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Lenovo's 'Yoga Book' Laptop Is So Thin It Needs A Touchscreen Keyboard (gizmodo.com)
An anonymous reader writes: At IFA in Berlin, Lenovo announced the Yoga Book, a laptop that measures in at just 0.38-inches thick, making it the thinnest laptop currently available. In order for it to retain such a slim profile, the keyboard needed to be redesigned. The Yoga Book features what is called the Halo Keyboard, a touchscreen keyboard that is separated from the display and doubles as a drawing tablet. Gizmodo reports: "Officially it's called the Halo Keyboard, and if you've ever tried to quickly type on a tablet's software keyboard than you'll be familiar with the experience. Only it's a little nicer because the keyboard is separated from the display, so it doesn't suck up screen real estate, and it has a pleasantly rough texture. It's also got haptic feedback, which in the case of a touchscreen keyboard is sort of like sticking lipstick on the pig. A press of a button turns the keys off and turns the keyboard into a drawing tablet. From there, it behaves a lot like a Wacom tablet, directly reporting pen input into your chosen app. It even reads pen inputs through paper laid over the input panel." Some other specs of this 2-in-1 laptop/tablet include an Intel Atom processor, 64GB of onboard storage with support for a microSD card, 13 hours of battery life, 4G LTE, 802.11 AC Wi-Fi, front and rear cameras, and a 10.1-inch, 1080p display.
It's not much better than a tablet.
So it is 10mm thick (or rather 9.6). It is not remarkable. I have a Dell that isn't much thicker at 13mm. I also have a tablet with removable keyboard (A laptop) that comes at less than that. Also Atom - Intel's garbage.. Not interested. Give me a Haswell/Broadwell/Skylake any day (XXXXU processors), but the Atom/Braswell/Bay trail/Cherry Trail are the utter crap
what is this obsession with making things thin, the space it saves is almost irrelevant and tactile feed back is a wonderful thing.
I want fat laptops that don't snap its plastic after months/years again. My Toshiba Tecra from 1996 is still in one piece and it works. All the "modern" laptops afterward failed in various ways including their shell cracking apart, while the only Tecra issue is the mouse nub tearing a bit.
Given the description, I found it rather surprising the linked Lenovo news page didn't include an actual photo anywhere.
Or perhaps the thing is so thin I simply couldn't see it?
#DeleteChrome
does it run Linux? i know one will run android, but android is a little too googly for me sometimes, i would like to slap a Linux distro on it, and i would only buy it if it is testing Linux compatible, i would hate to be in the middle of an install and find the keyboard does not work in Linux, and then be stuck with a nice looking brick that is no more useful than a door stop,
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Will it teach me how to bend over and blow myself?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
http://67.media.tumblr.com/7bc...
The most interesting thing about this is:
"Touch-typists used the Moving Virtual Layout (MVL), which adapted to fit the user’s natural style, learning where the user intended to strike the keys through experience. On a mechanical keyboard, the user could dynamically adjust the position of their fingers onto the keys, helped by the shape of the keys and gaps in between. To overcome this problem on a touch keyboard, the halo keyboard used artificial learning to correct repeated mistakes or mistyping, learning the difference between common errors, like when a user hits the Alt key but intended to hit the spacebar instead."
The first article refers to an Atom X5. Checking it out on wikipedia, it appears that the most powerful processor meeting that description is the x5-z8550 cpu, which is not quite up to the performance level that I would have hoped for. Oh well, wait for the next processor design cycle, and hope for the best.
I long for the day when all my devices are so thin that they cannot support *any* input devices. Think how glorious it will be when you are holding a supercomputer that is only a few microns thick! It will be so thin that it's practically two dimensional!
Input devices are overrated.
Lenovos new design so bad because it uses a touchscreen keyboard.
Should have been the headline.
Cool. Can it simulate nubs on the F and J keys? If it can't then your hands can't find their way back to where they need to be and, your ability to touch type is now lost. I agree that the artificial learning part is pretty cool but, cool doesn't trump useful.
I understand that this laptop isn't meant for power users but, frankly, widescreen laptops weren't meant for power users either. How many power users are still using a laptop with a 4:3 aspect ratio? How vehemently did they object (Hint: A LOT)? I'd be happy to let this slide as a toy that no one will use for real work but, when I see a modern day ThinkPad, I'm inclined to believe that the Yoga series is a staging ground for things to come.
