ThinkPad Time Machine?

[SL89]

http://blog.lenovo.com/en/blog/retro-th ... me-machine.

Check out this 'new' concept. It pretty much has everything that made the ThinkPad awesome, as well as modern accouterments as well. I wonder how FOSS friendly a new machine would be (as I know the FOSS folk love or loved these usually.)

What do you think of the layout and lenovos newer keyboards?

Who knows maybe they will revive the Model M some day

[ne0phyte]

Oooooooh that looks awesome.

Clamshell, proper navigation key positions, blue enter, media keys on fn, ThinkLight instead of expensive backlit keyboards.
And all that with a touch of modern design.

Now if they would reintroduce a model with a 4:3 screen a lot of people would sheld tears of joy

EDIT:
I went from a maxed out X201 to a ThinkPad Yoga S1... it's decent but nowhere as much of a tank as the older X series ThinkPads. The backlit chiclet keyboard is okay, but I much preferred the old one.
Also the non-removable, rather small batteries suck. Everything has to be thin today
(You can still replace the battery, but it's not an official FRU meant to be replaced by the user)

[SL89]

I agree, I have to wonder how many of these would actually sell. I quite like Lenovo these days, maybe referencing their past (that they bought) is a pretty good idea. I havent bought a proper laptop since 2006 (MacBook) because everything is plastic and flimsy and very thin. If these were built like their heritage models, that would change very fast.

[Halvar]

I'm all for this. When they tried to copy MacBooks they went horribly wrong. They've already gone back to their heritage a bit with the newer models by reintroducing the old mouse keys and keyboard arrangement.

The listened to this guy, which was the right decision:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jb7p3VkQCOo

[SL89]

Hopefully Lenovo can be leaders and not followers. I'm glad they are receptive to feedback from their customers regardless.

[Muirium]

Might as well make ThinkPads instead of MacBooks. Trouble is, it takes balls to go through with it and see if it sells. Hopefully they do. The world is a poorer place when everyone apes Apple.

Edit: Go on, even Gruber thinks you should do it, Lenovo!

[bhtooefr]

That design doesn't do that much for me, to be honest. The multicolor logo as it's implemented in that machine is pretty awful, it's the size of a T450 basically (which, the original ThinkPads were always more compact than that), the keyboard only went back to the T420 keyboard, not the earlier design, and it just doesn't seem that retro to me really.

I'm comparing this design to my 365XD - which is on the second-gen ThinkPad chassis (as in the 750), which merely tweaked what the first-gen 700/720 chassis did - and while the 750 chassis design is lacking in a lot of ways today (the sheer thickness and the utter lack of palmrest being the two main ones), this doesn't feel like an homage to that era of ThinkPad at all.

If I were designing it, I'd follow one rule that this design utterly fails at, at a minimum - the width is set by the keyboard, with minimal bezel around it. This rule was adhered to by the 700/720, the 75x, the 76x, the 600, the T2x, the T3x, the T4x 14.1" 4:3, and the T6x 14.1" 4:3, at least. (I'm ignoring budget machines like the 300 and R-series in this, as well as ultraportables like the 701C, 200/S, and 500/X series. The 770 was the first 7-series to break that rule, but the 600 made up for the 770 becoming bigger (and the 770 became the A series).)

It's also worth noting that the 365XD I've got, you could get about 13.3" of screen in its lid almost exactly (11.25" x 7", and with moving the screen down, you've got room for the obligatory webcam). That actually is 16:10, so... I don't hate that part, although that doesn't give any room for a trackpad, and you'd want to go 4:3 at 14.1" to make room for that, or 3:2 at something in between.

[andrewjoy]

all i want them to do is make an updated X61 with an ultra low power i3, a pcie SSD with gigabit ethernet and some USB ports

all with a nice 1900x1200 4:3 display

[scottc]

But 1920x1200 is 16:10...

[Muirium]

But if you look into your heart, into the truth the world can't see, is it really? Is it really, Scott?

Unfortunately this trick hardly ever worked for me in maths class.

[bhtooefr]

Honestly, such an updated X61, with a 2048x1536 display, would be fantastic... although too small to be my primary laptop, and bigger than I'd want for the ultraportable.

Can I get an S150 or X150 or whatever you want to call it, as a successor to the 701, 200 series, and s30/s31, with a 1920x1080 10.8" LCD, a Core M, and the keyboard out of an X61, under 1 kg? Because I would rock the fuck out of that as a take-everywhere machine. (Or, go a bit smaller with the keyboard, and make the screen smaller - at 17 mm pitch, it becomes 10.1", which is nicer yet for extreme portability. 16 mm pitch (which would be optimum in the 8.9-9.6" ballpark) is pushing too much, though, although I have a 16 mm pitch 8.9" machine that I really do quite like, and I'm dumping upgrades into despite it being a bad idea.)

