Lenovo ThinkPad T400s - Simple Tap screenshot

Lenovo has shaped up quite a bit over the past few years. For the most part now, when they launch a product, you can go on their website and buy it the same day. Today Lenovo announced multitouch screens for the existing ThinkPad T400s and X200 Tablet, along with an additional outdoor viewable screen for the tablet.

It just so happens the T400s and X200T are already on sale, and that discount carries over to models with the new displays as well. I already discussed how the T400s multitouch (MT) was fun, but not quite practical for the $400 upgrade price. However all of the multitouch capabilities and features, including Lenovo’s new SimpleTap software, would absolutely transform a convertible tablet.

If you were looking to get ahold of a T400s MT, you can do so at 10% off the base price of $1999, bringing the entry fee to $1,799. The X200 Tablet is a fair bit cheaper, starting at $1654 before a 15% coupon that drops it down to only $1405. Less than $1500 for a multitouch tablet with 5+ hours of battery life? Yes please! Details on the deals below

How to get the T400s multitouch deal

1. Choose the “ThinkPad T400s with Multi-Touch” model and configure
2. Enter coupon code in shopping cart with no spaces before/after: USPBANNERS

How to get the X200 Tablet multitouch deal

1. Choose the “ThinkPad X200 Tablet with Multi-Touch Screen” model and configure
2. Enter coupon code in shopping cart with no spaces before/after: USPXSERIES

Who saw this one coming? A multitouch display, much less on a non-convertible notebook? Crazier things have been done, like wrapping a laptop in leather. To make use of the multitouch features, Lenovo loaded a mostly-final version of Windows 7 on the T400s multitouch (MT) along with a new ThinkVantage utility: SimpleTap. TrackPoint enthusiasts will appreciate the homage paid within this application. Without further ado, let’s dive in.

Multitouch

For those not familiar with multitouch technology, it refers to an LCD that supports capacitive touch-sensing from multiple simultaneous inputs. Translation: you can use your fingers as you would on a regular old touchpad, and four of them at a time will be recognized. Capacitive touchscreens are nothing new and have been featured on other laptops, like Dell’s Latitude XT Tablet, and of course we are all familiar with the iPhone.

As I alluded to, capacitive touch-sensing is actually a feature of your touchpad and is the basis of how it operates. The T400s touchpad and many others these days are multitouch, supporting two inputs at once. The ThinkPad T400s MT supports four inputs at any given time, although you really won’t find much of a use for that right now.

Windows 7 & Multitouch

So, you’ve got this fancy capacitive, multitouch screen. Wonderful. Now what do you do with it? Windows 7 has added a number of touch, and specifically multitouch, features over Vista. They also designed the system with touch interfaces in mind and made it a bit more user friendly in that regard. The taskbar is taller for easier switching between applications and touch functionality like flick gestures, scrolling, rotating, and zooming are natively built into the OS. I won’t belabor something that the Windows 7 themselves has already done justice for, so read more about the specific features Win7 offers for touch here.

Lenovo ThinkPad T400s multitouch (left) compared to regular T400s (right)

ThinkPad T400s MT

The T400s MT is visually identical to a standard T400s, except for the extra 3.3 mm (0.13 inches) of thickness added by the capacitive touch panel, as measured by my digital caliper. Battery life is expected to stay nearly the same, although we won’t be testing that today as the software is still not quite final.

Does the extra thickness inches make a big difference? Not in my eyes. The T400s weighs closer to that of a standard T400, although I am lacking the official weight at the moment, but still comes off as a more svelte than its brethren.

The multitouch display itself works well, as one would expect. It does have a special coating designed to repel fingerprints and keep the screen smudge free, which it does very well. The ThinkPad X61 Tablet SXGA+ screens in particular were horrible with smudges and it could be quite an annoyance, making this feature much appreciated.

For those who are considering this screen on the ThinkPad X200 Tablet, Lenovo also reports that they have optimized the system firmware to “to help compensate for slightly imprecise taps on the screen, such as when closing a window or navigating the Start menu, helping make navigation easier for Tablet users.” When asked about what exactly was done in the firmware, Lenovo representatives said only that it was rather technical. While it doesn’t appear this updated firmware is for use on the T400s, I didn’t have much trouble with tapping on the edge; even with my ham fingers.

