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from the they-might-have-listened-to-the-customers dept.
Lenovo connoisseur David Hill recently blogged about the upcoming release of the much anticipated retro Thinkpad (Retro ThinkPad: It's Alive). Details are scant, but he hints at a "keyboard to die for" which sounds promising, and notes that it definitely won't cost $5000 (whew!).
I'm sure many people have seen the recent leaks related to the Retro ThinkPad initiative I started nearly 2 years ago. There's talk about display aspect ratio, resolution, keyboard, pricing and much more. Adding fuel to the rumor fire, the Lenovo commercial segment executive leader, Christian Teismann, even gave it a brief mention at the recent Lenovo Transform event in New York City. (Read the original blog that got the ball rolling here.) The social media response to the concept was staggering.
[...] At this point, it seems like the cat's out of the bag. There are certain things I can now confirm. Yes, Lenovo will be making a special edition ThinkPad as part of the 25th anniversary celebration. It's aimed at enthusiasts and superfans that were kind enough to share their thoughts about what the laptop might be. As with any new product we develop, there are always technical and cost limitations but I think where we landed is quite impressive. The product will embody many of the things people asked for.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday June 25 2017, @03:05PM (4 children)
Will it support coreboot without proprietary binaries?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 25 2017, @03:20PM (3 children)
Do you also mean Intel microcode patches and Intel's management backdoor and GPU maker's binary blobs? The anwer is no.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 25 2017, @04:05PM (2 children)
Well then, as a filthy toe-sucking neck-beard beggar, I must say this laptop does not respect my freedom not to bathe!
(Score: 2, Funny) by LoRdTAW on Sunday June 25 2017, @08:53PM (1 child)
Welcome to SN, Mr. Stallman.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 02 2017, @05:51AM
because how a person looks is so much more important than what they do
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 25 2017, @04:20PM (14 children)
Except for the handful that actually NEED a laptop, why the fuck would anybody willingly use one instead of a desktop?!? It baffles the mind why limiting yourself is a "good thing". Like trying to squeeze into a mini when you're used to a land yacht.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 25 2017, @04:34PM
Case modded my rig to include fleshlights, front and back.
(Score: 4, Informative) by ledow on Sunday June 25 2017, @05:25PM (5 children)
Gets me why you limit yourself to a machine you can't move, a machine you have to have plugged in, etc.
The absolute best thing ever is a gaming laptop. Power to do everything (e.g. I once briefly ran an entire school from my laptop with a copy of VMWare), able to play all the games, can do it anywhere and everywhere - take it on holiday, take it to work, bring it home, use it in the car, take it to friend's house's, etc. - and yet do basically everything you would do on a full PC.
A serious laptop can take anything you throw it at, including 1000+ Steam games, as well as running all the work stuff I would need, in isolated VM's, and yet can be tucked into a bag.
Personally, I work IT and only use desktops in work.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 25 2017, @05:46PM (3 children)
It would also weigh 7 pounds with another 2 pound power brick and be limited to a 16:9 ratio display with an off-centered numpad keyboard and an off-centered trackpad.
Terrible, terrible ergonomics with very little upgradability.
An ATX mini tower plugged into a UPS will provide much cheaper system at 2-3 times the performance, with multiple displays and whatever keyboard you want, at the same cost or less. And you can upgrade it piecemeal.
Combined with a $500 laptop or even an iPad Pro with remote/vnc, you will get all the mobility and performance of a gaming / workstation laptop, without the burden of poor ergonomics and a single point of failure.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Sunday June 25 2017, @07:12PM
I use a computer
* In the study
* In bed
* On sofa
* In Kitchen
* On the train
* At work in meeting rooms
* At work in 'touchdown points'
* At work on 'hot desks'
* In hotel rooms
* On the can
* On an airplane
When I'm in the study I plug in a largeish monitor, external keyboard, mouse, and network, and that's great. However most of the time I'm not in the study, and having everything I'm used to is great. With games, I do have a couple, however the only place I have time to play a game is on the airplane or train, If I have free time at home I'm not going to lock myself away in the study for the evening, even if I did want to play a computer game, it would be on the sofa or in the kitchen
Weight and battery life isn't that crucial to me -- pretty much all of those areas have sockets. If I've got an unproductive day ahead (lots of meetings and in the office) I'll take the air. If I'm going away for longer I'll take both. Right now I've been working on the t410 all day, but I'm now back at the hotel, so I just brought the air back to watch some youtube in bed.
(Score: 2) by ledow on Monday June 26 2017, @06:57AM
Weight of it has never bothered me. Not once have I cared about it, even when lugging it around on holiday. The power brick is actually slim and small. It all fits in a slim rucksack only slightly thicker than the laptop itself.
The numpad isn't off-centered, it's a full numpad. The trackpad isn't either, it's centred over the spacebar (not centered over the laptop because of the full-size numpad). P.S. I manage financial databases too, so a numpad is critical.
