ThinkPad Design: Spirit and Essence

http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/69081166#/69081166/1

by Adrock • 14 years ago

71 76 14 years ago

viewer.zmags.com

jtreminio• 14 years ago

The font on that page is making my head hurt. I can't even read it.

protomyth• 14 years ago

Given the content is not dynamic, they could have posted a webpage or a pdf and made it easier on everyone. There is some irony here.

runemadsen2• 14 years ago

The design and font use is a direct clone of many pamphlets Paul Rand made for IBM.

TorbjornLunde• 14 years ago

Very interesting, but the Flash-based player of this is not very readable. Is it available as a PDF?

tnhh• 14 years ago

This URL was hiding in the source: http://viewer.zmags.com/services/DownloadPDF?publicationID=6...

stan_rogers2• 14 years ago

Well, that was a horrible experience. Sure, my connection is unforgivably slow, but a long player download (in my case, about four minutes) followed by a long per-page content download (with no apparent prefetch) means that I didn't get very far before bailing. Oh, and none of the usual keyboard navigation (arrows) work. There are a lot of ways to present something like this that work; this doesn't, particularly.

miahi3• 14 years ago

The presentation looked fine and loaded really fast on my Android phone using 3G network.

epaik• 14 years ago

On the other end of the spectrum, I thought the presentation was impressive. I have a typical broadband connection, and I thought it worked just fine. The loading time seemed instantaneous.

I actually appreciate that modern websites are increasingly being designed for higher standards of internet bandwidth/connectivity. It's not that I think bandwidth isn't precious, but when websites can deliver beautiful content at the cost of an extra 10th of a second of loading time on a modern connection, I think it's worth it.

A four minute download time on your part implies you have some kind of dial-up connection, is there a reason why you haven't upgraded to a faster service?

stan_rogers2• 14 years ago

Actually, that's what was passing for 3G at the time (it's not always rock-solid, and one doesn't have private towers). It doesn't take a lot of stuttering to make a site like that fail. Beauty and responsiveness are not mutually exclusive, and none of the content I saw warranted a player -- garden-variety HTML and CSS would have done as well.

acabal2• 14 years ago

I can't believe I'm reading an article touting the design smarts of the Thinkpad designers... honestly I've always thought that the standard black Thinkpads were unspeakably ugly. And I'm not even a design snob. Usable yes, but aesthetic? No way.

oftenwrong• 14 years ago

Maybe I am broken, but I think they are the best looking laptops. Ironically, their "function-over-form" design yields a form I find beautiful.

w1ntermute2• 14 years ago

I use ThinkPads and their timeless design is one of my favorite things about them. For a lot of people, shiny aluminum is great, but some appreciate the ThinkPad color scheme.

acabal2• 14 years ago

I'm not knocking the color scheme, I think black with red highlights can look pretty slick myself. It's just the overall feeling I get... it just looks so sharp-edged and industrial. To me that's the opposite of aesthetic. On the other hand they're doubtlessly excellent machines and there's no accounting for taste, even mine :)

zerostar072• 14 years ago

I think it's intentional, well, not ugly but no effort to make it beautiful either. I see my computer as a tool; do people care if their electric drill looks ugly?

Plus, if you ask me, sturdy case, functional keyboard, docking connector and myriad of ports is a very smart design that trumps macbooks.

anonymouz• 14 years ago

Personally, I find them very aesthetic. But this comes down to a subjective feeling.

More important in my opinion is the functional design, which Thinkpads really excel at.

kitsune_• 14 years ago

The ThinkPad was designed by Richard Sapper [1], somewhat of a legend in industrial design.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Sapper

daviddaviddavid• 14 years ago

I found it rather bizarre that this fact was not mentioned.

geoka92• 14 years ago

It's probably not slick enough to blend into an office with a glamorous interior design.

http://www.eurotech.cz/image/file/361/x60_2.jpg

But when I see this, I get an urge to touch the keyboard, run the shell, fire up the editor... No other laptop makes me want to do this just with its looks.