[DanielT]

I like the design. I have a T400 and I love it, I'm working on it right now. The keyboard is more than decent, the performance is very good, I have upgraded it to SSD and it runs so nice. And the best part is that Linux runs without any problems on it, there is not one function that does not work under Linux and if Lenovo keeps it this way it would be a really nice notebook to have.

[Halvar]

Yes, I agree. I have a T420 and it's great industrial design and quality. For me, the Thinkpad design underlines that a Thinkpad is a workhorse, a machine to do work on, the opposite of a fashion accessoire. I have no problem with a Lenovo 10.8'' subnotebook to always carry around, but it's not at all what I would think of first when "classic Thinkpad" is mentioned.

[bhtooefr]

So this isn't a classic ThinkPad?


(OK, so my idea didn't include the TrackWrite keyboard...)

[rsbseb]

I'm pretty loyal to Toshiba when it comes to laptops but this looks like a move in the right direction. I'm due for a replacement and would love to give this a try.

[SL89]

The butterfly board takes me back...

We have plenty of new Lenovo offerings (mostly with the chiclet keyboard) and the chassis is nice, good screens, solid performance, but they all lack anything really differentiating.

The 'retro' (yes i know its a relative term) could be the x factor that appeals to the less hardcore loyalists and those who were familiar with the thinkpads of old.

I agree with bhtooefr that it's far from perfect. But at least its somewhat compelling. Much like cars, phones and other implements, everything is *very* homogeneous and moving towards some idealized design singularity. This concept, if nothing, is *slightly* less of the same then anything else.

[Halvar]

So this isn't a classic ThinkPad?

...

(OK, so my idea didn't include the TrackWrite keyboard...)

That wasn't a subnotebook in any way, I'm sure it had 2 kg and was about 5 cm thick.

This was a subnotebook back then (Compaq Contura Aero, 1997, 8 inch VGA monochrome screen):



http://james.hamsterrepublic.com/linux/contura-aero.php

[SL89]

Either way, Chromebooks and Tablets are the new Netbooks. Idek if there are any subnotebooks available these days.

[Muirium]

I'd say iPads are the new Netbooks. Samsung gave up even selling ChromeBooks here in Europe, which was a stronghold for Netbooks back in their brief heyday.

But then even iPads are decreasing in sales every year now. Perhaps phones killed off everything mobile, despite the screen size!

[DanielT]

Are you kidding, now the phones are big as hell, those phablets everyone is using... I like to keep the phone to a small screen estate, my iPhone 5C is all I need. If I need more I have the iPad mini, the normal iPad is just no portable enough for me, I use it a lot for reading comics .
I still prefer a healty T400 any day, the Mac's are nice but I still enjoy tinkering on my computers and the T is just perfect for that.

edit: damn I make a lot of typo's, must be tired again

[Muirium]

Around here, I used to see big ass Samsung phones everywhere. But soon after the iPhone 6 launched, damn well everyone got that. 6 Pluses, meanwhile, are fairly rare. The old embattled Apple user in me, who remembers what it was like running anything other than Windows back in early 2000s, likes what he sees. But must they use *my* notification sounds?

I'm still on the tinier-than-yours iPhone 4S. Actually, I've only had it about 6 months (a hand me down that's proved very useful). Small, sure, but so much so it forever turns sideways in my pockets, let alone my hands. I'm eyeing up the 6S Plus, or whatever Apple calls the next one. That would make a better iPhone than the 4S for me, and a better iPad than my original model, hands down.

As for tinkerability: laptops I'm not bothered about. A good external bus like Thunderbolt or USB C is enough for me, along with fast Wi-Fi and Bluetooth of course. Desktops are where I'm the fossil, Apple-wise. Here I am on my ancient Mac Pro, stuffed full of drives and a graphics card that lets this 9 year old machine run at 4k just nicely! The wee Mac Pros they sell today are of no use to me. I'd have to mess up the whole place with wires and dumb caddies. Ugh.

[SL89]

I prefer the size of the 4 and 4S over the 6's that are everywhere.

[Muirium]

Someday Apple will have a lineup of 4 or 5 sizes, just like the colossal Samsung that they now are. They're slowly coming to grips with the fact that people are different sizes!

The 6 Plus is a nice size for me. The 4S is comically minuscule. But hey, Retina.