But these things are really petty considerations, in my eyes. Besides, most of the time I use a bluetooth mouse with it, if it's anywhere near practical (which is at least 80% of usage scenarios).
The ergonomics are at least equal, and usually far better than sitting up to a desk.
Though your system may have more performance, I really DON'T NEED that kind of performance to play every game I want, run every VM I want, etc. I hate multiple displays with a passion, it indicates that people don't know how to task-switch and also that they don't realise their eyes are only ever on ONE SCREEN at a time. And I can use whatever keyboard I want.
In terms of performance, as stated - I literally RAN A SCHOOL from it. I pushed the VM's from the servers onto that laptop en-route to server upgrades once and nobody even noticed (I wouldn't expect them to, it actually outperformed the server it was upgrading and was used as a staging past with intermediate power to the place they were heading too.
And I have everything I ever need installed on a single machine (P.S. two full-speed drive bays), for home, business, gaming, etc., so I don't need to switch machines to do tasks.
Remote/vnc is atrocious for anything of this sort, and I spend most of my working day in RDP / HyperV viewers. That works fine for BUSINESS apps only. My laptop isn't business apps only, it's every program I've ever needed to use, ever. Plus a 20 year email archive. How many people do you see doing video/photo/audio/gaming over RDP? No-one. Why the hell would I pay for a full desktop, pay for a laptop/ipad, and then suffer in a remote session? And OnLive died for a reason.
Your single point of failure is really dredging the bottom of the barrel. So is your PC. In fact, you just added a requirement for another laptop / remote to make it portable that's dependent on it. (P.S. remember those double-drive-bays? Guess how long it takes to remove an SSD and put it into ANY other machine? Especially with VM images on the laptop - the only thing that really runs on the main OS is games, hardly critical!).
It may not be to your taste, but a gaming-level portable machine has far more advantages for some people (whether or not you would use it like that) than a static desktop.
Hint: I specify only static desktops in work. I actively resist all laptops requests, and pretty much they represent less than 1% of the clients I manage. At home, the only desktop I have hasn't been plugged in in years. I think it's still got IDE drives in it, plus one early SATA drive. I've literally not needed or desired it in nearly 10 years. And I have any amount of desktops I could use, including server-grade hardware, and I'm in charge of the budget so I could easily put a desktop into my home for work purposes if I wanted.
My previous workplace? Entirely laptop. Every single machine that wasn't a server was a laptop, plugged into official docking stations in every room. I think it was a disaster. So I have tried both sides of the coin.
It's a choice. Much bigger than "Oh, but you might buy one with a rubbishy numpad". But as a general compromise on minor things to give you much greater flexibility on the larger things, it works wonderfully.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday June 26 2017, @04:19PM
I see you've never heard of a "docking station".
(Score: 2) by KGIII on Sunday June 25 2017, @08:30PM
Marginal disagreement, for me the best laptops have been those classed as mobile workstations. My preference is for Titan. They are a bit pricey, but absolutely worth it - in my opinion. My current model is the X4K and I pretty much picked all the good options. It was pricey but I'm very, very pleased.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: 1) by technoid_ on Sunday June 25 2017, @05:41PM
LAN Party.
Group projects.
Getting comfortable away from your desk.
Working outside on a nice day.
Built in UPS.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday June 25 2017, @09:50PM (3 children)
Because it allows me to work in bed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 25 2017, @10:34PM (2 children)
You say that as if it's a good thing.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday June 26 2017, @12:03AM (1 child)
After a certain age, one gets what one can as a bed partner.
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday June 26 2017, @08:02PM
[edited terribly depressing comment about aging partners] Time to hit the lottery and get a newer model...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 26 2017, @03:13AM
The laptop can be physically moved without any care in the world, and casually takes power drops without the slightest worry.
Nothing quite as annoying as having a summer brownout and "oops, machine rebooted."
Hell, even if you never took the machine out of the house, just being able to bring it from room to room is reason enough.
Unless you're editing 4k video or doing heavy 3D work or whatever, what the hell do you need a desktop for?
The nicest thing is probably the expandability and the lower cost, but it's not like machines have been getting fast enough as time passes for it to matter nowadays.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 26 2017, @07:20AM
My work laptop spends 98% of the time on my desk, but I still have the option to bring it home, e.g. if I need to be home to let in a plumber. I also bring it home when I have vacation, just in case there is some problem that I'm the only one who can fix, because though I'd rather not have them call during my vacation, IF a situation does arise, I'd rather grab the laptop than need to go to the office.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 25 2017, @04:26PM (4 children)
The Retro Thinkpad is actually a *response* to the old die-hard Thinkpad community (those who have used these devices for more than the past 5 years and remember when they were actually excellent machines).