SimpleTap

While many were likely disappointed over the final list of what ThinkVantage Technology software would be carried over into Windows 7 (I will miss Presentation Director dearly), Lenovo has ADDED functionality to Windows 7 instead of just taking it away. Enter: SimpleTap. The red dot, ala TrackPoint, at the top of the screen shown above is the trigger for SimpleTap. Tap it with your finger, or click it with the mouse.

As its name implies, you simply tap the red dot and the interface you see above appears. These tiles are inspired by the old “Classic 15″ puzzle game and control various functions; read more about the design on David Hill’s blog. Some tiles trigger the function directly, like turning on the ThinkLight, and change color indicate status. Others pop up a slider, as shown below, and allow you to adjust the volume or brightness to your liking.

Included in the default interface are all the system functions you could ever want to control:

• Volume, Mic, & Webcam mute
• Volume & Screen Brightness adjustment
• System lock
• Webcam preview
• Wireless radio control
• Sleep (requires two taps to activate)
• ThinkLight

Not enough for you? You can add a tile for any application or web page you want, as shown in the interface above. Notice the black tile below the main group in my screen shot. This is a tile I created that takes me straight to ThinkPads.com. You can specify a range of colors for added tiles, and when linking to a website you can even pull in the site’s favicon. VERY nice touch.

SimpleTap is a very neat utility, but will truly show its usefulness on something like the tablet where you don’t have a keyboard & mouse handy in slate mode. Check out the video below for a demonstration of its features. I love playing with the slingshot effect – watch the video and see what I mean.

Real World Usage

As you could maybe tell from my opening line, myself and others are likely skeptical as to what a multitouch display does for a notebook that doesn’t convert into slate mode, i.e. no keyboard/mouse. I personally found myself minimizing windows via the taskbar and scrolling web pages. The two finger scrolling is very nice and smooth.

I found the flick gestures a bit sloppier, but they are really something that just needs some practice. Flicks can be rather precise depending on how you activate the gesture, from a small bump on the page to a large, flying scroll. Windows 7 even simulates reaching the end of the document and bumps the window, to signify the scrolling reaching the end. Very slick.

Lenovo’s Access Connections and Power Manager utilities are by default setup as their own little tab on the taskbar, making for easy access via touch. While it would be nice if the icons in Access Connections itself were a bit bigger, tablet or other touch users shouldn’t have much trouble accessing these utilities via finger touch. Kudos to Lenovo on a slick Windows 7 integration, even if they did take away my favorite ThinkVantage utility.

So when you get beyond interacting with Windows, there is always zooming in on photos/text and rotating photos. That’s neat, but you could also just do that on the touchpad. What else is there? Games.

Microsoft Windows 7 multitouch Garden Pond game - the object is to move your little origami boats around

Microsoft includes several neat touch interactive games with the Touch Pack. Two of them can be two player, involving causing water rippled to move little origami boats in one and a complex version of pong involving forcefields. There is also a little puzzle game, which tells you what to do and thus defeats the puzzle aspect, and a nifty screen saver that lets you cause ripples in a pond and scare little fishies away. Click here for a good overview of the Touch Pack applications.

What can someone REALLY do with this?

Is there anything else you could use it for? If you have a specific application that is designed around touch, or is well suited to touch input, then the T400s would give you that capability without the compromises of a smaller tablet model. That could mean a lot to a specific industry or group within a company that would benefit from touch input, but needs the full featured capabilities in a notebook like the T400s. And let’s face it, performance, size, and quality don’t get much better than the ThinkPad T400s.

However both myself and Lenovo recognize that the touch app market is relatively small. Think of the T400s MT as almost a proof of concept: it can be done, done well, and hopefully open the doors to new uses. In fact, Lenovo pointed out one of those potential new uses to us. Check out the YouTube video below of a new CAD program that extensively uses multitouch input.

I talked to a mechanical engineer friend of mine and he added that while touch input would not be useful creating the baseline design and wireframe, being able to model and modify a design as shown in the video would be very cool. I’m not sure how much added value you would really get out of it, but there is value.

Should you buy it?

