ideaPad systems announced

[sfbutterfield]

It looks like the Y710 has everything I want. I'd be moving from a T42 and the thing I'm not sure about is how I would live day to day with a machine the size of the 710. Normally I would order it with the assurance that if I didn't like it I could send it back. I don't see any retail outlets in Northern California where I can take a look at the real deal. And it appears that all of the outlets for the IdeaPads have very limited return policies. So, is there any way for me to clap eyes on this thing before I commit my life to it.
Many thanks
Scott

[Leo]

my brother came for a short visit to my old dad in São Paulo with a y510 as gift for me, i installed win xp64 and ubuntu 64 imediatly, ubuntu 64 , although i am migrating slowly to it cause of lots of new things to learn, worked great!
on xp 64 i cant fix a problem with the atkacpi.sys and screen control buttons didn´t work,
ubuntu members are certainly solving faster any problems than microsoft, who only want to fill us with lots of "new stuff" for lot´s of money.

[wyth]

So today I installed Cheese, and it picked up the webcam.  The image was upside-down, but under the effects, I just clicked the vertical swap effect, and I was right-side up.

So it seems things are coming along.  I know Cheese will be standard in Gnome 2.22.

[wyth]

Just curious how people's keyboards are holding up.  I've noticed that a few keys on my Ideapad Y510 don't always register. 

I type pretty fast.  When I tracked the problem, I found that when I hit certain keys, I often don't hit hit them directly, but rather on the corner (the 's' key is a big one for me).  The key depresses, clicks, feels like any regular keystroke, but it just doesn't register.  This seems to be a left-handed issue in my case; my left hand is the one that doesn't hit keys directly.

Has anyone else experienced this?  And barring re-training myself on how to type, is there anything that can be done about this, like making the keyboard a little more sensitive?

[kojio]

Wyth, 

Glad to know I'm not crazy...I'm having simlar issues with my keyboard.  At first i thought that it was just my own fault, but now I have been paying close attention to my typing the past few days.  I've noticed that non-registering hits still occur when i purposely type very slowly to make sure that it's not me.  I've also tried altering how I type, and still it happens.   Wyth described it perfectly when he said:

 "The key depresses, clicks, feels like any regular keystroke, but it just doesn't register."

At times, I've tried typing much harder so that the keyboard makes a "thudding" sound, and still some letters don't get through.

What's annoying is that it doesn't occur too frequently, and when it does, it seems to happen almost at random (it's not always the same letters that don't register).  Therefor, I feel like service will tell me that I'm imagining things.

Anyhow, I will call support this evening and see what they suggest. 

[mikepasta]

...and all this time I thought it was just me! It's unfortunate we are all having problems with the keyboard like this. I have been typing for the last 40+ years and consider myself a somewhat good typist. It is totally random. There is no rhyme nor reason as to what keys will actually work. I also tried typing slowly and still had keys not work. Just typing this short reply I had to go back and type in a few missing characters!

Anyone else?

[vsrinu26f]

I've purchased Y510.

It is best with multimedia features, one touch recovery, programmable button.

good graphic performance.

border less screen is great.

one hitch is that the screen is getting hurt by the hard intel vista and nvidia stickers just below the keypad.

They make marks on my screen I love the stickers but I will be happy if they dont hurt my screen.

[CyruzDraxs]

Any word on the possiblity of Ideapads coming to Canada? Lenovo's Canadian lineup is really terrible at the moment and I'd hate to have to buy some piece of junk Sony laptop, but they are about the only thing I can find that's even halfway reasonably priced in Canada.

[biochemical]

What do you like best about the direction of the new IdeaPads?

New, more modern and stylish design – its not only about technology anymore. Customers are more focused on the esthetic side of their work machines. 
I definitely am one of them and I could not buy a simply utilitarian laptop, regardless of its look. If I have to spend x amount of money on it and stare at it for hours every day, I want it to look and feel good. 

It’s a pity that Lenovo doesn’t offer more choice of portable, stylish and light laptop in 14'' and 15'' size. 

