "non-alphanumeric keyboards" (that is, gamepads). And it can't be fixed without wiping and rooting the device to rename a keyboard layout file.
Android is loved as a phone and tablet OS because it is open source and easy to work with.
As a desktop operating or some sort of mobile computing operating system, aside from the open source angle and the general openness, I don't see Android being any better of an alternative than Windows.
Android has quite a bit of fragmentation, has malware and exploit issues (I have some sort of pesky nuisance-ware on my Android phone, apparently from installing some free game outside the Google Play ecosystem) -- and if ends up encroaching onto the traditional desktop/laptop space --- then you are back to hardware interoperability/printer drivers/etc.
So setting aside the open nature and potentially the "cost" (i.e. Microsoft tax) --- I don't see this being an improvement over Windows.
But I would definitely welcome Microsoft's near-monopoly to start feeling the heat and would be nice to get more utility out Android apps or developing them personally.
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
Actually, this is more valuable than a full fledged PC Windows laptop. Because it supports a SIM card
So does the USB mobile broadband dongle from any carrier that isn't Verizon or Sprint or a Sprint MVNO. The problem here is that one has to pay hundreds of dollars a year to use that SIM card unless applications are designed for "offline first", anticipating that a user's Internet connection will be intermittent. I imagine that Windows applications are more likely to support offline use than Android applications, especially because Android was first sold on phones.
and camera, HDMI out of the box at budget price
Laptops have had a front-facing camera as a standard feature for years, and they've had either VGA out or HDMI out or both since I started using laptops in 1999.
I couldn't give less of a shit what they do with consumer-targeted products that are used entirely or mostly for dicking around. I mean, Android is cute, but some of us actually need our computers to work.
What I want is for them to reverse the spread of this toxic notion in the ThinkPad lineup. See: crippled, flexing keyboards and buttonless trackpoints/pads that are pretty but feel and work like shit, wide screens that are fine for movies but shit for actually working, removal of status lights that gave useful information at a glance replaced by various indicators scattered among hardware and software that make usability a load of fragmented shit, poor construction materials that make them feel and behave like cheap shit...
In case it wasn't clear, the point I'm getting at is that the last several generations of ThinkPad have increasingly been ... shit.
Fix that shit first, please.
I have an Asus Transformer TF300. I bought it about six months ago. It was on sale with the keyboard for about $350. It has a 10.1 inch HD touchscreen, and a keyboard with 'signature Android buttons for "home screen", "previous"'. (No Apps Screen button, but nothing's perfect.) Its screen doesn't swivel, but it does detach. It also has a camera, a microSD card slot and an HDMI port like the Lenovo, plus a USB port on the keyboard.
(T>t && O(n)--) == sqrt(666)
Make it 13 and we might have a winner, depending on price. 10 is still a netbook, and we see how well that market did.
Make it 13 and we might have a winner, depending on price. 10 is still a netbook, and we see how well that market did.
...till Microsoft and Intel crippled its specifications, while raising its price over traditional laptops, very well. Given that this is about removing Intel/Microsoft and their 70% Gross Margins, and without any stupid hardware limitations. It looks to repeat itself. With the massive growth of Chromebooks...No1 selling laptop on Amazon...fastest (and only) growing PC market...blah blah blah I would argue it already is.
When you try to connect a SIM card to a regular PC; your vendor thinks he can impose arbitrary restrictions on how it's used.
I don't see a single way Windows differs from Android in this respect. You can't plug a SIM into a Windows PC with a Sprint mobile broadband adapter for the same reason that you can't plug a SIM into an Android phone sold by Sprint. A device that takes a SIM won't work on Verizon or Sprint or a Sprint MVNO either because the U.S. CDMA2000 carriers have chosen to program the subscriber identity directly into the mobile equipment rather than using a CSIM. This is true no matter whether a device runs Windows, OS X, desktop Linux, Windows RT, iOS, Android, BlackBerry, GreenBerry, Three-a-MeeGoes, or whatever.
The Android OS provides all the useful things that a Windows OS does
Except Snap. Windows and Windows RT both offer the ability to split the screen down the middle and run a web browser on one side and a note-taking application or word processor or whatever on the other. Windows has had such a tiling window manager since version 1.0 in 1985, back when the original NES was hot $#!+. The Mac had floating mini-apps (called "desk accessories") since its launch in 1984, long before even MultiFinder. Android, on the other hand, runs a window management policy of all maximized all the time. My Nexus 7 tablet's screen is bigger than two Android phone screens put together, but it can't run two applications each in a phone-sized window because the Android CDD allows applications to assume that the screen's size will never change after installation. Why must a calculator app fill your laptop's entire screen and cover up the document containing the numbers that you're adding?
For the past few years it has become increasingly apparent that PC makers are longing for the day that they can finally wash their hands of Microsoft. The Linux netbooks, Instant on features like Splashtop OS and WebOS, Android laptops, etc.; They wouldn't be experimenting with all of these if they didn't find the idea of ditching Windows extremely appealing. And why wouldn't they? Not only have they been subject to the so-called "Microsoft Tax" for decades now, but their bottom line is tied directly to Microsoft's successes and failures. Vista and Windows 8, anyone?
An official announcement would've been greeted by yawns, but a "leak" is reported and analyzed in all the tech sites.
I was a Google advocate and an Android fanatic a couple years ago, but it seems to me that they have shifted focus to emulating Apple, eliminating functionality, and, worryingly, ignoring bug reports.
