Thinkpads Forum

I'm disappointed Lenovo decided to use Android on their powerhouse tablet. I currently have an Android tablet and a phone, so I understand the capability it has. Never once did I wish my devices had a Thinkpad Keyboard and a (optical?) Trackpoint. But there were many times I wished my laptop's screen could just snap off and be used as a tablet. It does give Lenovo a very good advantage in the saturated Android tablet market, but as a Thinkpad fanboy, I wish they at least offered something similar that runs Windows.

Yeah... Maybe wait for someone to shim Windows 8 onto it?

I think that Android and open source is a viable alternative, I have confidence in Lenovo providing good support, in my mind probably a lot better than other device manufacturers. As for Windows, I think with the release of Win 8 (or whatever it will be called) will bring momentum back.

You need touch input and good ARM support if you want a tablet, and Windows can do neither. If you want a hard-to-use UMPC with a kludgy pen to simulate mouse clicks you could have bought one years ago ;-P

In fact, there is no OS out there at all that provides both excellent tablet and desktop usability. You need completely different GUIs for the two, or it'll just plain suck. Windows 8 might run on ARM but then it'll lose its only strength (namely, run legacy x86 apps).

scl23enn4m3 wrote:I'm disappointed Lenovo decided to use Android on their powerhouse tablet. I currently have an Android tablet and a phone, so I understand the capability it has. Never once did I wish my devices had a Thinkpad Keyboard and a (optical?) Trackpoint. But there were many times I wished my laptop's screen could just snap off and be used as a tablet. It does give Lenovo a very good advantage in the saturated Android tablet market, but as a Thinkpad fanboy, I wish they at least offered something similar that runs Windows.

Count me in. We have plenty of Android entries, not a lot of Windows machines.

Whether they're waiting for Windows 8, whether it has performance problems on the Tegra 2, whether it needed too much storage, or whether they just failed to imaginate or ask the audience ... who knows?

I, for one, can live with Android on my portable in the short run - I switched to Lucid Puppy on a $6 USB Flash Drive after tiring of losing three hard drives in a year - and no, peanut gallery, I wasn't pounding them with a hammer. While I'm disgusted with the non-portrait-mode keyfolio functionality, I'm thrilled that we finally have a 10" XGA Thinkpad again.

My next slate will be the Thinkpad one, just waiting to be in the markets to buy it. Lets not try to convert it into another ultraportable PC. Honeycomb is just for what a tablet is meant. The Tablet PC is the X220t.

elray wrote:We have plenty of Android entries....

Not in the business tablet space.

Cheers,

Bill B.

an dont forget that the guys at the xda developers are working in porting the ubuntu onto the transformer tablet ... guessing that they use the same architecture in the thinkpad tablet as well, it shouldnt be that hard to port the same onto this beauty!!!

No, not all all. I use windows at work and Linux at home, with an Android smart phone.

Looking fwd to an android tablet next year

Is the X series convertable tablet not to your liking? It has a 'real' computer OS, supports fingers and pens.

scl23enn4m3 wrote:I'm disappointed Lenovo decided to use Android on their powerhouse tablet. I wish they at least offered something similar that runs Windows.

Lenovo US site says that a windows based Lenovo P1 is coming this fall)
http://shop.lenovo.com/us/products/tablets/

I think the IdeaPad Tablet running Windows will depend on how well the Android based IdeaPad Tablet sells.

Personally, I don't think 1 GB of RAM is enough to run any version of Windows.. except maybe Windows 95.

ecoupons wrote:Personally, I don't think 1 GB of RAM is enough to run any version of Windows.. except maybe Windows 95.

Windows XP ran normally on my T42 when it had even 512mb RAM,of course after upgrade to 1gb made things better...I worry much more about the CPU...if it will be an Atom based tablet,it will be a fail(

anabol wrote:Windows XP ran normally on my T42 when it had even 512mb RAM,of course after upgrade to 1gb made things better...I worry much more about the CPU...if it will be an Atom based tablet,it will be a fail(

Current windows versions doesn't run on anything but x86 until at least Fall 2012. That limits the hardware choices to Intel Atom and AMD Zacate, basically. Which is really on the very slow side for a standard Windows install, while at the same time nowhere near the power efficiency of ARM. Of course Windows doesn't have adequate touch support either, so its not like there is an opportunity lost...

For all MS Windows addicted people - have a look at the feature list here http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/cont ... 36CC727E1E -> scrool down the page and look at IdeaPad column. There is a IdeaPad P1 Windows based tablet announced for later this year and you can read out from the IdeaPad column that it could be delivered with Intel(R) Lincroft for Oaktrail 1.5GHz processor. But in my honest opinion, MS addicted should be waiting until Windows 8 release.

wolfindersteppe wrote:But in my honest opinion, MS addicted should be waiting until Windows 8 release.

+10

To all of MS Windows addicted people - not the ThinkPad but Samsung has just unveiled Samsung's Series 7 Slate PC on IFA 2001 in Berlin, http://www.engadget.com/2011/08/31/sams ... -hands-on/.

I am wishing there was a good Windows-based tablet, regardless of brand. Yesterday I carefully evaluated my mobile computer needs and concluded that I want to have just one laptop (probably my current Toughbook Y5), plus a sub-2lb tablet that runs Windows 8, has a full-sized USB port and an external video port. This tablet needs to run Windows because I need to install all the programs that I use on the road, including the full Microsoft Office suite. Right now, there are several sub-2lb tablets that run Windows 7, have one USB and one HDMI port, but Windows 7 isn't optimized for tablets, in terms of performance and touchscreen support.

I used to be not into tablets at all but after getting an HP Touchpad during last month's fire sale, they have grown on me quite a bit. I like the touchscreen, light weight, long battery duration, and instant-on. I like to use my Touchpad to display sheet music on my piano, for quickly getting on the internet when all my other computers are off, and for reading eBooks. I wish I could travel with it but I can't, because it doesn't run Windows, doesn't have a full-sized USB port, and doesn't have external video output.

pianowizard wrote:a sub-2lb tablet that runs Windows 8, has a full-sized USB port and an external video port. This tablet needs to run Windows because I need to install all the programs that I use on the road, including the full Microsoft Office suite.

From what has been demoed on //build that tablet probably going to cost you something in the $2k range because Win8 is only marginally lighter/faster than Win7. So you'll need a recent x86 CPU, SSD big enough to hold a full Windows install, and forget about 8h+ battery lifetime.

Well, the current 10" Windows 7 tablets start at around $500 for brand-new units and $300-400 on eBay. (I forgot to mention that I need 10", no smaller and no larger.) They are slow indeed but fast enough for me. My main speed requirement is that when I am playing the piano and reading the music in a PDF file, I need the new page to load within a second every time I flip the page. I agree that battery duration would be way under 8 hours for sub-2lb Windows 8 tablets, but that's a sacrifice I am willing to make. I am hopeful that in about 3 years, I will find a tablet that meets my requirements on eBay for $300 delivered. Intel's Atom processors (if they still exist 3 years from now) would be fine, and by then 64GB SSDs will be very affordable.

Sadly, the P1 (http://www.engadget.com/2011/07/20/leno ... -7-should/) has vanished from the Lenovo Web site. I am hoping to and continue to hear rumors of a slate of the ThinkPad Variety running Windows. Win8 will make a difference, but as a tablet user since XP tab edition, and a thinkpad Xt user since the x200t was released, I have been wanting a full slate with similar specs and some kind of kbd-battery dock.

I hope they will make the move eventually, but it may end up being after the release of windows 8.