Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Technology

Lenovo's Weird New ThinkBook Finds a Whole New Place To Add a Second Screen (cnet.com) 43

CNET News writes about Lenovo's ThinkBook Plus Gen 3. From the report: With the first two generations of the ThinkBook Plus, Lenovo put an E Ink display on the lid of a 13-inch laptop. The external display lets you read, take notes, get notifications and see your work calendar, all without opening the laptop. It's a cool idea but also kind of limiting. Aside from being a laptop with two displays, the third-gen model is nothing like its predecessors. For starters, it's an ultrawide 17.3-inch laptop with a 21:10 aspect ratio and a 3,072x1,440 resolution at 120Hz and with 100% P3 color gamut, which could be interesting if this were a gaming laptop. But it's not, it's made for doing work. The second display, an 8-inch color pen-enabled touchscreen with an 800x1,280-pixel resolution, is embedded in the laptop deck to the right of the keyboard and touchpad. It's like if you set down an 8-inch tablet on your laptop's keyboard and it just latched on and wouldn't let go.

Aside from the dual displays, though, the laptop isn't too unusual. It'll be powered by 12th-gen Intel Core H-series processors and have up to 32GB of LPDDR5 memory and an up-to-1TB PCIe NVMe Gen 4 solid-state drive. It has security features you'd expect to find on a Lenovo business laptop in addition to a fingerprint reader in the power button and a full-HD webcam with an IR camera for face recognition and a privacy shutter. The Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 3 will be available in May starting at $1,399, which seems reasonable for what you're getting.

This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Lenovo's Weird New ThinkBook Finds a Whole New Place To Add a Second Screen

Comments Filter:
  • Lenvo says... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Berkyjay ( 1225604 ) on Thursday January 06, 2022 @12:35PM (#62148991)

    Fuck those left handed people.

    • Fuck those left handed people.

      Or ambidextrous people -- put the screen in the middle of the keyboard!

      (Just kidding. I can't even type that well on a contiguous keyboard...)

      • Yeah, that's my WTF reaction, they have a giant laptop, put a tiny keyboard on it, and use the space that should have been taken up by a larger keyboard to bolt a crappy tablet onto the side. WTF?
  • The pictures only show right handed version and nothing mentioned about a left handed version. No go for me...
  • How dare Lenovo assume my handedness! Who do I report this hate crime to?
  • I've never figured out why aspect ratios for screens need to be so weird. 16:9 is a major standard, but for this one it's a widescreen 21:10. Why exactly can't we just settle on a simple 2:1 ratio? That would seem so much simpler and allow for more cross compatibility. (I guess one answer to this is common attempts at vendor lock in, something Apple has been very successful at, but one would think *someone* would have gone this route.)
    • by Scutter ( 18425 ) on Thursday January 06, 2022 @12:52PM (#62149065) Journal
    • Why not use the A system, like A4? Cutting it in half yields the same aspect ratio for each half.

    • by tlhIngan ( 30335 ) <slashdot&worf,net> on Thursday January 06, 2022 @04:29PM (#62150045)

      I've never figured out why aspect ratios for screens need to be so weird. 16:9 is a major standard, but for this one it's a widescreen 21:10. Why exactly can't we just settle on a simple 2:1 ratio? That would seem so much simpler and allow for more cross compatibility. (I guess one answer to this is common attempts at vendor lock in, something Apple has been very successful at, but one would think *someone* would have gone this route.)

      21:9 is a common movie aspect ratio, like 16:9 is. And just like 16:9 has 16:10 to offer a bit more vertical space, 21:10 offers a bit more vertical space as well.

      It's hard to do vendor lock in on displays - I don't think I've seen things require me to have a specific screen resolution. However, I do know people do prefer having a 16:10 display over a bog standard 16:9.

