Thinkpads Forum

Here's the basic problem:

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2 ... -asus-acer

PCs are just not a very profitable business these days... and the cell phone business is headed the same way.
I heard from a financial guy who was being interviewed on TV that in the entire mobile space, Apple was making
90% of the profits, and everyone else had to scramble for the remaining 10%.

Lenovo is probably trying to figure out how to stay in business at this point. The mobile workstation market
may be a bright spot at this point, but that's really a different market than the general business laptop market
that many of the readers of this forum would buy.

We can only hope that the Retro Thinkpad project can get funded; otherwise, we'll all be forced to use chicklet keyboards
in a few years and get our meals from pills, as in the year 2525: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izQB2-Kmiic

otherwise, we'll all be forced to use chicklet keyboards

I hate chiclet keyboards! They're the reason I bought an old Thinkpad to type on. I currently have a Unicomp Model M hooked up to my HP Envy main machine for the same reason.

There's a lot of truth in that article. I know at the school I teach at that we have a long term contract with Dell, and they're apparently very eager to maintain it. Its not just the sales, its the long term sales and support contract.

You can look at PC makers the same way as airlines. Everyone wants more and better (planes, PCs, frequencies, seats, you name it), but the consumer expects the prices to be so low that the companies often have trouble making a profit (today's low oil, high fee airline environment excepted). And, once the PC has been sold or the plane has landed, there are precious few opportunities to continue making money from the consumer. Toss in the fact that PCs no longer have to be the super high powered machines that we coveted a few years ago and you have the genesis for trouble. Lower priced, more basic Chromebooks and the like are becoming more common. Many of my students bring simple tablets to class, and my last "PC" purchase was a an HP Pavillion X2 tablet costing just $350 bucks. There couldn't have been much profit on that.

I think we'll have traditional PCs for a long time, but the market will contract and there will be consolidation, just like in the airline industry. I have to say, I miss the good 'ol days of reading Computer Shopper and viewing the multitude of systems and manufacturers available in the late '90s and early 2000s.

Bob

jcvjcvjcvjcv wrote:There is zero reason why a $15 more expensive screen and $1 more expensive keyboard would tag on a few hundred. We've seen thing like that before with Lenovo, when they asked about $350 more for the 14" 4:3 T61 compared to the 14" 16:10 T61; total nonsense. Still, there was a waiting list for that thing. And then they killed it because... didn't they say "too low demand"?

A taller screen would most certainly add something in the region of 500$ or more. The X300 screen, which was a custom and crappy 13" 16:10 TN screen, costs more than 500$. That was back when 16:10 was still somewhat common.

As for the keyboard, the classic keyboard would be cheaper, not more expensive (due to the lack of backlight).

I don't know what the demands were, but I know that Lenovo had a plan for its image, which it has been consistently pursuing over the last years. They want to appeal to a different/wider customer base, which is why they made many of the changes that older fans don't like.

the market will contract and there will be consolidation, just like in the airline industry

It's looking like Dell, HP, Lenovo, and Apple are the only ones which are going to be left, soon.
If China goes south, who knows what will happen? I'd hate to have to use a Mac... I'd even
hate to have to use a Mac that I bought from a fake Apple store.

600X wrote:

jcvjcvjcvjcv wrote:There is zero reason why a $15 more expensive screen and $1 more expensive keyboard would tag on a few hundred. We've seen thing like that before with Lenovo, when they asked about $350 more for the 14" 4:3 T61 compared to the 14" 16:10 T61; total nonsense. Still, there was a waiting list for that thing. And then they killed it because... didn't they say "too low demand"?

A taller screen would most certainly add something in the region of 500$ or more. The X300 screen, which was a custom and crappy 13" 16:10 TN screen, costs more than 500$. That was back when 16:10 was still somewhat common.

As for the keyboard, the classic keyboard would be cheaper, not more expensive (due to the lack of backlight).

I don't know what the demands were, but I know that Lenovo had a plan for its image, which it has been consistently pursuing over the last years. They want to appeal to a different/wider customer base, which is why they made many of the changes that older fans don't like.

No way Lenovo paid $500 for these panels.

I don't know what the demand was either, but I know it was big enough to keep a 3-month waiting time alive for a pretty long time. So either demand was high, or supply ridiculously low. And keep in mind that was all with the $350 tagged on. It's not about costs or impossibilities, it's about not wanting to do it.

jcvjcvjcvjcv wrote:It's not about costs or impossibilities, it's about not wanting to do it.

