Japan and Back
I was just in Japan for a week working on our future generation ThinkPad offerings. I met Richard Sapper there along with Aaron Stewart from my North Carolina based design team. The trip there was a lengthy 24 hours door to door, including a 13 hour torture test of an airline seat. When I arrived at the hotel I was pretty much worn slick. International travel of this magnitude is brutal. We ate that evening at the Trader Vic’s at the hotel. Seems a bit odd, but it was actually quite good and convenient. We got up at the crack of dawn the next morning, rode the train into Yamato, and began a week long marathon discussing, debating, and inventing the latest design details for ThinkPad. I think you will like what we are working on.
While we were in Japan we got the opportunity to visit the Imperial Palace in Tokyo and tour the East Gardens. I love Japanese gardens and found this very inspirational from a design perspective. The Japanese attention to design detail and beauty is everywhere. Not so different from the ThinkPad design approach. While at the palace we were fortunate enough to get to observe a team of gardeners delicately prunning the black pines perched 50-75 feet in the air. Working without ropes or safety nets, they prune individual bits of the tree with small specialized scissors. At ground level, assistants scurry around picking up the clippings. It’s really impressive to watch.
How high in the air are these people?
Japanese pruning scissors are a design treasure
Can you find the Imperial Palace?
Resting on the promontory
The trip to Japan was a great success. I got to visit my friends in Yamato, re-think next generation ThinkPad, and emerse myself in another design sensitive culture. I can’t wait to go again. Maybe I can squeeze in a trip to Kyoto, the cultural hub for all Japanese gardening. I can only hope.
David Hill
Lenovo Meet the Modder Dean Liou
Lenovo Meet the modder- Chris Blarsky Dairy 2
Lenovo Meet the modder- Chris Blarsky Dairy 1
Lenovo H320 desktop
February 8th, 2010 9:31 pm
David,
Nice trip it looks like. Excited about the work on the new thinkpads-I hope they will still maintain the “thinkpad” quality.
Regards,
Karthik.
February 8th, 2010 11:08 pm
Apologies for the off topic post. One thing that baffles me is why the Lenovo web site is absolutely determined to keep screen resolutions a secret.
For example look at the Thinkpads. The T500 shows an acronym (eg WXGA+). The “help me” finally added some definitions a while back. (Other sources weren’t too helpful because a plus suffix is non-standard as are many of the acronyms without punctuation.)
Now look at the T510. That comes in HD or HD+ and there is no definition anywhere of what that is. Is it really necessary to hide the actual numbers?
I suggest you change things to be simple and informative. Always list the resolution as numbers and then put whatever acronyms you want in parentheses.
For example “1024×768 (XGA)”. No more secrets and no more obfuscation.
A similar thing is happening with wireless cards. I happen to know that the axb numbers are the transmit and receive antennas (or is it receive and transmit?) and the consequences but I don’t know how you expect others to figure it out. (The “help me decide” talks about the 5000 series chips at the end while the machine has several different 6000 series as options.)
February 9th, 2010 12:56 am
Karthik, Not to worry, my team, and Lenovo, cleary understands what makes ThinkPad quality.You should see the ThinkPad torture test equipment in the Yamato lab. Amazing.
February 9th, 2010 12:58 am
Roger,I’ll pass the resolution comment on to the web team. Thanks for the feedback. We certainly don’t want to confuse our customers.
February 9th, 2010 1:21 am
David, while it was nice to read about your trip (and Japan certainly seems like a place to visit anyhow:), are you allowed to tell us what you were actually discussing @ Yamato?
Forgive me, but it just feels strange that you tell us about how you discussed the future of ThinkPads, but then don’t disclose what you were actually talking about?
I know, you probably cannot tell us anything because of NDAs, etc. But even if you can’t say specifics, is it possible for you to say which areas were you looking at? Were you talking about software or hardware features, quality issues, keyboard changes, etc,etc,etc?