And that's what I think good industrial design is about.

sedachv2• 14 years ago

You're confusing design with visual appeal. Steve Jobs loved to rant about design and longetivity, but Apple laptops only seem to excel on visual appeal (and this is a recent phenomenon - just look at the first PowerBook G4s). Design has to be functional, and this is where Apple always makes sacrifices.

Bringing chiclet-style keyboards back into vogue (to the point where even Lenovo now puts them on Thinkpads) shows a complete disregard for the functionality of the laptop as a computer. Try comparing the new apple-style chiclet keys, to "skateboard-ramp" shaped keys (an "innovation" introduced by IBM to save costs), to the spherical shaped keys (http://www.daskeyboard.com/blog/?page_id=1458#shapes) of high-end keyboards from the 1980s and you will see how far computer keyboards have actually degenerated. This isn't just my opinion - Kathleen Potosnak's review of literature (appears as chapter 21 in Helander's Handbook of Human-Computer Interaction) shows that shaped keys are better for typing.

There's a lot to be said about 3-button mice as well. One thing I do like about Macs is the touchpad on the newest ones (it took Apple a long time to make them really useful, though). Again, this is a sacrifice in terms of functionality. You can do things like https://github.com/vsedach/mouse-copy with the Thinkpad touchpoint and even the trackpad, but it's not convenient with most other trackpads (especially ones like the Mac's that don't have separate keys).

In terms of longetivity and visual design, I'm typing this on a 2004 Thinkpad T43. Nothing on this machine is broken, and despite 8 years of almost continuous use, even the keyboard labels only have a few nicks. This laptop looks as new or as old as the early 90s 386 Thinkpad we have at the hackerspace or the X230 my friend bought a few months ago. It wasn't until the PowerBook that Apple hit on a design with any sort of longetivity. Besides Apple and IBM/Lenovo, there's no one making laptops with a lasting design across many product generations.

cpeterso2• 14 years ago

I've always thought the ThinkPad's keyboard is one of its worst attributes. The keyboard's layout is very cramped. The keys feel flimsy and loose. Their edges are sharp and exposed when you type.

nessus422• 14 years ago

> but Apple laptops only seem to excel on visual appeal (and this is a recent phenomenon - just look at the first PowerBook G4s). Design has to be functional, and this is where Apple always makes sacrifices.

I don't know what you are talking about--you are WAY overstating your case. My 11-inch MacBook Air is by the far the most ergonomic and pleasant-to-use laptop computer I have ever owned. The keyboard on it is by far the best laptop keyboard I have ever used, and the trackpad is revolutionarily wonderful compared to any other trackpad I have ever used.

That being said, I do prefer Thinkpad-style nubs to trackpads. Also, I find Thinkpads to be beautiful, not ugly. Also, I would agree that Apple does at times make unfortunate ergonomic decisions, like the lamentable and fortunately short-lived round mouse of a decade ago, and Apple's current laptop-style keyboard for desktop computers is a bit questionable. This doesn't bother me, personally, as I use a Kinesis keyboard anyway. Also, since Apple's laptop keyboards are so good, I think they actually might be better than most desktop keyboards anyway.

I don't find Apple to be any worse in the regard of form-over-function than another other company. The ergonomic improvements that they've brought in recent years far offset any ergonomic harm that they have done. One thing that Apple did get right with it's desktop keyboard is a return to small keyboards rather than the monstrosities that the industry has been foisting on us for the last few decades. The current small Apple keyboards remind me of "Happy Hacking" keyboards, which are the way that keyboards should be.

dfc3• 14 years ago

Aesthetics: the creation and appreciation of beauty

In my opinion there is nothing more beautiful on a laptop than the thinkpads hardened steel hinges.

miahi3• 14 years ago

I found the hard way (repairing a T60 broken hinge) that the steel hinges are strong, but the part that links the hinge to the display frame is thin and made of magnesium alloy. It was so thin and small that I ended up fixing it in place with epoxy.

snogglethorpe• 14 years ago

> I've always thought that the standard black Thinkpads were unspeakably ugly. And I'm not even a design snob.