I’ve decided to go for y650 mostly because it was lighter than y550 and y450 was not yet available. The exterior is nice and compact, but the white inside with small keyboard that seems miles away from the edge seems weird. It feels bit like a girl that looks cool, dressed in dark clothes (laptop closed) but fat and weird undressed (laptop open) 

I agree that all black option would be great as dark colour are generally more popular and easier to maintain. 

What areas would I like to see Lenovo focus on to be even more successful?

Keep the WEIGHT down. It’s a laptop, so it will get carried around. It will drive, fly, go for a walk in a purse, laptop bag. 

EXTEND the battery life. Again – it’s a laptop, people don’t buy it, to keep it forever plugged in on a desk. The battery in my brand new Y650 last – very pathetic 1.5hours. 2 hours less, than my 4 years old grand dad Asus W3, which first came out in 2005. We are in 2009, surely the technology did not go backwards!

Keep the SIZE down. Im talking about the power supply cable. Does it really need to be such a gigantic, awkward looking thing? Guys from apple figured it out long time ago. What’s wrong with Lenovo?? Are you lacking good designers? 

Build your designs PRACTICALLY. One of the most annoying things about the Y650 is that the disk slot is on the front side of the laptop, which – when I work on in from my lap (very often!) keeps opening up. There is no way of locking it either. Did that thing ever got tested as what its designed to be 'a loptop'? The clue is in the name.. 

What feature or service do you think competitor X has that we should take note of?

As I said above: Super popular and almost cult laptops produced by Apple are minimalistic, stylish, compact, light, very practical and have great battery life. 
Their designers seem to very well understand the expectations of their customers and the ever changing trends of the market.
They also seem to understand that their customers don’t expect completely new designs every year, but are happy to see small changes and modifications to their iconic cases. 
 If not for the lack of right click, which make operating on Windows somewhat retarded I would not think about going elsewhere than to Apple. 

Message Edited by biochemical on 05-27-2009 01:37 PM

[wyth]

To be honest, this will be the last Lenovo I get.  For all kinds of reasons, I use linux; so does my wife, and so do my parents and brother.  (They're not geeks, they're average everyday users.)

When I got my Y510, not long after it was released, Linux ran on the machine much better than Vista could.  There were just a few things to work out, and with the help of the Linux community, we who used Linux on these machines got it running very well.  

But it seems that any support Lenovo used to provide for Linux is fast disappearing.  They're not offering Linux options for average end-users, although I believe it's still available for business machines.  Search for Linux off their web page, and you're soon lost.  That's one thing, but the recent comments by Matt Kohut, Lenovo's Worldwide Competitive Analyst, was the determining factor for me. On his blog and in recent interviews, he's been actively hostile, or at least nasty, toward Linux while telling his audience how much they're going to love Windows 7 -- which he admits Lenovo is developing tools for because Windows 7 still has some shortcomings. 

I won't lay it alll out here; in an ubuntuforums thread of Lenovo Linux users, there's a collection of his statements berating Linux and praising Windows on one hand, while admitting Windows still has shortcomings that Lenovo needs to overcome on the other.  I'm not a Windows hater, I don't look for opportunities to talk smack about Microsoft, I use it in a virtual machine; I'm just am better off with Linux. 

But I don't see why Kohut needs to go after the OS or its users; if he truly believes Windows is that much better than Linux, there really wouldn't be a need to attack an OS with only 2% of the market.  A simple disclaimer on the front page of his blog would do.  But when someone spends time trying to build up his champion by cutting down the opposition, that doesn't show a lot of confidence in his champion.  And I'm not interested in supporting a company who is actively hostile to the way I use technology.  I'd feel the same way if I were using Windows and a hardware company insisted its users use a particular browser or office suite or media player while slamming the browser, office suite or media player I use.  It's alienating and unnecessary.  

I don't know if Kohut or Lenovo is trying to drive Linux users toward Windows 7, but they've succeeded in driving a few of us away from Lenovo.

Message Edited by wyth on 05-27-2009 06:17 PM