Lenovo ThinkPad T431s ultrabook coming in April for $949 and up

Lenovo’s next ThinkPad ultrabook is a laptop with a 14 inch, 1600 x 900 pixel matte display, a carbon fiber and magnesium case, and the company’s signature ThinkPad look… although that look is a little different than it used to be.

The Lenovo ThinkPad X431s will ship in April for $949 and up, with the base model featuring a Core i5 Ivy Bridge processor, 4GB of RAM, and a 320GB hard drive.

Lenovo ThinkPad T431s

Lenovo will also offer options such as a Core i7 chip and up to 12GB of RAM. The laptop has 2 USB 3.0 ports full-sized Ethernet and SD card slots, and a built-in 47Whr battery.

What separates this 3.6 pound notebook from some of its predecessors is the chiclet-style keyboard, a new touchpad which has integrated touch areas instead of distinct buttons, and a new color: instead of plain black, the ThinkPad X431s is a slightly lighter shade of “graphite black.”

It still has a pointing stick in the center of the keyboard, and a screen which tilts back 180 degrees — although it’s not a touchscreen and the ThinkPad T431s doesn’t have any sort of tablet mode.

The company plans to use the new keyboard, touchpad, and other visual elements found in the T431s in other upcoming ThinkPad products eventually.

via Engadget and The Verge

Posted on Sunday, March 17th, 2013, 7:22 pm by Brad Linder | 5 Comments

Joe

Not liking the no button mouse especially when using the trackpoint. I often rest my thumbs on the buttons when using the trackpoint.

I hate the clickpad of my X230. I want distinct pressable buttons. I ended up just disabling the clickpad in BIOS.
Backwards

Overall a good laptop but yet another 16:9 screen. How it comes that only Apple sells laptops with 16:10 screens and nobody else realizes that they are a factor of Apple taking the top end of the market? Furthermore 1600×900 is subpar. I’m using a laptop with 1680×1050 display from 2006. Innovation went backwards in the last years.
CyberGusa

Top end of the market? All of Apple’s OSX systems combined take up less than 10% of the PC market. It’s only their iOS products that are really successful.

While there isn’t much difference between 16:9 and 16:10, you’d have to have them next to each other to tell the difference in ratio!

Maybe you’re confusing screen ratio with resolution? Since that’s the only thing Apple laptops are really pushing right now with their newer retina displays and most of that was pretty recent.

What’s probably more important to most people is the increase in IPS displays instead of the cheaper TN screens… Not everything that makes a screen good has to do with just its resolution and dimensions!
Backwards

I’m not confusing the two things. The Leonovo screen is bad because it has low resolution and because it has the wrong aspect ratio. The only good thing is that it’s not glossy.

I’m not buying a Mac because I don’t like OSX but their displays are much better than anything else, not necessarily the retina ones but even the matte 1680×1050 they keep selling as on option for the lower end Macbooks. Everytime I think to my next notebook I look at my display and think, “do I really want to have a 16:9 display 1″ shorter than this one?”. I don’t.

And 10% of the pc market is a much bigger share for the notebooks costing more than 1500 USD, which is what one buys for professional use. Non Apple notebooks are becoming rare among my customers (web companies).
CyberGusa

First, there’s only about 100 pixel difference between a 16:10 and 16:9 with the 16:10 having a resolution of 1680×1050. Meaning the height difference is only about 1/3 of a inch and not a whole inch as you tried to imply!

This is only enough for a line or two of a document or web page.

Second, screen quality has a lot more factors than just aspect ratio! There’s color accuracy, viewing angles, general image quality as to how the screen renders and handles things like text, pixel density, contrast ratio, brightness, reflectivity, etc.

Aspect ratio mainly only matters on what you’ll be generally using the screen for… Since 16:9 and 16:10 too is mainly for media. While closer to 4:3 ratio is preferable if you intend to do a lot of reading, document editing, etc.

Something like a iPad for example uses closer to the 4:3 ratio.

While there’s plenty of expensive laptops, Apple hardly has the majority of anything that doesn’t use iOS.

Gaming laptops, Business Laptops, Graphic Designer laptops, etc. are all still very expensive and still make up the vast majority of the market.

Apple systems do appeal to certain consumer bases, so it’s far more likely your customers simply fall into that category. Otherwise Apple wouldn’t still have a limited share of the PC laptop/desktop market.

Apple even trimmed down their model offerings to focus on those few models that do sell fairly well for them.

So let’s be clear, you have your preferences and that’s fine, we all do, but they’re not as significant as you think they are to everyone else…

Lenovo ThinkPad T431s ultrabook coming in April for $949 and up

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