back to article Lenovo Thinkpad X220T 12.5in tablet PC

A recent business profile of Lenovo in a national newspaper made an interesting assertion. "Anyone you spot on the Tube using a ThinkPad has almost certainly obtained it from their employer," claimed the reporter. Lenovo ThinkPad X220T Tablet with a twist: Lenovo's ThinkPad X220T Well, discerning readers know this isn’t …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. Chloe Cresswell Silver badge

    Screen Ratio

    When was 1280 x 800 4:3?

    Surely the shift is 16:10 to 16:9 for the resolutions quoted.

  2. Kebablog

    Need a new channel!

    'The standard laptop isn’t in the channel yet and wasn’t available for review'

    Strange i've got one sitting on my desk! That said the Tablet version we ordered seems to be lost in the wilderness. At least I know what it looks like now.

    One thing i'd say the new 16:9 (1366x768) screens fitted are a little awkward for work, width is fine but the loss in height is annoying. That said it looks to be an industry thing now.

    1. Robert E A Harvey

      vertical resolution

      I've been getting more and more annoyed by this toys-r-us vertical resolution obsession that has been filling the world. It's just cheap & nasty.

    2. /dev/null
      Unhappy

      1366x768

      The preponderance of 1366x768 laptops is disappointing....to think that the vertical resolution of most small-ish laptops today is *exactly* the same as it was in the 1990s when 1024x768 was the norm! And what's the point of a 16:9 laptop anyway? Is watching DVDs the only thing people use laptops for?

      1. Boothy
        FAIL

        Wide screen on a business laptop = fail

        Have to agree with all the comments around this annoying obsession with wide screen 16:9 ratios.

        It is pretty much useless on a business machine, and probably about 95% useless on a laptop for home use.

        I've got a T400 at work, and that's the older 1280 x 800 size. At 800, this screen is only just high enough for most uses, but forces you to scroll up and down all the time when using normal apps, such as writing or reviewing documents in Word etc. Most of the width is wasted, as almost all apps don't utilise this extra screen estate. So this new 1366x768 size is actually making things worse! Taking away the hight, when you really need more, and adding to the width, when you really need less of this!

        The only use I can see for having a 19:9 ratio, is for watching movies, and I'll never do that at work, and have only ever done that once away from work.

        So that basically means, at least for me, all current laptops with a 16:9 ratio screen, are unsuitable for purpose for about 99.99% of the time.

        Bring back 4:3 for business use, or at least give people the option. Even 16:10 is better, as at least there you don't loose all the hight!

        1. Steve Evans

          Wide screen on a business laptop = fail * 2

          Lenovo, stop copying everyone else. I want a 4:3 screen. This is a machine to work on, not play movies!

          I'm still using the Thinkpad R52 which I've had more years than I care to remember because it has a 4:3 screen which is 1400x1050 pixels, and still only 15". Incidentally I bought it myself, with my own money to replace the Thinkpad A30 which I had also bought with my own money, but unfortunately stood on after many years of reliable service :'(

          The only way I can get that kind of vertical resolution on a laptop these days is to buy something which is 1920x1080, and the size of a f*cking aircraft carrier's flight deck.

          Please please please be a little different, stop being a sheep, and give me a good upgrade path, because at the moment I'm seriously looking at bi-passing the sata/pata bridge chip you put in this machine so I can install a sata SSD to get some more speed out of it and run it for another 5 years!

    3. Tomato42
      Pint

      X61 Tablet

      And to think, that a X61 Tablet can be loaded with 8GB of RAM, use SSD in the drive slot and normal big HDD in docking station, have 802.11n wireless and have 1400x1050 screen and play Full HD video with multithreaded mplayer...

      The only thing that's missing is an ExpressCard/54 slot

      Beer for still the best Thinkpad tablet

  3. xj25vm

    Lenovo in UK

    >"Anyone you spot on the Tube using a ThinkPad has almost certainly obtained it from their employer," claimed the reporter.

    Oh heck - big mystery there. As Lenovo in the UK barely have any machines available through retail channels - what a shocking revelation! How many machines in the Argos, PC World, Comet or any number of large retailers' offerings are Lenovo? Very few and far between. So of course most machines will be from their employers (most of the times medium to large organisations). Lenovo seems to be focused in the UK firmly on the corporate market.

    What is the reason for that? Heck if I know. But it does mean that, being hard to find through retails channels - it is less likely that people will buy them themselves. Of course, the fact that their professional grade machines are not exactly "consumer" priced (and probably rightly so) - doesn't make them a favourite with the average man/woman/cat on the street.

    There you go - mystery solved for you. No need for fancy statistics based on Tube samples.

  4. Richard Jukes

    No light?