Consider:
- Latest maps update removes swathes of important functionality, is significantly less useful, and looks "better" than the previous version
- As of Android 4.3, the base OS still does not support correct mouse-driven cut and paste, or right-click to open context menu
- Alt-tab does not function correctly; first press merely opens the "recents" menu. A second press is required to actually switch apps, inconsistent with every other major platform available today
- No real, consistent window-mode infrastructure in place
- Still bundled with non-standard, poor quality unix-level utilities
- As others have pointed out, the Nexus 7 2013 ships with a buggy bluetooth configuration that breaks keyboard compability. That this trivial-to-fix issue was not a sev1 defect speaks volumes as to Android's direction!
It saddens me to see Google focusing on decommissioning useful services like Latitude to try to rope people into Google+ (a silly place for user location services) and Android UI "enhancements" while the market is clearly moving towards device integration.
They may yet turn out to be the next RIM: focused on irrelevant things while their competitors (some yet to be visible) build the infrastructure that will be demanded in 5 years. They may wake up down the road unable to compete with a competitor who has spent this time looking forward.
Google: Please focus on desktop functionality, proper unix integration, and product feature set! Leave the customers who demand a limited, cutesy UI to Apple!
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
In particular, the pen-centric interface which Go Corporation was an early pioneer.
Everyone should read:
- ThinkPad: A Different Shade of Blue
- Startup: A Silicon Valley Adventure
So as to provide some sort of background into the original hopes and dreams for ubiquitous computing.
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
Ordinary Linux is a no-hoper for mainstream desktop deployment- we all know this. Ordinary Linux is in the hands of the most psychotically disturbed and dysfunctional developers imaginable. All they do is the modern day equivalent of arguing how many angels dance of the head of a pin.
Ordinary Linux is battered into some form of acceptable shape for servers and scientific computing by necessity, but doesn't come within a million miles of Windows (pre-version 8) and OSX for sane and useful desktop operation.
Android *IS* Linux with stable, well conceived libraries, APIs, and everything that goes with a modern OS ready to run apps. It currently only lacks an official 'shell' environment for conventional 'windows' multi-view desktop situations, although the underlying Android systems allow third party shells to be easily placed on Android.
Google currently has but one serious mains/laptop project, and that is Chromebook running the putrid ChromeOS. When Chromebooks use ARM (some have x86 parts from Intel), the ARM chips are tablet/phone class- NOT mains-powered/laptop class. The ARM world is awaiting the 2014 generation of ARMv8 64-bit parts suitable for desktop use, with per-core performance around Intel's Core2 architecture (which is easily powerful enough for 99.999% of all users). Given that with mains power, an ARM SoC part could have 8-cores+ at 3GHz a core, multi-threaded tasks could easily have the same performance as those running on Intel's latest (and expensive) 4-core i5 parts.
But most desktop/laptop tasks need only a fraction of such CPU power, moving once CPU intensive activities (sound, video decoding, 2D screen rendering, JPG decoding) to dedicated hardware blocks, often leaving the CPU at somewhat of a loose end.
ARM is getting Nvidia and AMD desktop PC graphics systems next year, on-chip. That's right- state-of-the-art GCN and CUDA/Maxwell GPUs for ARM parts. ARM is going to hit the desktop running, and running very very fast indeed. The crappy GPU solutions from ARM (Mali), Apple (PowerVR) and Qualcomm (Adreno) are a very bad joke when it comes to REAL PC/console quality 3D graphics. Giving ARM integrated PC class GPUs will remove the last disincentive against using ARM in laptop/desktop systems SO LONG AS Google gets behind Android for desktops in 2014.
Frankly I don't quite understand the appeal of the chrome notebook and I've played with a few. Sure, it's different, but so are a hundred different flavors of Linux. Now an Android laptop is something that I think makes a lot of sense as there is an incredible marketplace already in existence for their software.
It would be very easy to transition from an Android phone to an Android laptop for the large number of people that already have Android phones. When you consider the jarring UI change that is being forced by the Metro interface to begin with, why not just go with the much better design of the Android UI?
When there's an Android leak, is it oil, or battery acid?
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
VZW uses mini-SIM / micro-SIM in all of the 4G LTE capable phones.
For one thing, entry-level devices sold by Sprint MVNOs are less likely to support 4G, and devices that don't support 4G still store the subscriber identity on the device. For another, I was under the impression that CDMA2000+LTE devices sold by Verizon, Sprint, and Sprint MVNOs were carrier locked not to accept a SIM from a GSM+UMTS+LTE carrier. And finally, can you swap CDMA2000 subscriber identities by swapping SIMs in a CDMA2000+LTE phone, or is only the LTE subscriber identity stored on the SIM and the CDMA2000 subscriber identity on the device itself?
I had to get a SIM from VZW for my S3 and from U.S. Cellular for my GNote2....
Swap them. Do they still work?
But Android does indeed support offline use.
The OS does. The applications aren't quite as likely to. For example, Chrome for Android doesn't appear to register itself as a handler for HTML file open intents, which means that (unlike Firefox for Android) it doesn't appear in the "Open With" dialog box. And unlike Firefox for desktop Linux and Chromium for desktop Linux, Chrome for Android likes to purge pages associated with tabs that aren't in view, triggering a reload when I switch back to that tab. If I open a tab while online, go offline, and switch back to the tab, too bad. (For avoidance of doubt, I'm comparing desktop Linux with 1 GB of RAM to Android with 1 GB of RAM.) And does a barcode scanner or a music identification program (such as Shazam) let the user scan a barcode or record a snippet while offline and save it for identification later? And what do ad-supported applications (which are quite common on Android) do when they can't contact the ad server?
Not even 1080p on a 10 inch screen, what a joke. Typical Lenovo.