From the left, Arimasa Naitoh, Sohichi Yokota A message from Sohichi Yokota Greetings. I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season. My name is Sohichi Yokota and since April of last year, I have been the executive director at the Notebook Research and Development Center. This year I will be taking over management of the Yamato Blog from my colleague, Arimasa Naitoh. Here at Lenovo, we see this blog as being an invaluable opportunity for us to hear the opinions, hopes and encouragement of the passionate fans of ThinkPad. The voices of ThinkPad fans help guide us as we seek to preserve the ThinkPad DNA, even while providing a platform for new value and experiences in an ever-changing IT environment. I hope you will continue following us closely. A message from Arimasa Naitoh Dedicated Lenovo fans, thank you for reading the Yamato blog! A year has now passed since we moved offices to Minato Mirai 21 in Yokohama, and we are beginning to really settle in. We are renewing Lenovo's social networking presence and decided to take this opportunity to pass the baton for the Yamato Blog to the new head of ThinkPad development and Lenovo Japan Ltd. Corporate Officer, Mr. Sohichi Yokota. I took on a supervisory role for the development of Lenovo PCs and server products. I hope to take advantage of the experiences and things I learned from customers in my work on ThinkPad development and work to make sure that all of Lenovo's products are...
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Due to some technical difficulties associated with a blog platform migration, we temporarily lost the ability to display historical comments. This really made me sad, since comments are so valuable to Lenovo and me personally. I'm very pleased to report they are back. The comment counter still may register at zero, but they are there. Click on comments and they magically appear. Hopefully in a few days the counter will be in synch with reality. Sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused our readers.
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- Some time has passed since the tablet was released, how has the reaction been? Kinoshita: It’s been superb. Right now there are many tablets that all look the same, but the ThinkPad Tablet has been praised as being “recognizably ThinkPad”. - That’s great. What specifically do you think it is about the ThinkPad Tablet that makes it “recognizably ThinkPad”? Kinoshita: I think the ThinkPad Tablet is recognizably ThinkPad in two ways, it’s “toughness” and “design”. There was a lot of debate about toughness, but eventually the development team came to a consensus that sacrificing toughness to make the tablet thinner and lighter wasn’t the right way to go. I’m fairly satisfied with the finished product where design is concerned, considering the “the comfortable feel of the luxurious black rubber coating”, “sturdy and solid construction” and “a style that uses red effectively”. - I suppose that as a ThinkPad, it would have to pass rigorous testing focused on toughness. Kinoshita: Yes, that was a major consideration for us. Some of the testing standards were actually more severe than the ones we use for ThinkPads. We wanted to design a tablet that would be okay to use outside, even if it rained. – Personally, I have some doubts about whether the Android OS can really be used in a “professional business tool”. Is it really up...
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We just announced the ThinkPad X130e, our latest offering specially designed for the k-12 education crowd. If you ever had kids, you know the kind of abuse they can dish out to the things around them. I suffered through unexplainable damage to VCR's, televisions, and countless electronic toys during the first decade of the kid experience. Imagine handing them an ordinary computer to take back and forth to school each day, and even more scary, use without your direct supervision? That's why we went back to the blackboard to create something that is far from ordinary. The X130e design has been uniquely ruggedized for the extreme wear and tear education environment. Here are some of the things Lenovo did to ensure success: Rubber bumper absorbs side impacts 33% stronger corners due to larger energy dispersing radii Reinforced and recessed ports Kid-proof hinges last up to 30,000 cycles Stronger bezel to protect the screen Can you say rubber baby buggy bumpers five times fast? When we first started working on the project I was insistent that the design should telegraph ruggedness through an obvious feature. Strengthening the hinges was a great idea, but you can't see that. It can only be experienced over time. Enter the the rubber bumper. To me, it not only protects the edges from the occasional drop from little Billy's book bag, but it outwardly communicates ruggedness. Would you buy a Jeep without bumpers? Even if...
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I recently blogged about celebrating the 19th anniversary of ThinkPad. Every time we pass one of these milestones it makes me realize just how much black paint I have beneath my fingernails, and how significant ThinkPad has become. This week I started thinking about the forthcoming 20th anniversary, October 5th isn’t so far away. How could we celebrate the 20th anniversary in a dramatic and appropriate way. If you research wedding anniversary milestones you will find many fascinating traditional suggestions for ways to honor the event with gifts. Here is an excerpt from the Wikipedia on this topic: The names of some anniversaries provide guidance for appropriate or traditional gifts for the spouses to give each other; if there is a party these can be brought by the guests or influence the theme or decoration. These gifts vary in different countries, but some years have well-established connections now common to most nations: 5th Wooden, 10th Tin, 15th Crystal, 20th China, 25th Silver, 30th Pearl, 40th Ruby, 50th Golden, 60th Diamond. The tradition may have originated in medieval Germany where, if a married couple lived to celebrate the 25th anniversary of their wedding, the wife was presented by her friends and neighbors with a silver wreath to congratulate them for the good fortune that had prolonged the lives of the couple for so many years. On celebration of the 50th, the wife received a wreath of gold. Over time the number of symbols expanded and the...