So it’s really cool, but is it for you? I think we’ve covered that while a multitouch screen on a non-tablet computer has some neat uses, it’s not exactly a practical purchase. The ThinkPad T400s with multitouch display is priced at $1,999, which near as I can tell would compare against the standard “sale” price of the T400s at $1,599. $400 is a lot of coin to swallow for a neat, if not excessively useful feature that adds a bit of heft to a truly thin & light notebook.

If you’re a developer working on multitouch applications, then the T400s MT would make perfect sense. You can do everything you need to, on the go, and test all your apps whenever you want. But how many of those customers are out there today? Not that many.

SimpleTap is a very cool feature that adds leaps and bounds of functionality for a multitouch display, especially one on a tablet. Not only that, but it is very customizable as all Lenovo ThinkVantage utilities generally are. Keep up the good work Lenovo.

In the end, the multitouch display is an excellent piece of technology, but one better suited for the X200 Tablet that also announced today. If I were shopping I couldn’t justify the $400 for the MT display on the T400s, but you bet I would buy it in a heart beat on the X200 Tablet. It adds a ton of usability to a tablet in slate mode, especially with Lenovo’s very cool SimpleTap software. It’s like that old commercial: “Multitouch – don’t leave home without it.”

Today Lenovo has announced two new versions of their ThinkPad T400s and X200 Tablet models featuring a capacitive multitouch display. The multitouch display allows for use of up to four fingers at once to interact with the operating system, and relies on capacitive sensing rather than resistive sensing, making for a much better user experience.

Lenovo ThinkPad X200 Tablet with outdoor viewable screen compared to standard screen

There is also another new display available on the X200 Tablet, a truly outdoor viewable screen. While this offers a bright 400 nits, the trick to outdoor viewability is reducing reflectivitiy and Lenovo cut that down to only 1.2%. You can see an actual photo shot by the Lenovo product manager in charge of the tablet above.

The ThinkPad T400s with multitouch display starts at $1,999 and is available for purchase here. The ThinkPad X200 Tablet with multitouch display starts at $1,654 and can be purchased here. Those looking for the outdoor viewable screen will pay $1,704 and you can configure yours here.

We have both a ThinkPad T400s multitouch and X200 Tablet outdoor viewable in the labs. You can look for the T400s MT review later today, and the X200 Tablet to follow tomorrow. I look forward to fielding your questions in the comments! Press release is after the jump.

Lenovo Adds Touch of Simplicity to New MultiTouch Screen ThinkPad PCs

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, NC – September 15, 2009: Lenovo today is bringing business users a new way to work with multitouch screen technology¹ on the versatile and portable ThinkPad X200 Tablet PC and slim and powerful ThinkPad T400s laptop. Lenovo is also introducing SimpleTap, an application that brings simplicity to the multitouch screen experience.

“We see now as the right time for multitouch screens on PCs,” said Sam Dusi, vice president, worldwide ThinkPad product marketing, Lenovo. “With touch screens increasingly becoming part of more devices we use routinely and continued improvement of the technology including the integration of touch in the upcoming Windows 7 operating system, the environment for making touch part of our Tablet PC and ThinkPad T400s laptop experience couldn’t be better. We’ve also extended the touch experience with SimpleTap to make frequent hardware-based functions touch-enabled and simple.”

Lenovo also today announced a new defense against the sun for outdoor workers with a new super bright optional screen on the ThinkPad X200 Tablet.

Personalizing Productivity on the PC with Touch

Users can now interact with their ThinkPad PC in a more personal way with multitouch screen technology. Designed for highly mobile users, the optional multitouch screen ThinkPad X200 Tablet caters to individuals in fields such as sales, health care and education. Already supporting one finger touch, these users can now use two-finger touch to perform a variety of gestures, including pinching, zooming, tapping and flicking through documents, web pages and photos instead of using a mouse.

The high performance ThinkPad T400s laptop serves professionals in engineering and design. Now these users can manipulate four fingers on the ThinkPad T400s laptop’s optional multitouch screen to not only replace the mouse but transform the way they work. They can now use four fingers to manipulate objects, move images with two hands and even have another person touch the screen to collaborate simultaneously. As new multitouch applications are introduced, there will be new possibilities for using multitouch screen laptops.

