x200 announced $1,199

[erik]

With the upgraded GMA X4500 and the DisplayPort in the docking station, can i finally push a 30" 2560x1600 display from an X-series??

Please say yes (if it's true)...

according to anandtech, yes.

[rek]

Imagine there would be a choice of an Xabc model with IPS display but 2" wide display bezel

Hahhaha. You are an evil, evil man!

I get this feeling that if they used an X60-style top cover ("old style" wireless antennas) on the X200, they could have shoehorned the X300's 13" 1440x900 screen in there.. now wouldn't THAT be a great upgrade from the X60 series... sigh. Everything else about the X200 sounds great, except for the screen and oversize case dimensions, which presumably, is due to the screen+bezel.

Re the 12" wide AFFS panel, dollars to donuts that'll be in the upcoming tablet version, where Flexview is a requirement and not just a privilege.

[charles.atcher]

One positive on the wide bezel?

The screen is farther from the edge, perhaps better protected.

Yeah, I'm reaching. Still kind of ugly.

[luckyauto]

--now a day , to have all the wireless feature in notebook ( umpc , <1.5 kg ) is a must .. like wifi , bt , wwan , gps , wimax , and more..,
becasue we are mobile. i giving up to buy sony , and start to look for lenovo , because lenovo go for wireless... ,

--i am using UMPC samsung q1u , is built it every wireless , and i use it bt with gps... i love it , i given up my sony UX.

--i hope new notebook keyboard should have the led back light..
especially , we typing inside the car in night time..

--for x200 , i waiting to buy .. and hope any big brother / member can help for mod bios to disable error of 1802 / 1804 .. , and show the bare of the x200 . to confirm can add the 3g module / wwan card like sierra mc card..

thank


andy , singapore

[apbudha]

does it have a hot palmrest like the x61?

[rek]

does it have a hot palmrest like the x61?

According to the notebookreview.com review Nonny linked to earlier, the answer is no;

(image link) http://www.notebookreview.com/assets/34867.jpg

[rek]

--for x200 , i waiting to buy .. and hope any big brother / member can help for mod bios to disable error of 1802 / 1804 .. , and show the bare of the x200 . to confirm can add the 3g module / wwan card like sierra mc card..

One of our forum members has been able to remove the card lock for other recent ThinkPads, so maybe unlocking the X200 won't be very far away.

This thread has more information: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=55837

[Blackhold]

well, all great, but I have some questions

- will be wifi - wimax - gps integrated in the same card? this will spend a lot of batteries, so then 9,6 hours of batteries with the 9 cell batteries will be disabling this card...

if someone could have one of this jewerly in their hand, could run the computer with a live cd and show us the

# lspci

# lsusb

# lshw

and check for example with an ubuntu wich hardware is automatically detected, please?

I read also that this model will come without modem? that's true?

thanks you much.

[Blackhold]

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=272634

great page

[somemale]

I know there are no system requirements out yet, but do you guys think it'll be good enough to run Starcarft 2 or Diablo 3? Although knowing blizzard, the next X200 version will probably be out by then.

[csv96]

Looks like X200's are starting to show up for preorder. Anyone know what the difference is between these two models? (nothing comes up at Lenovo.com)

http://www.costcentral.com/searchresult ... enovo+x200

[laowai]

I know there are no system requirements out yet, but do you guys think it'll be good enough to run Starcarft 2 or Diablo 3? Although knowing blizzard, the next X200 version will probably be out by then.

Diablo 3... it's low-spec by design, as long as you have something less than 10 years old, it will run.

[stgreek]

Looks like X200's are starting to show up for preorder. Anyone know what the difference is between these two models? (nothing comes up at Lenovo.com)

http://www.costcentral.com/searchresult ... enovo+x200

DVD-RW? That would mean $1100 including an ultrabase and drive, which is ridiculously, unbelievably cheap, which makes me suspicious...

[bobdsmith]

Thats because they are hoping to pawn off the oversized widescreen trash on us at minimal loss.

SXGA 12"

[luckyauto]

well, all great, but I have some questions

- will be wifi - wimax - gps integrated in the same card? this will spend a lot of batteries, so then 9,6 hours of batteries with the 9 cell batteries will be disabling this card...

if

should be included , same as x300 .... wimax readiness . and gps + wwan mini express card with sierra..

[Blackhold]

should be included , same as x300 .... wimax readiness . and gps + wwan mini express card with sierra..

so then... will be a compatible driver for linux machines?

[Blackhold]

I have digged a little bit and found that x300 uses for wireless intel 4965AGN that is compatible with the 2.6.25 kernel.

I've found out that the GPS uses the Sierra EVDO modem.
"Sierra Wireless 1X/EVDO module and a GPS that uses the EVDO module's aGPS"

Then also, the webcam gets work, with the uvc driver...

I wish that the same components on x300 will be at x200...

at the moment, here in spain, we have to wait till september

[kunfuchopsticks]

Looks like X200's are starting to show up for preorder. Anyone know what the difference is between these two models? (nothing comes up at Lenovo.com)

http://www.costcentral.com/searchresult ... enovo+x200

DVD-RW? That would mean $1100 including an ultrabase and drive, which is ridiculously, unbelievably cheap, which makes me suspicious...

