Lenovo shows off new laptops that twist and roll If there was a kingdom of laptop screen flexibility, Lenovo would take the crown. Last year, the company released the ThinkBook Plus Gen 6, with a mechanical screen that could roll out to increase its size from 14 to 16.7 inches. Now, it’s back with the ThinkPad Rollable XD concept laptop that expands from 13.3 to 16 inches at …
So we can do sensible(?!) things, like make it shake its head reproachfully every time an incorrect password is given.
And we promise, Scout's Honour, not to do things like make it turn every time the mouse is moved sideways or refuse to let you be seen in the video call after it has been going for at least fifteen minutes and you start talking.
When I'm awake in the middle of the night, I sometimes get up and work on my X1. Back in bed, my girlfriend notes I don't have a heated keyboard. So I pass the suggestion on to Lenovo: instead of wasting that heat through side slots, vent it upwards through the keyboard. Since AI is now a requirement, use it to feel my fingers and decide where to direct the heat.
You're of the opinion the webcam on them works and that there isn't an inbuilt physical shutter.
Camera on my X1 doesn't work (never has), so I leave the physical shutter covering the lens as there's no point leaving it uncovered.
Personally, I think it's a great security feature! Means I have to use a much more obvious webcam that I can physically unplug in addition to the larger, more obvious lens cover that USB webcam comes with.
But my concern would more be with how the screen twists and covers part of the keyboard. Perhaps that's a feature to combat RSI? Encourage users to plug in an external keyboard, which would then encourage the use of an external mouse, too...
allows the Auto Twist to qualify as a Copilot+ PC, which means that it can run exclusive offline AI tools such as Microsoft Recall and Windows Studio Effects
Wow, great, fantastic! Ensure it can run the AI shit nobody fucking well wants, needs or uses, but also ensure you can't upgrade the RAM as it's soldered on. FFS, when will these companies get a grip and focus on things people might actually want in a PC/Laptop instead of ramming nonsensical and unfit for purpose crap into them. Yes, the folding screen might have a use case someday and these are demo units so not the final product, but does anyone ever buy a PC/Laptop specifically to use the AI features? Seriously? The option to upgrade the RAM yourself is a far more compelling reason to buy a specific machine and I'd be more than happy to have a non-Copilot capable machine if it meant I had an easy upgrade path in the future.
Intel Inside was just marketing. It meant that the CPU was a 32-bit Intel, instead of Cyrix/AMD, or heaven forbid, a 680x0 and whatever Apple was using back then.
Each new boxed Intel CPU came with the sticker, probably still comes, now with an updated sticker:
Centrino was the first (mobile) platform mandate with specific chipset+CPU+wireless, all made by Intel of course.
Then they marketed Ultrabooks and now Evo, both also requiring specific Intel components.
Not that different from my Lenovo business laptop and the glistening (hideous) AMD Ryzen sticker.
Upgradeable and repairable started going out the window on laptops when the obsession with "thin and light" came along thanks to stuff like the Macbook Air.
The best way to find anything of that ilk now is either going with a gaming laptop or some of the mid-range Dell/HP/Lenovo business models from a couple of years back. The 2021ish Dell Latitude i7 I was given at work is surprisingly easy to service and upgrade, despite having a unpleasant feeling keyboard and one of the worst trackpads I think I've ever come across.
I have a gen 6 X1 Carbon that for the most part gathers dust on a shelf. The reason? The effing keyboard. At the best of times the keyboard is an abomination compared to the older ThinkPad keyboards, but they compounded the issue by changing the layout of the home/ins/del buttons.
So I still use the old X220 daily, firing up the X1 very occasionally, and keep the interaction to a minimum.
Now, if a company were to make a decent replacement keyboard for these...
When did you last think they gave a toss about what you want? It's been a long time since any company has though that designing a product for the people who will use it is a good sales strategy.
Now they build the products that they want to sell and get marketing to force feed it to you.
Unfortunately this works most of the time
"you can't upgrade the RAM as it's soldered on."
I'd like to see the tech specs/service manual before making that claim. In the case of Lenovo, at least, consumer grade stuff invariable has only soldered on RAM. Business grade used to always be SODIMMS, but they now come in cheapest option, no SODIMM sockets, mid range with soldered on RAM + 1 SODIMM and high end with only SODIMM sockets. You get what you pay for.
It's a shame they went for the gamer branding on that one. I rarely feel like i need some additional vertical real estate on my 13"laptop (it's a 3:2, but a lot of new models are 16:10 already), but i can definitely imagine situations where having some additional room for side-by-side windows comes in handy.
Also, execs would absolutely eat that concept up. Imagine their boner when they show off this thing expanding to show that big spreadsheet they don't understand in it's entirety!
All the Old Guard who grew up with "luggables" and saw them change into decent, robust, "laptop PCs" have moved on and the younglings don't have any actual experience to guide them. They barely comprehend why people want to type instead of using a 'phone (those designers "are Creatives", they don't need to bother with hours at the spreadsheet or any of that ridiculous side-by-side diff'ing).
Without the ability to judge for themselves whether an idea is any good to Real Users they foolishly finish off the engineering models and hold them all up for the public to see ("look, I done my potty").
There is nothing basically wrong in *having* daft ideas and discussing them in the right forum; good stuff can come when a bit from there is added to half of that whacky thought. But it just gets a bit sad when the synergy fails and they end up, well, here. And being talked about in public like this. You almost feel sorry for the poor wee darlings.
Vaguely off subject, when we have such marvelous tech, why isn’t it standard now that phone cameras filter out (or at least have the option to filter out) the owners breathing?
I’ve often had the same issue as the first video, you quickly film something, upload it, and realise you should like lusty goblin heavy breathing over a laptop.
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