"Ugly", is of course, subjective, but do keep in mind that the original thinkpad line is generally considered a design classic.

Also keep in mind that thinkpads in the last decade or so have shifted a great deal design-wise from the original, losing much of the aesthetic purity along the way.

The original thinkpad was yer basic stark black monolith (all right angles, no curves or wedges to speak of) with the barest minimum of accent (the bright red nub pointer and button markers), and a lovely silky surface texture that made you want to caress it. No tacky chrome-look plastic. No touchpad to bloat up the lower surface. Just quality of materials and purity of form.

While recent thinkpads share the color scheme with the original, they've lost many of the other iconic design cues, both obvious and subtle.

So I kinda see where you're coming from if you're talking about recent models, but the original thinkpads were absolutely beautiful.

linuxhansl2• 14 years ago

I have privately been using ThinkPads exclusively for many years now. These are the best laptops I ever used (and I am being supplied with work laptops that ranged from MacBook to Dells).

The part I relate the most with in the presentation is that ThinkPads are not trendy or flashy. No they are not, they are not gadgets or things you show off, they are functional tools that just work.

paulgb• 14 years ago

The one thing I don't like about ThinkPad is that like pretty much every PC maker they insist on bundling their own software (in their case, ThinkVantage). I wish PC makers would start shipping PCs with Windows, any necessary hardware drivers, and nothing else. This, more than anything, is what makes me dread buying another PC.

ygra• 14 years ago

In the case of the ThinkPad bundled software stuff it's also that they seem to look unchanged since the Windows 95 era or so. Nothing terribly wrong with carrying on with a brand and look, but to me the Windows built-in controls for Wifi, etc. are far more usable than the strange bundled software (which may have had its place up until Windows XP got native Wifi support, I guess).

linuxhansl2• 14 years ago

I agree. I tried to multiple times to purchase ThinkPads without the bundled software (I use Linux). But it is not an option.

This in fact is the only reason why I look at other offers at all. Every time I need a new laptop I re-check whether I get a ThinkPad without Windows, then I look around for other offerings that do not bundle useless software; so far the ThinkPads have just been better.

First thing I do is wiping the Windows and "factory" partitions and install Linux.

runemadsen2• 14 years ago

Someone has looked at their Paul Rand history when designing this booklet.

lallysingh• 14 years ago

Funny how they talk about how classic the machine is after completely botching up the keyboard. They even mentioned the keyboard in the PDF!

Inufu• 14 years ago

I for one like the new keyboard and think it's great. (I used both old and new keyboard on two Thinkpads simultaneously for 2 months)

BinRoo• 14 years ago

I have two ThinkPads: X201 Tablet running Windows 8, and a T530 running Ubuntu. The craftsmanship of the keyboard and ThinkPoint nub is unmatched. As a hacker, I cannot find any sufficient replacement.

wyclif• 14 years ago

For many years, ThinkPads had the best quality keyboards on any laptop. At least that was true of the IBM models I've had. I can't speak to the quality of the Lenovo-era models.

pearle3• 14 years ago

The non chiclet ones are still great. Perhaps not as good as the IBM ThinkPads but I think they're still better than anything the competition offers.

kabdib2• 14 years ago

Thinkpads /were/ great. They took a serious quality dive several years ago, and I've had a number of bad problems with customer service (e.g., orders "stuck" for months, miscommunicaton of warranty issues), and now I won't recommend them.

My guess is that when things go great, you'll be fine, but the moment you need something out of the ordinary then Lenovo will be just as bad as Dell.

dfc3• 14 years ago

How many thinkpads have you purchased recently? Multiple orders stuck for months? Granted I have only had 3 thinkpads in 8 years but I have never had any problems.

jlgreco2• 14 years ago

In my experience "Lenovo thinkpads are bad" is a meme that started as a prediction ("Lenovo thinkpads will be bad") and somehow kept on being trotted out on rare occasion for reasons unknown. The T and X series from Lenovo are both brilliant. The only complaint I can muster is the unfortunate trend in screen resolutions.