    No bloody keyboard light? Its not fit to call its self a thinkpad!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      *cough*

      I suspect you mean "No bloody thinklight(tm)"

      ... call yourself a fan... tut tut tut

  5. ColinX
    Thumb Down

    No SSD

    For that much money I would expect the storage to be SSD not disk, faster access and less power draw..

  6. John Arthur
    Thumb Down

    Screen rotation

    "In one major departure to previous Lenovo tablets, the screen rotates only clockwise. " Just like my X60 Tablet which has a screen that rotates only clockwise then.

    I bought my X60 several years ago as a private purchase and the only thing I have needed to do is replace the HDD with a larger one. Now how do I get the other half to buy me one of these X220Ts for my birthday?

  7. Ogi

    A few points....

    a) Every single Tablet Thinkpad I've owned (X41, X61, and I've used the one before the reviewed one) only ever allowed you to turn the LCD screen clockwise. That is nothing new.

    b) All Tablet Thinkpad's don't have the thinklight, due to the fact that the screen bezel has to be flush in order to be able to be used both as a tablet and normal machine. I can tell you to this day I miss that feature from the tablet Thinkpads, and it's always a toss up when it comes to a new machine, whether I'd prefer a tablet or the LED light.

    (Long long time Thinkpad user, although all owned by me rather than corporate)

  8. Peter Gathercole Silver badge

    "obtained through their employer"

    Thinkpads have a longevity in line with their robustness, and are very popular 2nd user systems. If you spot someone with a T30 or a T40 through T43 (and the odd T60 as well), chances are it's an ex-corporate machine doing sterling service for value and quality concious individuals. Just look on eBay to gauge this popularity. A T43 will still do everything most people want to do on the move, especially if loaded with Linux.

    I'm glad I agree with Andrew on something, even if it is something as mundane as a choice of laptop!

    1. Bruno Girin
      Happy

      @Peter Gathercole

      Indeed! That's exactly what my T42 is: ex-corporate machine doing sterling work with Ubuntu loaded on it :-)

    2. Steve McIntyre
      Thumb Up

      Exactly

      I'm on my 4th Thinkpad X series laptop at the moment: all bought second-hand with my own money, run for a few years with Debian and then sold on still with more life left in them. I won't buy anything else.

      Aside: nice to see Orlowski not trolling!

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Maybe...

    ... just maybe, lenovo ought to hire a couple of their ever loving harshest critics for some design advice. I'm happy to see they picked up a couple things but then it saddens me to see how they manage to opt-in on mediocrity on just about everything else time and time again. Do we really need to rely on start-ups for any actual innovation?

    And Andrew, couple tiny nitpicks: While waxing on the qualities of the keyboard and notwithstanding that the thinkpad keyboards are well-known for being pretty good, tyops look a bit sloppy especially there and then. Apropos wireless, mentioning /only/ "802.11n" doesn't tell me what band(s) are supported. I suspect it might very well be 2.4GHz and 5GHz both in this case, but it is something I expect to learn from tech specs all the same. Also, I'd suspect some of us would be interested to hear (which would be me moreso if indeed some employer would get me one or rather two of these things, though I'd still bitch about its design failures, but I digress) whether the fancy features like touchscreen and tilt awareness and such are supported by foss drivers, like for linux or some member(s) of the *BSD family. And, colour me ignorant, but wth is gorilla glass? Does that cure or curse with gorilla arm?

  10. Aurelian2
    Happy

    Not hard to find

    This longtime ThinkPad lover has five in the house, the oldest being a seven-year-old T41 still happily running WinXP all day and every day.

    The reason for this laptop cornucopia is Lenovo's excellent online selling operation, which tempts all too often with discounts and special offers on new models. If you fancy a ThinkPad, go to shop.lenovo.com, choose your country from the dropdown list, and take your plastic firmly in hand...

  11. louis walsh's toilet
    FAIL

    looks like the elisabeth duke of tablets..

    shiny, cheap, awful.....and so wanting to be hip, groovy and desired like an ipad.....

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Thinkpads

    Ended up a domestic thinkpad owner by being given a chunky 380z and a 600.

    The 380z was running 98, replaced the HDD and dual booted 3.1 and 95 for old games.

    The 600 runs Win2000 very well. Upgraded the RAM on both and they share a Cisco Aironet PCMCIA card that gives them wireless capability.

    Corporate wise, my last place was taken over by a big blue corporation and they dished out thinkpads. Then, my new place, thinkpads again. Seem to be no-nonsense corporate machines. However, they don't seem to like suspend mode, and the new one occasionally reboots itself (which I put down to the US powerpack. When working from home on a spare UK powerpack it behaves itself).

  13. Maryland, USA
    Unhappy

    Docks?

    The X220 can snap into any of three Lenovo docking stations. Didn't Lenovo provide a dock for this review?

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like