Exactly

If China goes south, who knows what will happen?

That might actually help those PC makers, like HP, who source most of their machines from China. I just ordered an HP Star Wars special edition laptop. Yeah, I'm a geek. Its being shipped from China via FedEx. If China goes bust, then manufacturers could demand lower manufacturing prices from facilities there. Whether they'd pass that on to the consumer over here remains to be seen. The danger there is that the burgeoning Chinese middle class, which wants things like PCs, cell phones, and cars, would be seriously impacted and that would erode market share and expansion for these same PC makers. In the end, it would likely be a wash, at best.

Bob

A taller screen would most certainly add something in the region of 500$ or more. The X300 screen, which was a custom and crappy 13" 16:10 TN screen, costs more than 500$. That was back when 16:10 was still somewhat common.

In a business running on 3% margin, feasibility is totally dependent on volume.
Apple ships a lot of 16:10 screens, and we're asking Lenovo to do the same thing
on a small part of its product line. It's got to be a tough problem to solve.

What I don't understand is the the idiotic thinking of the panel manufacturers.
Are they really selling tons of 14" 16:9 screens to television manufacturers?
Who buys a TV that small these days? I can see how that would have been
a real novelty back in 1971, but now?

bit_twiddler wrote:

A taller screen would most certainly add something in the region of 500$ or more. The X300 screen, which was a custom and crappy 13" 16:10 TN screen, costs more than 500$. That was back when 16:10 was still somewhat common.

In a business running on 3% margin, feasibility is totally dependent on volume.
Apple ships a lot of 16:10 screens, and we're asking Lenovo to do the same thing
on a small part of its product line. It's got to be a tough problem to solve.

There is a problem. 16:10 1440x900 screens are LVDS interface.
16:10 1920x1200 screens in size 13.4 - 14.9" DO NOT EXIST (http://www.panelook.com).

So at a bare minimum you need extra $$$ for a custom eDP (2-lanes) interface to 1440x900 screens.
The MacBook Air screen is crap. I saw one just a day or two ago. It would never have shipped on a T4x. Viewing angles suck to save power.

So you probably need $120k (guess) of tooling and board design for a 1440x900 high-quality eDP (2-lanes) screen.
And you probably need $120k (guess) of tooling for a new design of a 1920x1200 high-quality eDP (2-lanes) screen.

If Lenovo can sell 20,000 laptops thats a $44 premium to make it worth their while to take this risk (which might help Apple).

It's actually possibly cheaper to revive 4:3 screens manufacturing lines and get the makers to install brighter WLED backlights with custom driver boards and eDP (2-lanes) interfaces. The tooling probably exists and it's just an electronics change which could probably be done for $5/LCD ($10/laptop after Lenovo Markup). You already need new motherboards so why not change the form factor?

Lenovo is a big fat chicken though, and they are probably losing money because they are afraid to do anything risky and the entire country's stock market is collapsing and investors are angry and not happy with Chinese corporations right now.

So it's possible that the China stock meltdown just killed the T90 project at Lenovo.

bit_twiddler wrote:

A taller screen would most certainly add something in the region of 500$ or more. The X300 screen, which was a custom and crappy 13" 16:10 TN screen, costs more than 500$. That was back when 16:10 was still somewhat common.

In a business running on 3% margin, feasibility is totally dependent on volume.
Apple ships a lot of 16:10 screens, and we're asking Lenovo to do the same thing
on a small part of its product line. It's got to be a tough problem to solve.

What I don't understand is the the idiotic thinking of the panel manufacturers.
Are they really selling tons of 14" 16:9 screens to television manufacturers?
Who buys a TV that small these days? I can see how that would have been
a real novelty back in 1971, but now?

Wider aspect ratio gives smaller screen with same diagonal, for example 14,1" 16:10 gives 576.47cm², when 16:9 provides 548.07cm². That means less material and more money in a manufacturers pocket.

Puppy wrote:

murak wrote:This will only take away more of the Thinkpad brands credibility.

It hurts Even more crappy keyboard layout and crappy extra-vulnerable crippled OS. Next time we will see the ThinkPad name on this http://www.amazon.com/Discovery-Kids-Te ... B0045H29OY

This is not true. Chromebooks have significantly higher user interface quality, on average, than the average sub-$400 laptop. Chromebooks have many minimum specifications for sound, keyboard, and display. And so you may be trashing chromebooks out of ignorance, but many people are buying chromebooks and expanding them into full-fledged laptops with large M.2 SSDs running windows or Linux and Steam because Google is forcing the manufacturers to "do the right thing" or they cannot get the Chromebook label and the OS port on their laptop.

bit_twiddler wrote:

A taller screen would most certainly add something in the region of 500$ or more. The X300 screen, which was a custom and crappy 13" 16:10 TN screen, costs more than 500$. That was back when 16:10 was still somewhat common.

