Given that this is ex-ibm we're talking about...
... the lack of a trackpoint is but one thing. Another failure by lenovo to make use of its assets.
Lenovo has unwrapped its first smartbook– an ARM-based PC with 10.1in display. Lenovo_skylight_03 Skylight is Lenovo's first smartbook Called Skylight, the machine has been created to fill a gadget gap that supposedly exists between smartphones and netbooks. As such Skylight combines “the long battery life and connectivity …
It'd be nice if people stopped hating on other people's preferred tools, thanks.
I'm actually having to use a touchpad-equipped dull right now, and have had to for a year, and all that did was make me miss the trackpoint on the previous box more. I get tenfold the false inputs, like when the screen jump-scrolls up and down because my thumb hovered half an inch above the stupid pad. Dammit, I'm typing here, don't disturb!
For someone like me, touch-typist unix admin and software engineer, whose desktop primarily consists of xterms full of software, xterms with sessions to other boxes, xterms with text-based email clients, and so on and so forth, a trackpoint actually saves a lot of superfluous hand movement over both mouse and touchpad, and makes for tight keyboard+copy/paste integration.
I'm not advocating the death of touchpads; I'm sure many are greatly helped by it. But I am hoping at least some laptop/netbook/whatever manufacturers would value the trackpoint and cater for people who actually need a professional's computing tool instead of the usual {suit,3rd world kid,soccermom}-peergrouped fare. I have a little list of wishes, and it starts with a trackpoint.
... right up until the price got mentioned... then I switched off.
I found a netbook too heavy and restrictive on screen size for what I got out of it (web browsing, vpn and ssh mostly, the media playback was crap thanks to Atom & 945), and I find a smartphone too small to be productive for much other than a quick look at something on a simple site (hoping N900 will be an improvement though)...
A gadget such as this, ~800g or less, web browser, media player and some linux goodies such as SSH etc could be useful... but only at around £150 does it sound worth it to me, definitly got to stay under £200.
VIdeo playback was horrific on mine until fairly recently, I think something wonderful happenedm like YUV scaling surface xv support or something, as I can watch Freeview full screen on it- mine has MythTV on it for sheer silliness. It runs like a dream, whereas before, it would have struggled to play the same video in a tiny window, in any of the apps that I use. VLC is much happier, too.
Obviously, Ion chipset would be awesome, with WPPAUG or whatever it's called giving HD h.264 decode with about 15% CPU load, but meantime, this is nice.
At that weight 10 hours is great. However - Asus has some of their eee range up to that sort of battery life with Atom.
Not as light, as thin or as pretty, but they've got there. I wonder if the usage patterns compare.
Hmmm. Still interested but too pricy and battery life not as impressive as promised.
I like it, rounded corners and all. Integrated 3g, HDMI output and ARM processor for long battery life sound a tempting combination.
And for those whinging about the admittedly highish price, don't forget that these will be snapped up by the network operators and subsidised to something much more attractive - just compare to the supposed full cost of an iphone or nexus one.
I think I may hold off updating my mobile broadband contract for a while!
It will also be interesting to see what business model they adopt for it - an iphone/android app store approach by any chance?!
BTW although the screen is undoubtedly photoshopped/gimped I spy a chrome icon in the menu bar. Will this be a full on Chome device?