      • Almost nothing other than ATSC is 16:9 natively. 16:9 got picked because you can matte it to every other commonly used cinematic aspect ratio with a minimum of letterboxing or pillarboxing. Mostly so home video and TV could air material in different formats without having to ride the struggle bus to make it fit. And for video, 16:9 is great because of that.
    • by shanen ( 462549 )

      Would have been a much better FP, but the answer has to do with the Golden Ratio. I don't remember the reasoning, but some kind of claim that 1:1.6... is optimal or prettiest or something.

      • by MrKaos ( 858439 )

        Would have been a much better FP, but the answer has to do with the Golden Ratio.

        I think you will find it has more to do with harmonics. Although some decisions (like 16:10) are not harmonic for the size of screen versus refresh rate, that it is based on phi probably mean a pixel count was found that is harmonic.

        I didn't look for the resolution though to see what it was.

        I don't remember the reasoning, but some kind of claim that 1:1.6... is optimal or prettiest or something.

        1.618 is phi.

        That is not a claim, it is expressed everywhere in nature. Simply look at a Fibonacci set, divide the current number in the sequence by the one before and you will get increasing (more accurate???) varia

        • by shanen ( 462549 )

          When you say "harmonics", I think you are going back to analog days and oscillator frequencies, but I don't think that's so much of a factor in these digital days. Rather I think there are some wannabe artists scattered among the engineers, usually disguised with labels like "ergonomics expert", and they are saying fuzzy things like "A 2:1 ratio for the display looks too 'mechanical' and fewer people will buy the computer", but underlying the fuzz is stuff they "studied" about the beauty of the Golden Ratio

          • by MrKaos ( 858439 )

            When you say "harmonics", I think you are going back to analog days and oscillator frequencies, but I don't think that's so much of a factor in these digital days.

            I'd have to see the screen resolution. The harmonics are more to do with clocking the refresh of the screen so you would need to know the refresh rate. Bottom line is everything is subject to time, digital or analog, so there has to be specific amounts of time to perform certain operations.

            Rather I think there are some wannabe artists scattered among the engineers, usually disguised with labels like "ergonomics expert", and they are saying fuzzy things like "A 2:1 ratio for the display looks too 'mechanical' and fewer people will buy the computer", but underlying the fuzz is stuff they "studied" about the beauty of the Golden Ratio in classical art.

            What little I've heard so far about this computer design does sound interesting, even though I basically dislike touchpads.

            Yeah, I'm not a big fan of them either. I don;t really know what they were thinking however I do know they would be constrained by the physical characteristics of the electronic components that they are implementing.

            • by shanen ( 462549 )

              Mostly the ACK, but leading to the question of "Why don't any makers offer any notebooks with the touchpad above the keyboard?"

    • by vlad30 ( 44644 )
      The main reason is price 16:10 (allowed for a menu bar and a bit more while working on movies) was common for computer screens when they could justify the cost to buyers. Then 16:9 which were common for tv suddenly got very cheap due to scale and those who didn't edit movies didn't care those that did used 2 screens
    • What do you expect from a display that is measured DIAGONALLY?
    • Not only that but if you're not doing a ton of stuff with video, all a 16:9 is doing is making it harder to see up and down further. 4:3 dying was a crap call for things that primarily game and play with data.
  • by thomasdz ( 178114 ) on Thursday January 06, 2022 @12:47PM (#62149041)

    The photos make it look like the person is casually drawing with ease, but aside from the right-handed bias which other Slashdotters have pointed out, it's going to be awkward since there's nothing for your wrist to rest on.

  • by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Thursday January 06, 2022 @12:47PM (#62149045)

    Index fingers on the F and J keys. Eyes on the screen or the document you are going to transpose and not look down to where you are typing as that will only distract you from what you are trying to accomplish.
    No lets put a screen down in the spot where keyboard space is a premium, so you can run some Lenovo only Apps, because it is only one model of laptop is no real need to for third party software makers to utilize it.

    Give me extra HDMI or VGA connectivity so I can plug in external monitors, then I can real advantage of that.

