Conversation with designer of X60 at CES
Posted: Sun Jan 08, 2006 12:42 pm
Hello all, I visited the lenovo room yesterday with the sole purpose of checking out the X60 and was suprised to find the designer of it standing right next to it answering questions. Wanting to take advantage of this my friend and I asked him just about every question one could possibly ask so ill start posting some of his answers that I can remember. If you have one for yourself, just post it and if we asked him that, we will post what he said.
The system itself is definatly a little bit thicker to accomidate for the 2.5" hard drive. The drives themselves are SATA and now use the rubber shock mounts that the T series uses. The hard drive was move towards the back of the unit with the mini-pci cards in the front right palm rest and the PCMCIA slots in the front left. The pre-production model he had with him was using a Intel Centrino Duo running at 1.83GHz. He finally put a 4 pin firewire port back on the unit stating that he was upset that the X40 didnt have it so he put it back. As for the color changes to the keyboard, it was nothing to get upset about. He said that in business research studies the colors stood out too much and the grey F keys were not necessary since they were already segregated from the rest of the keys enough. There will be models with Verizon BroadbandAccess (EVDO) built in which will add a small antennea to the right side of the monitor. They finally added an indicator light that specifically shows that the unit is plugged in instead of relying entirely on the battery indicator to do this. He also redesigned the planar board so that there is no longer any pre-soldered memory and both SODIMM slots are accessable from the bottom of the unit and it has a maximum memory capacity of 3.2GB.
As for looking into the future we asked if there was a higher resolution display in the works to which he stated that at least this year there are no plans to increase it since most business customers are uncomfortable with the higher DPI displays.
Finally, I asked the question that is probably on everyones mind:
"Is there a X60 tablet in the works?"
to which he replied "At this time I cannot confirm or deny that", I told him that I would take that as a "yes" and he simply reminded that I didnt hear anything from him. After speaking with him for a good half hour or so and using his X60 for just as much time I will most likely be selling my T42 and getting an X60 tablet once it is available. He didnt tell us an exact date but went into reasoning why there wouldnt be one in february with the X60 release. He specifically stated its been 6 months since the X41 introduction and the release of a new system would be much too soon. When I brought up the one year mark he just kinda smiled and again said he couldnt confirm or deny anything. So I would say to expect it in the next 6 months.
The system itself is definatly a little bit thicker to accomidate for the 2.5" hard drive. The drives themselves are SATA and now use the rubber shock mounts that the T series uses. The hard drive was move towards the back of the unit with the mini-pci cards in the front right palm rest and the PCMCIA slots in the front left. The pre-production model he had with him was using a Intel Centrino Duo running at 1.83GHz. He finally put a 4 pin firewire port back on the unit stating that he was upset that the X40 didnt have it so he put it back. As for the color changes to the keyboard, it was nothing to get upset about. He said that in business research studies the colors stood out too much and the grey F keys were not necessary since they were already segregated from the rest of the keys enough. There will be models with Verizon BroadbandAccess (EVDO) built in which will add a small antennea to the right side of the monitor. They finally added an indicator light that specifically shows that the unit is plugged in instead of relying entirely on the battery indicator to do this. He also redesigned the planar board so that there is no longer any pre-soldered memory and both SODIMM slots are accessable from the bottom of the unit and it has a maximum memory capacity of 3.2GB.
As for looking into the future we asked if there was a higher resolution display in the works to which he stated that at least this year there are no plans to increase it since most business customers are uncomfortable with the higher DPI displays.
Finally, I asked the question that is probably on everyones mind:
"Is there a X60 tablet in the works?"
to which he replied "At this time I cannot confirm or deny that", I told him that I would take that as a "yes" and he simply reminded that I didnt hear anything from him. After speaking with him for a good half hour or so and using his X60 for just as much time I will most likely be selling my T42 and getting an X60 tablet once it is available. He didnt tell us an exact date but went into reasoning why there wouldnt be one in february with the X60 release. He specifically stated its been 6 months since the X41 introduction and the release of a new system would be much too soon. When I brought up the one year mark he just kinda smiled and again said he couldnt confirm or deny anything. So I would say to expect it in the next 6 months.
This is probably the main reason I've not bought an X60 yet. Show me the resolution! It's got everything else I could want in a laptop, without the weight! ARGH! 