My T60p is a rock solid machine, and the T420 I have right now only improves on that. It is without a doubt the same machine, it has an unbelievable sense of identity, but it is better.

silentOpen• 14 years ago

Just got my T430s 6 weeks after ordering. Lenovo charged and uncharged my debit card and revised their shipping estimate 5+ times. 5 days before receiving the machine, I received an email telling me that federal regulations did not permit them to continue to keep the order 'pending' and that if I did not respond and waive my rights under these regulations, they would cancel my order for me. I did not respond.

They have serious fulfillment issues.

majormajor• 14 years ago

Is there a good, power-user-focused laptop manufacturer right now? I've heard others express similar opinions about newer Lenovos, and I'm currently on a MBP so I haven't used anything newer than a T500 much, but I really miss having a proper dock on my desk that I could just slide my laptop into.

And I really really really miss my X61's keyboard any time I use the built-in one on my MBPs (oddly, my T500 seemed to have too much flex to it's keyboard, but I never bothered swapping it or anything because I hardly ever used it outside of the dock).

johnrgrace• 14 years ago

I just bought a Thinkpad x220, slightly dated but for $450 a great price/performance ratio when Lenovo was clearing out their refurbs. While I've had it for about a week, the build quality of this machine is simply great. I've seen, and been given from corporate IT, their $4-500 new laptops and for the price they're good but they aren't perfect. Lenovo's top end series like the X are quality machines.

jeffchuber• 14 years ago

I know David Hill. He is a great designer and knows his clients intimately. His clients are the heads of IT for large organizations that want reliable solid unbreakable working machines. And that is exactly what Lenovo builds. They aren't sexy. They aren't meant to be sexy. Functionality comes first. Form gets a say if it's lucky. This is also how large organizations function and what they are most comfortable with. For this reason it's no surprise that Lenovo will likely become the largest PC manufacturer by volume this year.

JimmyL3• 14 years ago

In an office full of Retina MacBooks, I love my ThinkPad X220 (and this is my fourth ThinkPad in a row, spanning both Lenovo and IBM eras). It's not a flashy machine, but it's got a bunch of non-mainstream features that are devoted to getting things done, at which they excel:

- Nub pointer? I love it. Full mouse control without moving my hands significantly away from where they were on the keyboard anyways. My X220 has a trackpad, but I only use it by accident.

- An LED that lives above the monitor and has a shield that points it down to light up the keyboard. This is a lifesaver on long flights.

- Docking stations. I've got two USB drives, a pair of headphones, a few USB-powered accessories, two monitors, a mouse, and a keyboard plugged into my computer when it's at the office. My MBP-toting coworkers have to connect and disconnect all that when they pick up their computer; I press the big undock button and it all stays where I left it, and reconnects when I put it back on the desk.

- Accessory comparability. I've still got the power adapters from the first ThinkPad I had. They work fine on my current one, and mean that I have more of these bricks than I could ever need - so I can keep one at work, in my go bag, at my home office, in my living room, in my kitchen, and still have a few backups around.

- Repair manuals. Want to know how to do any type of repair on your ThinkPad? The repair manual is freely available, and tells you exactly how to do anything you'd like to. To swap out the network adapter, for example, involves taking off the keyboard and going from the top.

Was ordering it in the first place a pleasant experience? No. The website sucked, I had to call in to do half the customization I wanted, and it still took two months to get here.

rogerbinns2• 14 years ago

The one place things have gone downhill is screens. Thankfully you can still get matte screens rather than ones that double as mirrors. But Lenovo has gone 16:9 losing lots of vertical pixels - note how workflow is vertical (coding, documents) so this is a serious productivity killer. They also use large bezels meaning the laptops are larger than they need to be. And they used to be IPS giving excellent visual quality - that is pretty much extinct too.

JimmyL3• 14 years ago

You can still get IPS panels, you've just got to pay the extra $50 to get the "enhanced" screen (and they're not available on all models).