  • Yup, I love less vertical space on a laptop screen, give me more width, why stop at 21:10, give me 21:9, or 21:7. And, yes, I always wanted my phone/pad be permanently attached *right* next to my keyboard (note Lenovo themselves suggest you use the extra screen to "mirror" your phone/pad), no idea why nobody else though of that. /sarcasm

  • this is next level crazytown
    • It's very effective at getting tech journalists to write about Lenovo and to get consumers to jump on forums and click on stuff about it (love it or hate it).

  • All that matters is that they got the word "Lenovo" into a lot of headlines among the noise from CES. They don't really think they will sell any of these. But they will sell a lot more Lenovo stuff because they got the headline.

  • by Pibroch(CiH) ( 7414754 ) on Thursday January 06, 2022 @01:03PM (#62149115)

    When will manufacturers realize that having a touchscreen on a totally horizontal plane that can't be adjusted is horrible? Apple's touchbar was a cool idea, but ultimately proved useless, speaking as someone who owned one and tried so many ways to make it work and not just annoy the piss out of me when I accidentally tapped Reload with a stray finger while trying to type information into web forms.

    This is just pants-on-head insanity. It's like they told Xzibit they liked tablets AND laptops. And being left-handed, I couldn't write with this anyway without mashing keys.

    • Wish I had mod points. Nice mention of Xzibit, this is certainly pimping things (the "random thing combinator" is getting a bit out of hand).

    • When will manufacturers realize that having a touchscreen on a totally horizontal plane that can't be adjusted is horrible?

      Well then it sounds like you may want to steer clear of this laptop [theverge.com] also... I've been waiting for Slashdot to publish a story about this TouchBar like function row, that brings together the lack of real keys to press with the lack of functionality of a fully programmable display key row.

      I do think it's odd that after the market (and Apple) decided the Touch Bar was a bad idea, suddenly

    • Not to mention not having the keyboard centered. Ow, my aching neck and shoulder!

  • I do a lot of contracts and having people sign with their finger on a touch screen is annoying, especially older people. The angle is awkward. Carrying around a usb signature pad is also annoying and not worth the hassle. I doubt any of the software i use could take advantage of this, but it's a use case that could work.

    • by Ambvai ( 1106941 )

      One of my previous offices converted to all Surfaces for that reason-- full compatibility with everything we needed out of the box, the pen was natural to sign with, and they also replaced the iPads that were being used for various other handheld purposes, so it was actually a cheaper solution.

  • hinges [lenovo.com], and that isn't a piece of shit, maybe even with some support? [lenovo.com]

  • Why not make a laptop that, yes, has a second screen, but it's not physically attached to the laptop, it's basically a tablet, but wirelessly linked to only the laptop and does the same thing as the second screen in this Lenovo laptop? It wouldn't have to have all the capabilities of a 'normal' tablet computer because it's just a wireless touchscreen display unit. Bonus points, make the battery in it user-replaceable.
    • by vlad30 ( 44644 )

      Why not make a laptop that, yes, has a second screen, but it's not physically attached to the laptop, it's basically a tablet, but wirelessly linked to only the laptop and does the same thing as the second screen in this Lenovo laptop? It wouldn't have to have all the capabilities of a 'normal' tablet computer because it's just a wireless touchscreen display unit. Bonus points, make the battery in it user-replaceable.

      Too late already on on Macs the https://au.pcmag.com/macintosh... [pcmag.com]

      • Sure, but that's a full-blown tablet. I'm talking about something that's just a display and input device. It would be less expensive.
  • Not exactly the first to try it. The Aurora 7 laptop from the now defunct Expanscape had a 7" display in the right-hand palm rest as well, and was widely touted last February. We can only hope the design is cursed and takes Lenovo next.

  • It's on the wrong side.
  • W700ds (Score:4, Interesting)

    by virtig01 ( 414328 ) on Thursday January 06, 2022 @06:52PM (#62150429)

    And here I thought they were bringing back the side-slide screen of the W700ds [youtube.com].

    As much of a dud as the W700ds was, I think I still prefer that screen configuration.

Sentient plasmoids are a gas.

Working...