Commentary

Laptops of the Future: 2015

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Computerworld is running a really cool article with several mockups of future laptops – laptops/ultraportables we might be using in 2015. Needless to say, thin and light is definitely in, and touchscreens have become incredibly relevant in their view. All have some form of touchscreen … Read more

Notes on the Dell E4200 and E4300

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I want to take a brief moment and mention a few things that stood out to me about the Dell Latitude E4200 and E4300. It’s easy to get lost in the specs, but here are some things that jumped out: – Display Port – replaces … Read more

The Draw of Small Notebooks (jkOnTheRun)

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Over at jkOnTheRun, James Kendrick has written a good commentary on what draws many of us to the smaller notebooks. He discusses the Fujitsu LifeBook P1620 and the Asus Eee PC, and the attention that the Eee PC has been getting lately (something that surprised … Read more

Lenovo ThinkPad X300: What You Won’t Be Reading in a Review

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Lenovo ThinkPad X300 Up on Lenovo’s Inside the Box blog, the ThinkPad X300 designers have posted a comprehensive article about the Lenovo ThinkPad X300 covering, in their words, some of the things you won’t be reading in a review.

They literally are things we haven’t seen in any of the reviews or articles about the X300 (and it would appear that many of them could be utilized in a re-designed sequel to the ThinkPad X61 series).

Some of the highlights:

The ThinkPad X300’s paint/covering: The soft touch paint is absolutely intoxicating to run your hand across. It’s unlike any other ThinkPad finish we’ve had before and even better than our black external USB hard disk drives. I’m sure there will be lots of comments about how Kohut’s gone off his rocker, calling ThinkPad a fetish item, but try it out for yourself. You’ll see what I mean.

The bottom of the X300, and user access to user serviceable parts: here are several things that have been improved and are worth noting. First, in direct response to customer feedback, there is one door access to the memory slots, wireless, and mini PCI card slots. Our engineers stopped using one-door access design when the original Roll Cage was introduced in order to give the card slots and memory protection via the Roll Cage. While they accomplished their goal, the drawback was that servicing these was harder than many customers liked. With the X300, ThinkPad engineers figured out how to give both serviceability and protection.

The design of the X300 feet (yes, those little rubber things on the bottom!): The rubber feet deserve special mention. Though the system uses solid state HDDs, the system still needs as much protection as ever from shocks and bumps. These rubber feet are an iterative result of years of research and development (and patents) for protecting ThinkPad systems. There are multiple layers of protection here.
1. The shape of the foot itself. As an experiment, with the same amount of force, poke yourself with one finger and then three fingers in the same spot on your arm. Notice how when you use three fingers, the force is better distributed because it is not focused on a single point. ThinkPads have been using this design point for several generations and I have yet to see another vendor who has figured out this concept, much less implemented it.
2. There are two kinds of rubber. Soft rubber provides maximum cushioning and dampening for minor bumps.
3. Bonded to the soft rubber is a hard rubber. This is needed for harder bumps and falls when the softer rubber “bottoms out.”
4. The center nib (or nipple, if you insist) is an actual airbag which when depressed under force, acts to control deceleration to minimize damaging forces on the system.

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Apple Ultraportable on September 5th?

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Apple Just over a month and a half ago, there were rumors of some kind of “Ultra-thin, Ultra-light” Apple notebook. They concerned an ultraportable Mac with a 12″ widescreen display (something the 12″ iBooks and PowerBooks didn’t have), that weighed around three pounds, and was around 3/4″ thick (very doable with today’s LED-backlit displays). That did not come to pass at the time.

Low and behold, tomorrow, September 5th, there is going to be a major announcement from Apple, with a definite iPod flavor and potentially a Beatles theme. You can view the invitation at AppleInsider.com – it features a yellowish motif and the words “The beat goes on”. Depending on what era you first started listening to music, that either invokes memories of Sonny and Cher, or thoughts of the Beatles’ final press release from April 10, 1970:

Spring is here and Leeds play Chelsea tomorrow and Ringo and John and George and Paul are alive and well and full of hope.

The world is still spinning and so are we and so are you.

When the spinning stops — that’ll be the time to worry, not before.

Until then, the Beatles are alive and well and the beat goes on, the beat goes on.

It’s no secret that Apple (Steve Jobs) has been wanting to add the Beatles to iTunes, and so far three out of the four Beatles’ solo libraries have been added, or are in the process of being added. I think it’s pretty safe to say that they are adding the Beatles (especially now that the lawsuit between Apple, Inc., and Apple Records is over). I wouldn’t be surprised to see new iPods as well.

However, I’m not here to discuss iPods and the Beatles (although I like both), I was asked by a couple of people what I thought, and here goes:

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