The Thinkpad community has built and produced the X62, which is a modern (Broadwell) drop-in replacement motherboard for the old Core2 Duo X61. This, combined with the IPS SXGA+ screen upgrade, results in a modern Thinkpad at 12.1 inches, which has a proper 4:3 ratio display, and modern internals, up to 32GiB of RAM! These boards have been out for over a year now, and after the first demo batch, have had tremendous success rates with no (known) failures. Pretty good for a community project! If only Neo900 was so successful!
The Thinkpad community is also working on the T70 right now, which would be a drop-in replacement motherboard for the old T60. This would allow a full IPS display with proper 4:3 ratio, up to 32GiB of RAM with a modern Skylake chipset. With a BoeHydis LED display upgrade, one can rock a 1600x1200 UXGA laptop with modern internals, and the best screen ever placed in a laptop (including DreamColor displays in my opinion). As it stands, the Flexview Frankenpad (T61 motherboard in a T60 UXGA IPS chassis) is viewed as the pinnacle of laptop design, and there are hundreds of these machines still in daily use ten years later.
So with these aftermarket motherboards, one can retain the proper display ratio, thin bezels, old keyboard layout, and most importantly, the old trackpoint (trackpoint was re-designed for a buttonless trackpad at the Tx40 iteration 3 years ago, then buttons re-added for the Tx50 iteration, but the motion is still off compared to older trackpoints AND ONLY WINDOWS respects disabling the trackpad, even in the bios) at a fraction of the cost of the new Retro Thinkpad.
So if the Retro Thinkpad is really just a T470 with old style keyboard, as many people assume it will be, you can always order either the X62 (or the T70 in the near future), and with a little bit of work not outside the scope of what a Soylentil would be able to do, you would have a GREAT laptop alternative without feeding the out of control Lenovo beast.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 25 2017, @07:15PM (2 children)
One thing I noted is that 60-series thinkpads are good bit hotter than earlier (say 40-series) thinkpads, especially the area where the memory modules are located - obviously because the latter models memory are driven at good bit higher speed.
So, I wonder if the community version thinkpads may be overheating with faster running components, particularly the memory modules where less attention was paid for their cooling in the first place.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 25 2017, @09:28PM (1 child)
Overheating on those models was a function of the discrete GPU. ATI on the T60, nVidia on the T61. The integrated Intel graphics did not overheat like that, which is what the newer boards are using.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 26 2017, @12:30AM
I meant the memory module area, not CPU/GPU area where fans and heatsinks are provisiioned from the original design.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Sunday June 25 2017, @09:08PM
Are there any LED retrofits for the CCFL laps which like to burn out and either leave you with a black (dead) screen or dim reddish hue? I have two older T40's and a newer T410. One of the T40's with the high resolution display has a bad CCFL. IT starts off with a dim reddish hue and after a few minutes cuts out. Sometimes it doesn't come on at all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 25 2017, @07:02PM
Back in the days, senior code monkeys got thinkpads, architect level monkeys got x-series, and the helpdesk monkeys, if they were lucky, were given dells.
And them thinkpad keyboard keys "clicked" even though I don't think they used mechanical switches.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday June 26 2017, @05:07AM (1 child)
Give us a 16:10 or 3:2 screen, put the 7-row keyboard back--doesn't necessarily need to be chocolate-bar-style, just give us the old layout!--and the ThinkLight. Lenovo, give us what made the T series up to the ?20 generation so great. And you will rule the market. No more chasing Apple in the pursuit of ever-thinner, ever-less-functional devices. No more race to the bottom. Bring back the old brick-solid bento box design. Make things the worker is proud to own, for a decade straight.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 02 2017, @06:10AM
Bundled in malware from the factory. What's not to like...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfish [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 26 2017, @07:24AM (2 children)
Will it run Windows 7? Most new laptops will only run Windows Surface edition, which makes is absolutely terrible on a machine with a keyboard (though it's not any better on a tablet as long as half the settings still only available in REGEDIT).
Oh sure, you could use Linux or something, but I'm a .NET developer, I need Visual Studio and TFS.
(Score: 1) by tedd on Monday June 26 2017, @07:52AM
Where have you been hiding? We have Windows 10 now. It's not much better, but still..
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday June 26 2017, @05:01PM
Windows 7 is obsolete, not sold any more, and won't have any more security updates from MS before too long. Get with the times and use Windows 10. If you don't like Win10, then find another OS; stop expecting MS to sell you an OS that isn't sold any more. If you absolutely must use .NET, Visual Studio, etc., then stop whining and just use Win10 like everyone else. If you hate it that much, then look into a career change. You're a like a Chevy mechanic complaining about how bad all the newest Chevies are. If you hate the stuff you're working on, then stop doing it and find a new line of work (e.g., retrain to work on Fords or Toyotas instead); you're not going to get a giant corporation to change their direction.