From the left, Arimasa Naito, Soichi Yokota
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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- 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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Lenovo Voice vol. 5 Cover
The topic for vol. 5 of THE VOICE - The Masters of ThinkPad Development is "case design". The Mechanical Design Division, which is in charge of case design, is at the core of the efforts resulting in the tough ThinkPad case. I wanted to hear more about the explanation of the efforts to overcome the limits in case design from vol. 5 and interviewed the two men on the cover. - Masters. Do you think there has been a lot of progress since Lenovo Voice vol. 5 was published? Ohtani: That is a good question. When I look back on it, yes I think there have been many things. Some models that represent new challenges include the T420, T520/W520 and X1. The LCD side case panel is a new hybrid type on the T420 and T520/W520 and the X1 uses Gorilla Glass. - What is the new hybrid type? Ohtani: As I explained in vol. 5, we have been using CFRP (Carbon Fiber Reinforced Plastic) sandwiched foam boards since the Z Series, but the T420 and T520/W520 use molded materials. The molded materials are a hybrid that is a unified molding of CFRP and GFRP (Glass Fiber Reinforced Plastic) and I think this is the first time that this has been tried in the industry. Mizoguchi: It took almost a year to improve the design enough to reach the mass production level. It is necessary to join different materials effectively when molding and this took a lot of effort. The reason that this is a hybrid is because in the antenna areas GFRP must be used because...
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Participants of the 2010 Internship Program
Once per week, a group consisting primarily of Yamato Lab. engineers gathers together to think about what to write about, discussing what they want to communicate to Lenovo Fans in Yamato Thinking. It occurred to us that it would be a good time to talk about the internship. We would like to introduce to you some of the contents from interviews that we did from the hands-on work experience internship last year at Lenovo. Q1. This year we had as many as 9 students participating in the program. What was your motivation to apply to the Lenovo hands-on work experience internship? This is a different field from my major, but computers were my hobby. I saw it on Yamato Thinking. My professor is a fan of Lenovo Yamato. Q2. During the period of the internship (two to four weeks), you leave the university to instead commute to a company. What were your days like? I go to work at 9 AM and start by checking my E-mail. I am working on diagnosing the performance of cameras and I am concentrating on my work throughout the day, except for the hour during lunch. I had many good experiences going out drinking with other friends from the internship because my work finishes at 5:36. The many opportunities I had to speak with people from other universities were a precious experience for me. Q3. Is there anything that you came to feel about Lenovo during the course of your internship? Sametime (Authors note: A messaging software) messages were...
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ThinkVantage Power Manager
Lenovo ThinkVantage Power Manager is a software that efficiently manages PC power consumption. Using it can contribute to saving on electricity. With the hope that more of our customers will use the recently added "Peak Shift" function, we have interviewed the lead developer. First, however, here is a brief explanation of the electric power situation in Japan. Many nuclear and thermal power stations suffered severe damage as a result of the recent Tohoku Earthquake. Across a broad area, including Tokyo, it is difficult to maintain a steady supply of power and this has resulted in planned rolling blackouts. Now terminating blackouts, but the problem that remains is power consumption during peak hours. Predictions for power shortages in mid-summer are as high as 10 million kW per day and this will likely result in even more stringent demands for reductions in power consumption. The settings screen for the peak shift schedule - What is the Peak Shift function included in ThinkVantage Power Manager? Imai: The Peak Shift function uses power during the times that are off-peak hours for your service. Using the Peak Shift function in the ThinkVantage Power Manager allows you to automatically avoid the peak hours for power demand and rates. It is possible to easily and freely set the schedule for powering the PC using the battery or the AC adapter. This is the 4th generation of the Peak Shift function. The basic concept remains the same as it was in...
