Those blogorific engineers over the Lenovo blog Yamato Thinking are once again sharing their insight into the design and engineering process behind our beloved ThinkPads.
This time they are talking about “Team Minus 2W” (2W = 2 Watts in engineer speak). Dubbing themselves “Power-Saving Samurais,” Yamato’s bloggers go on to talk about the goals and process behind their hunt for power savings. As we all know, with laptop technology becoming more and more advanced, more bits and pieces are being stuffed into the same chassis and using more power. The compounding factor in the drive for power savings is that as mobile devices become more popular and accessible, more people are using them for longer periods of their day, making longer battery life a necessity.
Taking off 2 watts of electricity consumption goes a long way for a 6-cell battery: it adds 2 more working hours for the X series, and 1.5 hours for the T series. As a result of our team effort, we received very positive comments from our customers and magazine reviews which complimented the long battery life of our 2008/2009 laptops. Today, we will take a peak at the effort behind the improvement.
Have you ever seen a white man willingly dress up in a Kimono? Would you, for the chance at winning a ThinkPad T400s?
The folks in Lenovo’s Japan offices sure know how to have a good time, throwing a killer party at Toky’s Roppongi Hills tower (a 54-story megacomplex that has offices, apartments, shops, restaurants, cafes, movie theaters, a museum, hotel, major TV studio…well, you get the picture).
Even cooler was the contest to win a brand spanking new T400s. To even be eligible you had to dress up in a Summer Kimono, known as a Yukata, but to win you had to build a paper airplane and fly higher than anyone else.
Lenovo’s ThinkPad T400s featured a number of unique additions and changes to the ThinkPad line, like the controversial revised keyboard layout, yet another revised interior design, and the larger, textured multi-touch touchpad.
VP of Corporate Identity & Design David Hill already blogged on the new touchpad, and now some of his colleagues across the world in Lenovo’s Yamato design labs have shared some of their insight on what went into the new touchpad design. Japanese culture and design philosophy has had a huge influence on ThinkPad design from day one, even something as simple as a bento box, so it’s no surprise to see the correlation into these innovations found in the T400s. Check out the excerpt below and hit the link for the full post.
The trademark feature of the new Touchpad is its textured surface. The UV-print texture is applied on top of the traditional Touchpad surface. The sensation is smooth but with a feeling of definition. The texture was inspired by the traditional Japanese handcraft technique known as Inden.
The blogging engineers over at Yamato Thinking are teasing us once again, saying a few non-revealing words about a new keyboard design. Once again, this new design is most definitely on the T400s, but that name was not mentioned in the post. Hit the link…to be teased.
As you know, the ThinkPad keyboard has always tried to stay as true as possible to the desktop keyboard layout. The challenge is squeezing those keys onto the limited space of a notebook PC. Designers must bend their creativity towards providing the best user experience possible within limited space. During this process, we often find ourselves thinking, “the desktop keyboard might not actually be the ideal layout.”
A bit more cryptic than anything, Lenovo’s design blog has a post up today about the newly redesign TrackPoint. They specifically discuss a final tweak made to the design, resulting in a change of only 0.1mm to the device. You can hit the link for the full read, but really it’s just teasing us about the ThinkPad T400s…
The thing is that our fingertips are quite sensitive and that a difference of 0.1 mm can be significant in many cases. This is why we are so insistent and sensitive about this “mere 0.1 mm, but a definite change.”
Other input devices such as the keyboard and touchpad have also been tweaked. Even with all the new looks, the exterior still carries a good amount of traditional ThinkPad aesthetics where users can look at it and notice that it’s a ThinkPad after all.
We all know ThinkPad hinges are rather renowned and that while lesser notebooks flop around like a leaf in the breeze, ThinkPad hinges hold strong for years. Now the folks over at Yamato Thinking (one of Lenovo’s blogs) have posted a video showing how the hinges are tested. There is nothing terribly exciting to see here, but it is an oddly beautiful sight.
If you’ve ever laid your eyes on the Lenovo ThinkPad W700, you know it’s a monster of a laptop. It’s so big that Lenovo didn’t need to think twice when choosing a model to go dual screen with – as they did with the W700ds – because this laptop was so big that, hey, a little more weight could hardly hurt it.
I’ve personally had a chance to work on the W700 and let me tell you, it is one capable laptop, with a built in digitizer, a beautiful bright LCD, a quad core extreme processor, and RAM up the wazoo among many other features. Compared to some smaller laptops I’ve worked on, it truly is a joy to use. But while it is “only” 17″ and 8.3lbs, the sheer physical size of it in conjunction with the large power cord and other accessories can make it very difficult to carry around.
Arimasa Naitoh over at Yamato Thinking recently took his W700 on a road trip to see if it would be worth it. He chose it over the more portable ThinkPad X301, another laptop I’ve used and fallen in love with for completely different reasons. In the end, he found the ease with which it handled his CAD/design needs made the shoulder strain and funny looks at the airport worth it.
Frankly, I’m not sure I could handle carrying around the W700 all day. It always seemed like a bedroom-to-living-room kind of portable laptop to me. But I guess it’s doable if you need to, and not just doable – well worth it, if Naitoh is to be believed. Have you had an experience transporting the W700? If so, how has it worked out for you?
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Have you ever seen a white man willingly dress up in a Kimono? Would you, for the chance at winning a ThinkPad T400s?
Hit the link for the rest of the April Fools gag.
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