I'm with you about being less than thrilled with the transition to 16:9 displays, though.

geoka92• 14 years ago

Another happy ThinkPad user here :)

I agree with all your points. The bricks are pretty much universally interchangeable, except for W models (powerful workstation series, they have a large heavy brick with a higher current rating, which you cannot use with other series).

Repair manuals are fantastic. Two weeks ago the fan in my mother's T500 has become noisy. The laptop had been running non-stop for 3 years and the fan needed more lubrication. Using a repair manual that I downloaded from lenovo.com, I could do this in an afternoon, having had no prior experience of opening up (let alone fixing) a laptop of any kind (although I do have an experience of building my own desktops).

The knob and the thinklight are the best things since sliced bread.

BTW, you can turn off the trackpad completely in the BIOS setup utility. That's what I did on my X220 :)

mng2• 14 years ago

I have an X200s without a trackpad. It invariably blows people's minds when they try to use my laptop and there's nothing where the trackpad would usually be.

jamesbritt• 14 years ago

I run Ubuntu on my W500 and you can toggle the trackpad from the commandline. I have it off by default but should I need it I can easily turn it on.

arlog• 14 years ago

If you're making MBP vs. ThinkPad comparison, the screen is a complete game-changer. The MBP screen is in an entirely different league.

JimmyL3• 14 years ago

I'm with you that the screen on a Retina MBP is a leap ahead, but I don't think I'd call it a game-changer.

For one, I do 80% of extended work sessions when I'm at one of two desks. At both those desks, I've got an aforementioned docking station sitting there, and plugged into each docking station is a pair of beautiful Dell 24" IPS panels. That's more screen real estate, and in a more organized and usable way, that I'll get on an MBP Retina. If I did most of my work without these external displays/setups I may feel differently, but for now, they come with my main use-cases.

When I'm not at one of those two desks, would a Retina display be nicer than what I've got? Sure. But I wouldn't trade it for the control nub, the user-fixability, the ability to send a hundred bucks to Crucial and get 16GB of RAM at a time of my choosing or order a second battery if I'm going to be off the grid for a weekend, the docking station, or the keyboard light.

Neither machine will be the ultimate machine for every person. For the way I work, the X200 is in a league above the MBP - the better screen doesn't make up for the machine's other failings. If you work differently, your mileage may vary.

mdkess• 14 years ago

I have a ThinkPad (T420) too, I love it. I agree with everything that you said - nobody else comes close. Plus, their keyboards are by far the nicest laptop keyboards out there. The X220 is in my mind the perfect portable laptop... except, like every Lenovo laptop I've used, it has an absolutely terrible screen. It drives me nuts, because they come so close, and yet still miss by so much. I mean, I'm not expecting a Retina display here, but if Asus can put a 1920x1080 display on their $1000 Zenbooks, would it be too much to ask for Lenovo to put a 1600x900 panel on the X220?

My laptop - the T420 has a 1600x900 panel on it, but colors change at every angle, and I find myself constantly having to adjust it to get the angle just perfect. And even then, it's fuzzy.

Scene_Cast2• 14 years ago

Try the X230 IPS screen or any of the 15" screens. Lenovo's T400 series screens are truly notoriously bad.

pearle3• 14 years ago

I have a X220 with the IPS screen and it looks great despite being relatively low resolution.

zerostar072• 14 years ago

That little machine has replaced everything for me, giving me the benefit of working in the same machine without interruptions when moving from place to place. I use it in 2 workplaces with docking stations. Love the long battery life too which can make it to 8-9 hours of use, but the screen is small and has some aftereffect issues.

chrismsnz• 14 years ago

I have noticed some image persistence issues on mine as well. Any idea on how to fix/minimise it?

dfc3• 14 years ago

Does anyone know what the paulultra font is? pdffonts lists the following fonts in use:

    HTFDidot-B11Bold
    HTFDidot-M16Medium
    PaulultraPlain

PDF: http://viewer.zmags.com/services/DownloadPDF?publicationID=6...

lysol• 14 years ago

Thinkpads are the only other computers I'll willingly use besides a Mac. I think they're the only other computer that actually feels like it's purposefully designed instead of just being a forgettable, reactionary me-too from terrible OEMs that offer zero real innovation.