That is fishy. The dock usually costs $200 and a burner for dock costs $100.

[luckyauto]

I have digged a little bit and found that x300 uses for wireless intel 4965AGN that is compatible with the 2.6.25 kernel.

I've found out that the GPS uses the Sierra EVDO modem.
"Sierra Wireless 1X/EVDO module and a GPS that uses the EVDO module's aGPS"

Then also, the webcam gets work, with the uvc driver...

I wish that the same components on x300 will be at x200...

at the moment, here in spain, we have to wait till september

although i in singapore. i will not wait for it buying in singapore.
i will ask some one or agent to place the order in USA and ship back to me, usually USA is launching faster than other country..
USA notebook , still consider best buy...

[alekseevs]

"But on the bright side, we will never have to suffer 1024x768 again."

On the darker side, we'll be stuck with widescreen - IMHO only good for watching videos. But who needs this without an optical drive?

Yep, i am afraid it will be tired for me to type on X200 for more than 2 hours.

"Why? Thanks to the widescreen, the X200's keyboard will be bigger than the previous 4:3 X-series keyboards, so it's easier to type on it."

Who cares? I was PERFECTLY fine with the X30 12.1 keyboard and I typed on it for hours on end. You have to have awefully big fingers to need a bigger keyaboard.

Widescreen makes notebooks smaller! It really does!

ah, this pic makes a better point:
http://www.notebookreview.com/assets/34765.jpg

"Guys, you need to understand that the X200 is bigger than the X61 not because of the widescreen display but because Lenovo has to pack so many wireless technologies into the display bezel. If Lenovo were to make a 4:3 X-series with the same functionalities as the X200, it too would have an ugly wide display bezel and it would be bigger than the X61. My 12.1" widescreen HP nc2400 doesn't have as many wireless features, so it's only 11.1" wide versus the X200's 11.6". Incidentally, besides being smaller, this 2.81-lb HP is also lighter than the X200. So, I'm not tempted to replace it with the X200. This HP remains the most perfect ultraportable laptop I've ever owned."

Yeah, right! My girlfriend is using an widescreen HP 12.1 and I am using IBM X30 12.1 - she prefers working on my machine as you get at least 25% more viewing space on word and internet pages. No was I will ever go for HP instead of a Thinkpad also for the reason of having a better keyboard.


"Bottom line: Don't blame the widescreen. Blame the wireless crap surrounding it instead.[/quote]"

Bottom line: The new model is inferior to X60, IMHO.

[bobdsmith]

Bottom line: The new model is inferior to X60, IMHO.

Agreed

[pianowizard]

On the darker side, we'll be stuck with widescreen - IMHO only good for watching videos....My girlfriend is using an widescreen HP 12.1 and I am using IBM X30 12.1 - she prefers working on my machine as you get at least 25% more viewing space on word and internet pages.

Sorry but your X30 has much less viewing space than the HP 12.1". There's so much confusion about display resolution and aspect ratio that I uploaded the following screenshots to illustrate why 1280x800 is superior to 1024x768 for text applications:

Here's a Word document with 1-inch margins viewed at 100% magnification and maximized to fill a 12.1" XGA (1024x768) screen, i.e. the screen you have on your X30. Notice that 37 lines of text can be viewed:

http://i198.photobucket.com/albums/aa13 ... imized.jpg

Here's the same Word document (also with 1-inch margins and viewed at 100%) maximized to fill a 12.1" WXGA (1280x800) screen, i.e. the screen on my HP nc2400 and your girlfriend's HP laptop. Notice that this time we can see 39 lines of text:

http://i198.photobucket.com/albums/aa13 ... imized.jpg

Why can we see two more lines? That's because a WXGA screen has 800 rows of pixels, more than the XGA screen's 768 rows. The 32 extra rows allow you to see more of your text. Now, let's reduce the width of the window to text width and move the window to the far left. Here's what we get on the XGA:

http://i198.photobucket.com/albums/aa13 ... _width.jpg

And this is what we get on the WXGA:

http://i198.photobucket.com/albums/aa13 ... _width.jpg

Notice that on the WXGA screen, we now have freed up lots of room on the right half of the screen. In fact, we have just enough room for displaying another Word document! This is very helpful in many situations, e.g. when you are reading your student's term paper on the left while typing comments in another document on the right. Both documents have 1-inch margins and are viewed at 100%:

http://i198.photobucket.com/albums/aa13 ... y-side.jpg

For these reasons, I consider the increase in resolution from 1024x768 to 1280x800 a huge improvement for the X series (and most other brands' ultraportables for that matter).

The only advantage the XGA screen has over the WXGA is that things appear slightly bigger, as you can see in the above images where 100 pixels correspond to 1 inch in real life.

I hope this "crash course" helps.

[snv]

With screen preferences, so many people take it too personal

There are just so many ways that one can look at the same things (and measure the same screens)...