DO NOT WANT.
But, why? Why does anyone want such a thin laptop, other than for boasting to own the thinnest laptop in the world?
Video speaks for itself, very amazing
http://www.cnet.com/products/lenovo-yoga-book/
I think we will have a new era of devices like these in a few years.
Do you have to hover your hands over the keyboard, or is it smart enough to let you rest your fingers on the home row while typing? That's the dealbreaker for most tablet keyboards that want to pretend to be touch typist friendly. If not, you're a hunt and peck machine.
I read the internet for the articles.
I live in a 7 inch wide subterranean crevasse and my current 11mm thick laptop is just too much of a space hog down here.
If your only complaint is nubs, they could easily add that on the glass surface without deforming your view overmuch.
THe MS Surface is still the thinnest and Lenovo comes with malware like spearfish by default .... oh and the spyware is installed as drivers which means even if you do a fresh install Windows Store will automatically install the crapware again making it perpetual and impossible to remove!
Fuck em. I will never buy a product from such a company.
http://saveie6.com/
Good, the marketing people are happy. If you would kindly make useful notebook computers for the rest of us, that'd be swell.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
Don't hold your breath. I'm pretty sure Lenovo fired everyone who understood the term "useful" a few years ago. Now it's all about who can out-gimmick Apple.
"It’s also got haptic feedback, which in the case of a touchscreen keyboard is sort of like sticking lipstick on the pig."
So where does the author feel haptic feedback should be used if not on a touch device?
Laptops are getting thinner and thinner. At a certain point, I don't give a shit about thinness. I want a real keyboard. Unfortunately all manufacturers have copied Apple's shitty "Island" keyboard. It lets you have a really thin keyboard, but its like typing on paper. Want something else? Bad luck! There's only one laptop with a real keyboard I know and it's crazy expensive. When oh when are manufacturers going to stop chasing "thin" and give us a decent keyboard. IBM's clicky keyboard factory is still going and Cherry MX have done wonderful things with keyboards. I really want to see these on a laptop.
Though some tactile feedback is pleasant to work with, in particular that one coming from legendary IBM/Lenowo laptop keyboards, I always thought keyboard space was just a lot of wasted space in a laptop. If a not-mechanical alternative can be generally responsive and handy to use and offer some feedback, perhaps in the form of a resistive current, then I welcome that as a possible innovation.
The real problems today in the advanced hardware market don't lay in the keyboard but elsewhere though:
1. ENERGY storage, or batteries: there is a lot or research going on and some possible advancement to come, but present technologies still can't account for enough energy storage, fast recharge, controlled release and durability. Period. The fact the some producers with better OS and tricks or "intelligent design" (MacOS) can save more energy doesn't mean the problem has been overcome nor it will be any time soon. Keeping an eye at all times on where the closest wall-plugs are located is not an habit that will disappear any soon.
2. OS, or Operating System and associated software: current OS solutions available to the average Joe and usable or "licensable" on generic hardware (which very ironically excludes the close-minded MacOS) are all absolutely SUB-PAR to match the power and capabilities of any advanced hardware.
The Yoga Book comes with either Android (what a huge waste!, what you're gonna run there, Pokemon GO next to your favorite root hack to protect your private life with some firewall and to uninstall all the crapware?) or Windows 10 Pro with all its Trumpy or appallingly abusive anti-privacy behavior, violently pushing MS will and updates down innocent grandma's throats all the time.
How about support for special devices like the new keyboard or the pen? Those will always end up looking like fancy but oddly unused accessories because they need ad-hoc drivers written for the purpose (by the hardware producer) and badly integrated with the OS, and after all they'll be unsupported by most applications, anyways.
Needless to say running any of the thousands and constantly-changing but never current flavors of Linux on such a thing would not make sense, finding yourselves with no drivers or very broken support for the hardware (for the coming 5-10 years at least), unless you reverse engineer the hardware itself and code the drivers and some crappy GUI support yourself.