leeoniya2• 14 years ago

i had to add some ram to my t400, it wasnt difficult but i was surprised that it lives under the touchpad and requires more disassembly than say, just popping off a panel on the bottom side. it's been my workhorse with an x-25m ssd for over 4 years. only complaint is with extended 9-cell battery it's def a bulky thing. i've also had some issues using the reduced-size awkwardly-offset up/down/left/right keys - at least 3 times a day i will hit page-left or page-right by accident, causing tab switching. http://www.notebookcheck.net/typo3temp/pics/e82f8ee408.jpg

a huge win in all situations is having the cooling vents on the sides rather than bottom and keyboard drain/spill tray.

miahi3• 14 years ago

What I find great is that, at least for the business models, they offer service manuals that describe everything you have to do to change any part (from RAM to CPU).

leeoniya2• 14 years ago

I used to do routers/networking for a shop that was an Apple certified service center. The amount of teeny screws the techs had standing up on the magnetic bases was simply dumbfounding. With just the cases off, there was already a forest of these things similar to this: http://img.alibaba.com/img/pb/469/933/263/1282659625153_hz-c...

A couple of times someone knocked over one of those things and it was a disaster of crawling around on the floor for 60 minutes.

I can probably service my whole ThinkPad notebook with < 30 screws and 30% of the time.

mkhattab• 14 years ago

Last year I bought a Thinkpad E420s based on the praise I had read from multiple review sites and more importantly, the laptop is listed as Ubuntu certified. The first thing I did when I got it was install Ubuntu, of course. I'm not sure what "certified" means to Canonical but I assumed that every component would work flawlessly, such as the microphone, no sound output artifacts, smooth webcam, power & thermal management (although I understand Linux sucks in this regard), etc.

A few months ago, I bought a Macbook Air and as expected, there was a world of difference in seamless integration between OS and hardware.

If a vendor such as Lenovo built a Linux-based Thinkpad with something approaching the seamless integration and quality of OSX and Macbook hardware, I would gladly pay a premium over an Apple notebook.

hackoder• 14 years ago

The e420 is of the 'Edge' series. What you want to get is a T, X, or W series thinkpad. The E series is just thinkpad in name, so its no wonder that you had a bad experience.

Ofcourse, you are not to blame since Lenovo still markets it as a ThinkPad..

Zak2• 14 years ago

I'm typing this on a T400 because my usual T61/T60 hybrid has a cracked GPU BGA and I don't have a torch or a heat gun.

Comparing and contrasting the two machines, it's shocking what a step backwards in design the T400 is.

I think everyone knows about the terrible screen already, and I'd cut Lenovo some slack but for the fact that when IBM needed better screens, they founded IDTech as a joint venture with Chi Mei. Lenovo could at least push its suppliers around a bit; I think they have the volume for it.

The audio ports of the T400 are on the front, rather than the side. This isn't much of a problem at a desk, but using it as a laptop, it means headphone plugs often interfere with the user's body or clothing. It's especially bad using the machine in a reclined position. I'd look for a pcmcia sound card or bluetooth headphones if I had to use this machine for long.

The machine is bulky for the screen size. There's nearly an inch of bezel around the left, top and bottom of the screen. The bottom seems a bit reasonable; the inverter for the backlight has to go somewhere, and placing the screen too low puts the user's hands in front of the screen in some working positions. I see no excuse for the rest of it; the 14" 4:3 T61 had the same keyboard and much less wasted space.

The USB ports are vertical. I currently have a USB 3G stick inserted, and I can't set the machine on a flat surface without risking damage because it protrudes below the base of the laptop. It's not an unusually large 3G stick; even some flash drives have this problem.

I haven't spent any time with the newest Thinkpads, but models from a couple generations ago are shockingly worse than their immediate predecessors. Incidentally, it seems to have happened about the time they dropped the IBM branding, though Lenovo owned the Thinkpad division for several generations prior to that.

ThinkPad Design: Spirit and Essence

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