Design Matters

I wanted to take a moment to thank everyone that took the survey, signed up for future surveys, or left us a comment here. We’ve had over 440 people take the survey to date and gotten a lot of helpful feedback.

Looking at the comments in the previous post, the common discussion point is digital video of some sort and the aging 56K modem. Hopefully I will be able to talk more about these points soon.

David Hill

It seems like every time I read a review of a notebook computer, including our own, the topic of ports comes up. People have very strong opinions on this hot topic. It’s nearly as emotionally charged as religion or politics. The connector location is usually questioned, but more often than not the actual types and numbers of ports is even more intensely debated. Since notebooks have a limited area for placing connectors (there is only so much beach front real estate) I’m sure you can imagine the discussions that connectors generate during the development of a new ThinkPad. I thought it would be a good idea to go straight to my Design Matters readers and and gather data directly. We have created a brief survey on port usage where we can collect data on this subject. This is your big chance to have your vote counted as we develop future generation ThinkPads. Please click here to take the survey. Thanks for your time and input.

David Hill

Music pioneer Bo Diddley passed away yesterday at the age of 79. His driving rhythms and unique hard edge sound paved the transition between blues and rock and roll. Not only was he a influential guitarist and musician, but he was also a designer. His self-designed totally rectangular guitar nicknamed “The Twang Machine” was tremendously innovative and will forever be associated with his unique persona. A fellow Lenovian and guitar enthusiast went so far as to make a similar guitar out of a ThinkPad a few years ago. Yes it really works.

Bo will be greatly missed in both the music and design worlds. He was quite the man.

David Hill

Yesterday I saw that PC World magazine rolled out their top 100 edition. I was thrilled to see the ThinkPad X300 rated number 5. Very rewarding for the Lenovo team and the tremendous effort that went into designing and engineering the X300. You have to dig very deep to find the product most often compared to ours. Here is what PC World wrote about the X300:

5. Lenovo ThinkPad X300 (ultraportable laptop, $2500) As everyone swooned over Apple’s hot Air, Lenovo snuck in the back door with a business-centric notebook that answers most of the Air’s shortcomings. It has processing power to burn, plenty of ports–and a paper-thin optical drive. Stick that in your manila envelope, Steve.

David Hill