Here's a Word document with 1-inch margins viewed at 100% magnification

That is if you understand "magnification" in the MS Word sense (provided that the logical dpi is set the same for both screens despite them being physicaly different). OTOH, if you think of 100% magnification as 1in of a virtual document (with 1pt = 1/72 in for the font size, etc.) corresponding to 1in on the physical screen, then you'll arrive to the opposite conclusions.

Is the glass half full or half empty?


A random weird though: X3x is about U.S. letter size, X200 is close to A4. Are the notebooks turning metric?

[pianowizard]

That is if you understand "magnification" in the MS Word sense (provided that the logical dpi is set the same for both screens despite them being physicaly different).

Yes, that's what I was talking about. But regardless of how one defines "100%", 1024x768 makes it very hard to view two documents side by side. Sure, you can do it by displaying each document at something like 70% (again, that refers to MS Word's scaling), but the text would look crappy because each letter would be composed of fewer pixels.

Keep in mind that in this post and my last post, I was specifically comparing 1280x800 with 1024x768, which are the most common 12.1" resolutions. If you compare displays with higher res, the outcome might be different, e.g. while 1440x900 makes it slightly easier to view two docs side by side than 1400x1050, each document would show fewer lines of text. But when you compare 1600x1200 with 1920x1200, which are common for 15.0" and 15.4" screens, the widescreen would win again.

[snv]

@pianowizard:
I do not argue with you conclusion: it is perfectly correct, if one has the same criteria for choosing a screen. I just want to point out that these criteria are not universal. Different people may have different needs and preferences, and it is often not because they are uneducated.

But regardless of how one defines "100%", 1024x768 makes it very hard to view two documents side by side.

Consider a person whose eyesight, not the screen dpi, limits the level of detail that s/he can see. In this case, using larger fonts (in terms of real pt/in/mm, not just pixels) is a must, and viewing two documents side by side is not even distantly possible. With the minimum character size in mm determined by what your eyes can see, the vertical screen size in mm will determine how many readable lines would fit the screen. (And software not always makes it easy to comfortably enlarge fonts pixel-wise, that's why some people prefer XGA over UXGA.)

Now suppose one is choosing a light-weight ThinkPad with a vertical screen size of 185 mm in mind (which is the X3x vertical screen size: 4:3 aspect ratio, 308 mm diagonal). The wide screen laptop not sacrificing the number of readable lines of text (for a person with a poor eyesight) would have a diagonal of 185.0/3*sqrt(5**2 + 3**2) = 359.6 mm, which is about 14.1 in. So, a 14-in widescreen T6x is as light-weight as you can get to keep the vertical screen size of an X3x.

So, IMHO, there is nothing wrong if someone chooses whatever is easier on his/her eyes.

OTOH, the screens are moving from 4:3 to 5:3, and it is a fact of life. Nobody in favor of "tallscreens" seem to argue against 4:3 (why not 5:4, for example?). Emotional attachment of some forum members to the 4:3 aspect ratio is just too high to permit a balanced discussion of this topic. So, IMHO (and looking from the "glass is half-full" perspective), those who prefer "tallscreens" may just feel lucky that they still have some choice.

As a matter of full disclosure :
I do not have sufficient esperience with widescreens, so I prefer 4:3 just because I am used to it.
I do have a good eyesight and would likely appreciate UXGA over XGA (if not for the bulk and weight) - and yes, I know that QXGA is even better It also happens that I really like larger fonts, just because jugged or blurred letters irritate me; 20-pixel bitmapped font for a text terminal is my preference. I doubt that I will like two pages side-by-side on anything smaller than WUXGA.
I consider the full-size keyboard on X200 a really nice feature (although I do not have "awefully big fingers" and am quite happy with my smaller X31 keyboard). I can easily imagine that some could prefer a wider notebook with a thicker bezel just to have the full-size keyboard; just as that some could be of the opposite opinion.

[pianowizard]

Consider a person whose eyesight, not the screen dpi, limits the level of detail that s/he can see. In this case, using larger fonts (in terms of real pt/in/mm, not just pixels) is a must, and viewing two documents side by side is not even distantly possible.

I agree, and that's why I said "The only advantage the XGA screen has over the WXGA is that things appear slightly bigger....".

To summarize our discussion: 1280x800 has 30% more pixels than 1024x768, so it can provide 30% more real estate than 1024x768. But whether the user is willing to or knows how to take advantage of these extra pixels is another story. Sounds fair?

[snv]

But whether the user is willing to or knows how to take advantage of these extra pixels is another story. Sounds fair?

Not quite. My point was that it is not always "is willing to or knows how to", but for some, "whether one is physically capable of" taking advantage of the extra pixels. You could, perhaps, change some people's preferences with a bit of education and/or prescription glasses, but it may not work for everyone.

[pianowizard]

My point was that it is not always "is willing to or knows how to", but for some, "whether one is physically capable of"

Well, in my view, being "physically incapable" is just one of the reasons why one would be unwilling to display text documents on a 12.1" 1280x800 screen the way I described.

[snv]

@pianowizard: Sorry, I must have misunderstood your words. Now I think that we agree