Using advanced capacitive touch, the screens are sensitive and responsive to even the slightest touch of the finger. Lenovo also optimized the firmware to help compensate for slightly imprecise taps on the screen, such as when closing a window or navigating the Start menu, helping make navigation easier for Tablet users. To combat fingerprints, an anti-fingerprint coating helps keep smudges at bay and the screen clean. The multi-touch screens also allow users to enjoy ultra long battery life with up to nine hours on the ThinkPad X200 Tablet.²

With upcoming ThinkPad X200 Tablet models supporting the Microsoft Windows 7 operating system, these mobile users can also take advantage of improved predictive text over previous operating systems, improved handwriting recognition in more languages and formula input features for math and scientific equations.

More details on the ThinkPad T400s and X200 Tablet are available at www.lenovo.com.

Adding a “Touch” of Simplicity to Touch Screens

Touch screens are designed to make interaction with a PC natural and intuitive, however, often users must switch between touch screen gestures and pressing hardware buttons. Lenovo designed SimpleTap, a ThinkVantage Technology, to enable uninterrupted use of people’s touch screens by giving them access to hardware-based functions that may be more easily accessed via touch input. For Tablet users, that means staying in tablet mode longer while on-the-go, saving time and being more productive.

To use SimpleTap, simply double tap anywhere on the screen to launch the application. A clean and efficient grid of colorful and transparent square tiles, inspired by the classic 15 Puzzle, opens on top of the work beneath and allows users to choose several hardware-based functions including: turning on or off the wireless radio, ThinkLight and microphone, previewing the camera, enabling mute, adjusting the volume or screen brightness, locking the screen or putting the PC to sleep. To exit SimpleTap, just tap once anywhere on the screen to close the grid and continue working. As a quick access interface, SimpleTap allows users to get in, perform a function and get out quickly.

Designed to be highly customizable, individuals can create their own tiles to enhance their personal productivity. For example, a sales professional could create a tile that launches a sales presentation with just the tap of a finger. A health professional could similarly create a tile that pulls up a patient’s medical information instantaneously. Or a consumer could quickly access his or her favorite website. Users can arrange the tiles however they choose by dragging and grouping them together, and designed to be fun to use, the tiles can even be flicked around the screen.

Click here to see a video demonstration of SimpleTap and here to read more about the design and inspiration behind the application.

Brightening Tablet PC for Outdoor Light

To further extend tablet computing outdoors, users can now choose a super bright outdoor screen that displays images even in direct sunlight. For field engineers, sales professionals, students and others who work outside, outdoor viewability is critical. The new optional outdoor screen on the ThinkPad X200 Tablet offers excellent viewability with a bright 400 nit screen, low 1.2 percent reflectivity and wide viewing angle. Coated with a thin anti-reflective layer, the screen provides crisp and bright images that can easily be seen indoors or outdoors. Mobile workers can also stay productive with the Tablet’s all day battery life.

A photo of the ThinkPad X200 outdoor screen compared with a standard screen can be viewed here.

Pricing and Availability³

The ThinkPad T400s with the multitouch screen and the ThinkPad X200 Tablet with the multitouch screen and the outdoor screen will be available starting immediately through business partners and www.lenovo.com. Pricing starts at approximately $1,999 for the ThinkPad T400s with the multitouch screen and $1,654 and $1,704, respectively, for the ThinkPad X200 Tablet with the multitouch screen and outdoor screen. SimpleTap will be available for download after October 22.

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About Lenovo

Lenovo (HKSE: 992) (ADR: LNVGY) is dedicated to building exceptionally engineered personal computers. Lenovo’s business model is built on innovation, operational efficiency and customer satisfaction as well as a focus on investment in emerging markets. Formed by Lenovo Group’s acquisition of the former IBM Personal Computing Division, the company develops, manufactures and markets reliable, high-quality, secure and easy-to-use technology products and services worldwide. Lenovo has major research centers in Yamato, Japan; Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, China; and Raleigh, North Carolina. For more information see www.lenovo.com.

¹Multitouch does not support all applications.

²With an 8 cell battery. Battery life varies dependent upon user settings.

³Prices do not include tax or shipping and are subject to change without notice and is tied to specific terms and conditions. Reseller prices may vary. Price does not include all advertised features. All offers subject to availability. Lenovo reserves the right to alter product offerings and specifications at any time without notice