In a business running on 3% margin, feasibility is totally dependent on volume.
Apple ships a lot of 16:10 screens, and we're asking Lenovo to do the same thing
on a small part of its product line. It's got to be a tough problem to solve.

What I don't understand is the the idiotic thinking of the panel manufacturers.
Are they really selling tons of 14" 16:9 screens to television manufacturers?
Who buys a TV that small these days? I can see how that would have been
a real novelty back in 1971, but now?

Well, we've heard the excuse that there is less waste if the glass is cut in 16:9. Which I think is total B.S., since that argument is used for all sizes 16:9 and was also used for 16:10. You simply can not have "large sheet of glass" and end up with less waste when cutting it in 16:9 all the time. Also; a 15.6" panel costs next to nothing; for all I care they waste half the sheet; it's still only a 2-digit price difference.

Perhaps has more to do with the Samsung logic that found out that you can cheat consumers, because they are not aware that 20" 16:9 is less area than 19" 5:4.

I regularly pay through the nose for some rare piece of hardware; be it a 16:10 30" monitor, some high-quality PWM fan, a $3K DSLR body, a rubber-sealed, metal-canned USB stick (Corsair Survivor); all so called "low-profit" sectors; yet it's all available. But a single Windows laptop with anything else than 16:9 is too hard... give me a break.

For all I care they cheat their employees out of 0.0005 percentage point of next year's wage-raise, swap to 3:2 for employer-issued laptop and there; they have their minimum order quantity.

TFT glass substrates are typically 2,200mm x 2,500mm [8th gen] so the programmed gantry cutters would ensure minimum waste regardless of substrate size. it's the assembly process for the multi layers that's probably the bottleneck.

10th gen is 2,750mm x 3,050mm btw.

Despite those are very interesting facts for me as a technician,
this implies an inversion of perspective.
I am / we are paying customers and do not need to worry about semi-public problems of the production.

Only for a Classic Thinkpad with 4:3 form factor (at least for 14" and 15") I would give Lenovo a lump of money!

lophiomys wrote:Despite those are very interesting facts for me as a technician,
this implies an inversion of perspective.
I am / we are paying customers and do not need to worry about semi-public problems of the production.

Only for a Classic Thinkpad with 4:3 form factor (at least for 14" and 15") I would give Lenovo a lump of money!

You do if such tooling needed for TFT assy is a one off bespoke purchase, i doubt enough paying customers could fund the tooling budget given the small pool [5K tops???] of retropad diehards. From that POV it'll be easy to kick the project into the weeds unless you price it over 10K USD and get cash up front.

From my POV there will be no Retropad, the economics just dont add up given what the prospective customers are likely to demand. However as a tool for Dave Hill etc to try to show Lenovo the error their ways in their design path over the last 5 years which helps the design guys in their discussion with Chinese it might be beneficial.

there are certainly more than 5K people interested in the retro thinkpad. you have at least 13k people who answered the blog posts.

There are probably more interested in it than the voters.

That being said, not everyone will buy whatever they pull out. I guess there will be something in 2017, but what exactly and how interesting remains to be seen.

As you said, the polls may lead them to some design choice for the 2017 line up which would see good things back. Aspect ratio comes high top, if they can solve the shipping issue. But 3:2 laptop seems doable by other, so why not lenovo?

Buying classic keyboard rights from Lenovo and order a production run to Compal after a Kickstarter campaign, that's the ultimate and ever more plausible course of action that would get us something close to a Classic Thinkpad.

Besides a moment of grace happening at HP or Dell's headquarters.

Summilux wrote:Buying classic keyboard rights from Lenovo and order a production run to Compal after a Kickstarter campaign, that's the ultimate and ever more plausible course of action that would get us something close to a Classic Thinkpad.

Besides a moment of grace happening at HP or Dell's headquarters.

If I were to buy a new TP, I would back such a kickstarter. But it needs to work 100%, so no nastyness with scancode corrections and messed up external keyboards.

Summilux wrote:Buying classic keyboard rights from Lenovo

Is it needed to buy rights for keyboard that looks like desktop keyboard ?