[SL89]

I'm on the opposite end of the spectrum, the 6 is almost a tablet for me.

I'm an Android and have been since the G1 so it's slightly less of an issue as there is more variety. But i am locked in by pickiness like hackability, removable sd cards and batteries etc.

[bhtooefr]

That wasn't a subnotebook in any way, I'm sure it had 2 kg and was about 5 cm thick.

4.3 cm, let's be fair. But, yes, 2 kg.

This was a subnotebook back then (Compaq Contura Aero, 1997, 8 inch VGA monochrome screen):

http://james.hamsterrepublic.com/linux/ ... arison.png

http://james.hamsterrepublic.com/linux/contura-aero.php

Actually, your Contura Aero 4/25 example is from 1994, not 1997, but the ThinkPad in that photo is misleading because it's a (much larger) 600.

And, the standard for a notebook tended to be, about the footprint of a notebook, which is based on common paper sizes - US Letter and A4. (The ThinkPad 700/720, 75x, and 760 were actually almost exactly A4 size footprint at 11.7" x 8.3" (the 765 added an inch of depth to get a bigger screen in, and things got bigger from there), and the 700 was one of the models that defined the notebook computer.) Subnotebooks were smaller than notebooks, and the 701C was smaller than a notebook. I'm going to use inches here because that's what I've got in front of me, but...

ThinkPad 701C: 9.7" x 7.9" x 1.7", 4.5 lbs
Compaq Contura Aero 4/33c: 10.25" x 7.5" x 1.7", 4.2 lbs (yes, I used the color one, which is thicker and heavier, but it's the fair comparison)

Not that different, and the 701C has a smaller overall footprint (although it is a bit deeper, due to its 10.4" screen - but that was the whole point, it had the same screen as the full-size ThinkPads, with the same size keyboard, in a subnotebook form factor). If it's not a subnotebook, neither is the Contura Aero.

Edit: Looking through more recent ThinkPad specs, I decided how I'd make the retro ThinkPad. So, the ThinkPad was revolutionary for being a notebook, as well as some other design characteristics. This means 11.7" x 8.3" footprint. The closest modern ThinkPad to that is the X200/X201, at 11.6" x 8.3", and somehow, they managed to cram a trackpad in there. So, it's a good place to start for this modern machine.



Put the best quality domes under those scissors, with THAT keyboard layout (not even the 20-series layout, although I'll allow the modern volume buttons).

Maybe consider making it .1" wider to match the classic ThinkPad footprint and make a bit more width available for a screen (not that it needs much more screen space, but if it does need more, width is the dimension it needs), and then remember the FlexView heritage that IBM began on the A30 series, and put a damn good screen on... maybe get Samsung to make some 13.3" 2560x1600 panels, that'd be a nice fit for that machine.

Oh, and as a nod to machines like the 760 and 600... upward-firing palmrest speakers. None of the weaksauce downward-firing crap that later ThinkPads got. (And it's nowhere near thick enough for 770/380-style forward-firing speakers, nor deep enough for upward-firing speakers behind the keyboard ala 75x/355/36x or A-series.)

For pointing devices... LEAVE THE DAMN TRACKPOINT ALONE. Then, that touchpad is pretty uselessly tiny, so I'd be tempted to make it a clickpad on a new model (and, yes, include one, so it can actually be sold), as a clickpad is probably more usable than that awful tiny thing. And, the X220/X230 are 8.1" deep and get a better clickpad in than the 8.3" deep X200/X201's traditional trackpad... (X240/X250 are 8.2" deep, for what it's worth.)

Rubberized coating, of course, toss a ThinkLight in too. Not sure how to make the homage to the RGB logo, but sure as hell not how this Lenovo concept did it.

Now, for the specs... there's a few ways to go with this. Could make it really thin (like X250 thin), and put a 15 W ULV part in, they're pretty fast. But, to be honest, I don't like that idea. It'd be adequate, but this would kinda be a flagship, and that calls for more than "adequate". Keep it X201 thickness, maybe a bit thinner, and you could probably get enough cooling in there to run a 47 W part easily (given the business laptops I've seen cooling a 37 W CPU and a discrete GPU in less thickness...) - while I wouldn't recommend Broadwell-H, given its short lifespan, a Skylake-H would be extremely interesting.

I would probably buy the crap out of that machine (whether it's Lenovo that makes it, or my employer (but the last machine my employer made with a pointing stick in a form factor resembling this was, well, Merom and i945), or someone else) even though it doesn't really fit into my usage model that well. (Well, Steam in-home streaming and a desktop would honestly take care of a lot of it... Hmm...)