February 9th, 2010 1:31 am
Hi David, awesome that Lenovo is now on to the next generation of Thinkpads
My humble musings on this next generation:
- Keep the Thinkpad form factor and look-and-feel. For someone who has used ThinkPads since the IBM 768 to a (CTO’d to the max) T500 (my current toy
, a ThinkPad will always be black, with UltraNav, and linear in form (not a fan of the curvy CES ultra-portables 
- The “Slimmer, Lighter, Cleaner” direction is great! (T400S, 410/510). Neat and still instantly recognizable as ThinkPads!
February 9th, 2010 3:28 am
There are many smaller but much more beautiful gardens in Tokyo, in my opinion. Most of them were owned by wealthy merchants and such, but now are open to the public. Rikugien and Kiyosumi Teien are my favorites.
February 9th, 2010 3:56 am
Japanese gardens are wonderful. Maybe I’ll try to learn japanese just to have an excuse to go there. But is it worth learning japanese? Or do they speak English as good as one can hope?
Sorry for the most off-topic comment yet… /O8h7w
February 9th, 2010 4:54 am
Hi Dave,
i’m with the above commenters, it’s kind of mean to talk about discussing the new Thinkpads and then not give any hint on the directions…
Not that we think you do anything different throughout your days, but by writing it you made us curious!
Anyway, i like my T400s a lot, if you proceed in that direction i’m happy. OK, a high res and high quality screen is still lacking. Maybe that iPad screen is a hint that is not yet impossible to get good screens with a usable aspect ratio.
cheers
Hecke
February 9th, 2010 2:59 pm
Good to know that you guys are working hard on the next generation of ThinkPads. But I am still dying to hear about the remaining models of *this* generation of ThinkPads (i.e., successors to the X200 series)!
February 9th, 2010 5:54 pm
Kyoto is definitely worth a trip. We saw very similar gardening at Nijo Castle (Nijojo). The main train station there shares a very postmodern rectilinear sensibility with the ThinkPad. Ironically, the best food was Taiwanese dumplings from Din Tai Fung (Xiaolongbao).
In Tokyo they have a craft museum (Edo Shitamachi Dent? K?geikan) that includes the steps of making scissors. I put a photo link in the website box.
@08h7w: Basic greetings and directions are very necessary so you’re not rude. In my experience they were very friendly and helpful to wandering tourists.
February 9th, 2010 9:54 pm
I added a photo I took of the group resting on a promontory at the Imperial Palace gardens. Enjoy.
February 10th, 2010 12:30 am
O8h7w – just learn to say “sumimasen” to everyone. it’s a greeting, an apology, and a way to beg someone’s pardon before asking a question. it’s a good word to know no matter what you’re doing.
like VJ said, learning basic phrases is best. japanese will (usually) want to speak english to you since they don’t get much practice, however, they will respect you more if you try to say something in their language (even if you fumble through it).
ganbatte ne!
April 3rd, 2010 2:30 pm
It is coming up on two months and the T510 is still listed with HD and HD+ resolutions and there is still no link in the help or elsewhere as to what that actually is! Heck, the beginning of the “help me decide” text starts with a blurb about XGA being a type of display while lower down XGA is a resolution.
This whole issue is still pervasive throughout the page. For example for T510 integrated graphics, the only choice is “Intel HD Graphics with Always On USB” yet there is still a “help me decide” link, and that link mentions nothing of what Intel HD graphics is, yet does mention several older Intel graphic chipsets.
Try clicking on “Help me decide” for the processor section. You get taken to some annoying Flash page at Intel’s site to do with Core 2 and Celeron processors, none of which are the choices for the laptop. How about giving rough benchmark scores – eg give the slowest one a score of 100 and say what the others are relative to it?
The OS section is better actually listing the differences between the different Windows 7 versions, but also includes Linux which isn’t offered with the laptop.
The hard drive and webcam sections are pitiful. How about boasting about low light performance? Showing how it is builtin to the bezel so you get great convenience?
Despite offering 5 different wireless networking options, there is no “help me decide” at all!
April 3rd, 2010 3:11 pm
@Roger, did you look at tabook to see the differences between HD and HD+?
http://www2.partnerinfo.lenovo.....tabook.pdf
May 6th, 2010 1:55 am
In these 5 years, Lenovo has destroyed the Thinkpad brand.