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ThinkPad designer David Hill on unreleased models

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Re: ThinkPad designer David Hill on unreleased models

#81

Post by nosrepa »

goosedragons wrote: post #63
bArray wrote: post #58

> However, Hill said, he thought about putting a butterfly keyboard on a netbook when they were a viable product category in the late aughts. I really want to see sub-11" notebooks again. They were super cool travel laptops. > The dual lights would have eliminated shadows and provided even better illumination, but unfortunately, this effort proved too costly to make it into the final product. Ridiculous. Function mus…

GPD has some. Particularly the GPD Pocket 4. 8.8" Notebook with a AMD HX 370 processor and up to 64GB RAM. Can even work as a KVM.

I have one and I love it, but damn do I hate the key layout on it. Which is a shame because they have saner layouts on some of their smaller offerings.

Re: ThinkPad designer David Hill on unreleased models

#82

Post by dustinmr »

WillAdams wrote: post #4

The fibrous Trackpoint is still my absolute favourite. For folks who want more in-depth backstory, going all the way back to the beginning and the origin of the "ThinkPad" name see: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/483933.ThinkPad I really wish that there would be a true heir to the mantle, and a return to some of the original ideas, esp. the early stylus models and variants such as the TransNote --- if Lenovo wou…

I have a few of the THINK notepads that I found in my grandfather’s things after he passed away. He was an IBM employee in the 50s and 60s.

I remember picking the first one up and saying out loud, “that’s where the name came from!”

Re: ThinkPad designer David Hill on unreleased models

#84

Post by brikym »

I have always found thinkpads to be the most overrated laptops ever. I far prefer Macbooks in all aspects beit ergonomics, aesthetics or performance. I don't get the love for Thinkpads. Maybe it's just nostelgia clouding people's judgement because I just see something which is clunky, ugly, plastic, noisy with a crap screen and crap battery life. The keyboard is the only thing I like more, but the macbook keyboards are okay these days.

Re: ThinkPad designer David Hill on unreleased models

#85

Post by whyenot »

Maybe I’m just sentimental, but My Thinkpad x300 was the toughest, most productive laptop that I have owned. I took that laptop deep into the Amazon where it was exposed to near 100% humidity for months. It’s plastic / polycarbonate shell stood up to a tremendous amount of abuse, and it’s keyboard was awesome. Times have changed and now I mostly use Apple products, but they are not nearly as tough, or have as nice of a keyboard as that X300.

Re: ThinkPad designer David Hill on unreleased models

#86

Post by MBCook »

al_borland wrote: post #68
cosmic_cheese wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that impression comes from the laptop feeling “hollow” more than it does from it being light. This could probably be engineered around by doing things like holding the battery up against the laptop’s palm rest with a rim of TPU or similar between the battery and the case to deaden vibrations and make it feel more “solid”.

Haven’t some products been found to have weights inside just to make them feel more premium?

Yeah. Dense = quality (and thus expense) is something people think.

I don’t know if it’s innate or learned, but I would certainly like to.

Re: ThinkPad designer David Hill on unreleased models

#87

Post by cosmic_cheese »

MBCook wrote: post #86
al_borland wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haven’t some products been found to have weights inside just to make them feel more premium?

Yeah. Dense = quality (and thus expense) is something people think. I don’t know if it’s innate or learned, but I would certainly like to.

My theory is that this is a sense that people picked up on thanks to the outpouring of various cheap electronics from China from the 90s onward. They tended to be enclosed in thin plastic shells that were sometimes larger than necessary in attempt to increase visible differentiation from competitors sharing the same internals. This made them feel hollow, and people associated that feeling with cheapness.

By contrast, high end electronics brands like Sony used thicker enclosures that were made with a thicker, less resonant plastic or even metal and focused on miniaturization which naturally lent itself to more dense products. People then associated that denseness with quality.

Re: ThinkPad designer David Hill on unreleased models

#88

Post by theandrewbailey »

garciansmith wrote: post #16

I miss the ThinkLight (and the dual-light idea he had sounds great). Useful when working in a dark environment to look at papers and whatnot, or just to provide a nice amount of ambient light to smooth out the contrast between the screen itself and your surroundings. Most modern laptops have backlit keys, but those don't help in those cases; they are pretty much only useful for people who can't touch type.

All the ThinkLights I've used were dim, barely brighter than the backlight bleed from the screen. I would have to be in a pitch black room (at night with no light, not even a street light outside) for it to be useful.

Re: ThinkPad designer David Hill on unreleased models

#89

Post by theandrewbailey »

dekhn wrote: post #65

In England the nub was referred to as the nipple. I had a series of think pads. I think the last one was a t61p running Lennox and it was truly glorious. I can't remember if it was that model or an earlier one which had a battery known as the tumor which stuck out the back. You could hibernate the laptop and swap in another battery and turn the laptop back on and keep working without rebooting. Everything since then…

I went to a college in Utah (USA) that issued ThinkPads to every student. Since 90% of the students were guys, of course it was called the nipple.

Re: ThinkPad designer David Hill on unreleased models

#90

Post by theandrewbailey »

> After the sale, Hill got to work on building the ultimate ThinkPad, the X300. When it launched in early 2008, the X300 was one of the thinnest and lightest laptops made... It was also the first ThinkPad to ship without an IBM logo on it.

I swear that the ThinkPad z61p I got in July 2007 had Lenovo branding on it.

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