And I believe the touchpad/trackpoint combo is provided by synaptics, or are they proprietary?

jcvjcvjcvjcv wrote: If I were to buy a new TP, I would back such a kickstarter. But it needs to work 100%, so no nastyness with scancode corrections and messed up external keyboards.

Absolutely. It should provide the exact same seamless experience as if it were churn out by Lenovo itself. Complete, transparent hardware and software integration.

Though external version would be welcome too. Maybe featuring both USB and BT connections (with a hardware switch for the latter), in order to maximise the prospects and help amortise the production costs of the keyboard.

hhhd1 wrote: Is it needed to buy rights for keyboard that looks like desktop keyboard ?

And I believe the touchpad/trackpoint combo is provided by synaptics, or are they proprietary?

I expect that some keyboard features were patented and/or have had design features registered. Though I haven't checked, and patents could have expired.

In any case, this would be an essential step and some form of dialogue with Lenovo would be desirable, so that things go as smoothly as possible.

Or just ignore their patents. Patenting something, then refusing to sell the product is not nice.

jcvjcvjcvjcv wrote:Or just ignore their patents. Patenting something, then refusing to sell the product is not nice.

And then pay millions of dollars to Lenovo after Lenovo goes to the court and wins the case? Making holding onto these patents a very profitable business even if they don't want to use it themselves?

kony wrote:

jcvjcvjcvjcv wrote:Or just ignore their patents. Patenting something, then refusing to sell the product is not nice.

And then pay millions of dollars to Lenovo after Lenovo goes to the court and wins the case? Making holding onto these patents a very profitable business even if they don't want to use it themselves?

If they can't be bothered to actually use the patent because volume would be too low, they shouldn't be bothered by patent infringing either.

Either way are patents of that type are total [...]

Like Apple with their "Slide to unlock"

Sorry, what is this baloney about patents?

The "classic keyboard" is all about the layout. Since when does anyone have patents on that?

The trackpoint may be patented by IBM (and Lenovo inherited it), but even if it hasn't expired yet (which it should have), other manufacturers have been using trackpoints for years, so obviously whatever licensing situation exists, it has been resolved.

Somebody call for a patent lawyer?

dr_st wrote:Sorry, what is this baloney about patents?

The "classic keyboard" is all about the layout. Since when does anyone have patents on that?

The trackpoint may be patented by IBM (and Lenovo inherited it), but even if it hasn't expired yet (which it should have), other manufacturers have been using trackpoints for years, so obviously whatever licensing situation exists, it has been resolved.

There could be the shape of the keys, the scroll button of the trackpoint (I don't recall this being implemented in HP and Dell designs), some design protection for the 7th row, etc.

But again, I'm no specialist and didn't dig into the matter. My point (since I'm the one who introduced the notion of patents into the equation) is that, would such an endeavour as making a Classic Thinkpad replica by ourselves happen, it would be important to iron out the potential utility & design patent issues.

JPOESQ wrote:Somebody call for a patent lawyer?

Bless your appearance!

Could you give us your sentiments over the matter at hand? By the look of it, would replicating the Classic keyboard (and maybe other design elements) be a major pain point for any company or group of people venturing in offering the community an alternative to Lenovo's current offering?

Is there any notion such as "design abandonment" in anglo-saxon law, which could be useful for anyone wanting to reclaim the manufacturing rights of the Classic keyboard?

I think Lenovo should just rerelease the T500, with a new motherboard of course, and as long as they're doing that, recenter the screen, give it symmetrical hinges, color the Trackpoint buttons - essentially this: http://i.imgur.com/Wg0XlDP.png

They can even call it the "Retro" R series.

Summilux wrote:There could be the shape of the keys, the scroll button of the trackpoint (I don't recall this being implemented in HP and Dell designs), some design protection for the 7th row, etc.

There can indeed be a patent on the shape of the keys, but it's not what you would want to copy. The middle trackpoint button with scroll capabilities is implemented on some HP / DELL laptops. I am not sure what you mean by "design protection" for the 7th row, but in the past many laptops had such 7-row keyboards.

Can Lenovo design a ThinkPad logo laptop without basic issues ? I don't think so. P70 is supposed to be a $7000 workstation but typical user experience is like this https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-P ... -p/2247131

I understand there are issues but this is a way too much.

Puppy wrote:Can Lenovo design a ThinkPad logo laptop without basic issues ? I don't think so. P70 is supposed to be a $7000 workstation but typical user experience is like this https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-P ... -p/2247131

I understand there are issues but this is a way too much.

Sepy been posting on the forum here too: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=70&t=119903