Long story short: we may have invented, miniaturized and crammed into a shiny case the best and most powerful hardware innovations as we wish, but without any decent power storage and OS: we have nothing. Android people will keep playing Tinder and Angry Birds, Windows people will keep swallow unwanted updates and assist powerless to unsolicited reboots, Linux people will miss any hardware novelty or burn the think for lack of fan support, then end up on a xterm with an external USB keyboard, coding their builtin ACPI and keyboard drivers and struggling to get rid of systemd, let alone trying to cope with the lack of any modern and consistent GUI.
Does it have 2 screens, or is the keyboard just a large touch-pad with light-up etchings of a static keyboard?
It's something I have been waiting for quite some time. A laptop with TWO screens, or rather a foldable tablet, or a true electronic book. So many uses.
With a little bit of luck, Apple will pick up the concept make it right (no, they did not invent the smartphone or the laptop either).
Lenovo is shooting itself in the foot if it produces the "world's thinnest laptop" if it ships with the world's most useless keyboard. Touch typing on a flat bit of glass / plastic will suck big time regardless of whether they draw little boxes around where the "keys" are.
A touch-tablet keyboard that moves the "keys", adjusting to where the user's previous strokes have been. ...
That sounds like one of the features of FingerWorks TouchStream touch-keyboard and I think they had a patent on this.
They stopped making products in 2005. FingerWorks together with its patents was then acquired by Apple.
I think Lenovo must have someone bought or licensed that patent, or they are about to meet with Apple's lawyers
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
They make them already. I guess Thinkpads that have been around for 22+ years just flew under the radar.
Slashdot is so fucking filled with complaining morons. How do you people not blow your head off every day based on the world you've created around yourselves?
It's not meant to compete with actual laptops. The novel part is this is a tablet that has a second panel which you can use as a writing/drawing surface: including the ability to write on actual paper and have the images digitized. That's a pretty neat feature for folks who still like taking notes by hand. The ability to use the second panel as a keyboard is just an added bonus.
Most other write-ups on this product seem to understand this.
you are in a minority, no one uses those fucking nubs anymore. jesus fucking pole smoker, get with the times.
"Lenovo's 'Yoga Book' Laptop Is So Fragile It Needs A Crazy Person to Buy It"
Am I the only one that doesn't care if my laptop weighs 5 pounds instead of 4?
Could be interesting, as well as sketching on paper/screen with the same pen, I'd at least like to try one out
Twinstiq, game news
So instead of improving your typing, it actually takes an effort to at least keep as bad?
Seems like the obvious question would be: can't you just make it thicker? Then not only could you fit in a keyboard, but you could increase the battery size so that it runs longer. Win/win. It sounds like these guys made a critical design mistake and then "fixed" it with a touchpad in order to get it to market on time, instead of really fixing it. Now you've got a product that everyone is just going to laugh at instead of buy. I guess even bad publicity is better than no publicity?
I've owned at least a dozen laptops since the 1980s (if you'll allow me to say the TRS-80 Model 100 was a "laptop.") So many I can't count.
I have yet to find a better one for its era since the 1991ish Tandy 1100 FD. 3 second bootup, run Wordperfect 5.1 off 3.5 inch DOS floppy. Single drive and swap disks between A:\ and B:\ on same drive. Had no modem, though, and 5 years before USB peripherals IIRC. :( Keyboard was one of the best I've ever typed on in a laptop, beautiful contrast slider, and who needed anything but yellow-greenish Monochrome when you could do faux-4 color CGA graphics via Hercules? :)
Why can't I find its' spiritual successor.... ? I'd take exactly the same form factor today but with color screen and a sidecar style trackman portable logitech trackball... and can you imagine how much power one might get from a 3.5 pound battery these days?
Guess I'm just sentimental today.
I do consider myself a "power user," but have never thought much about wide-screen vs 4:3. What's the deal with that? I really like being able to have two applications (typically a browser and editor) side-by-side.
The nubs on the glass as mentioned by the AC below might really help, but I'm also sceptical that I would actually be able to type as well on such a screen. I assume I'd get used to it, just as I have with a phone, I just honestly don't know until I've tried it for a while.
Isn't Lenovo's major strength their keyboard quality? I've always seen them as the Blackberry of laptops.
Now they're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Give me back a ThinkPad classic.
Actually their x230 chicklet style keyboard is a good compromise between size and quality of typing.