Lenovo Windows 8 ThinkPad Tablet 2 - Tablet + dockable Keyboard Combo

[Rommie2k6]

I think you are right about the RAM. That thing is dirty cheap! But like I said, we don't know the prices of upcoming netbooks with Clover Trail Atoms. Netbooks below $300 might go completely extinct in October. And you're not taking into account the fact that the guts of a full-blown netbook computer are being miniaturized to fit inside a super thin slate. And that slate will run a full-blown OS! That shrinking requires expensive cutting-edge tech.

Your expectations are too low. If everyone consumer was like you, we'll have to pay through the nose to get tablets (like now).

Your cutting edge tech is BS and an excuse. The Nexus 7 costs about $150-ish to construct. How much more do you think an Atom slate costs? Ok, larger screen size with digitizer, Atom CPU maybe slightly more expensive than ARM, but it is no Core i. At most I give the construction cost $400 MAX for an Atom Slate. Selling it for $800 is a 100% markup. I am no iSheep, I refuse to pay for a product with this kind of markup.

The use of Wacom also increases the price tag considerably. Once, someone here told me that the N-trig digitizer costs about $200 per machine and its Wacom counterpart costs about $300. I find these numbers very high (are those estimates correct???), but if they are right, that would add a lot to the cost of a Tablet PC.

The digitizer probably cost $100 only. Oh please... you expect me to believe that the digitizer layer is equal to the cost of a 10" tablet with all its components?

It's possible that some "milking" will take place here, as we're going through a tablet fad and OEMs might get greedy, but I find it unlikely as prices of Tablet PCs have always being high. Besides, we saw the Q550, Slate 500 and Slate 2 sell for $800+ upon release! Those were tablets with N-trig and without a keyboard-folio! Perhaps, when compared against netbooks, the price tag of $700 looks fishy.... It's hard to tell without all the facts and specs.

Yet, one thing is for sure: when compared to a $500 iPad, an $800 detachable Tablet PC with a real OS, Wacom digitizer, keyboard-dock, Military toughness, IO ports and MS Office (which many need), is a tremendous steal! My advice to those with tight budgets is to wait till the coupons start popping up in the Spring and Summer!

Bastards! Are they really gonna sell Pens as a $50 optional accessory?!?! That's criminal!

I don't care that the old Atom slates were $800. That was pre Windows 8 era. Post Windows 8 Atom slates prices have to come down to be competitive if they want to go mainstream and not serve vertical markets. You are using the already overpriced pre Windows 8 slates and using it a reference point and concluding that prices are reasonable? Oh geesh...

I don't care about iSheeps buying iPads for $500. Only idiots with half a brain would spend half a grand on some stupid ARM device. A 10" ARM tablet with capacitive screen cost $300 or $400 with keyboard dock if you search around hard enough. The premium for an Atom slate of the same form factor (no keyboard) does not justify a 100% markup. Again you oversell the fluff of the various benefits like a dockable keyboard, military toughness, etc... when not everyone needs them.

The Tablet PC is now a secondary device to me. What I need is a cheap and fast enough digital inkpad (i.e. OneNote). I don't need HD resolution, I can live with 1280x800. I don't need super high quality IPS screen, a bright LED backlight LCD will suffice (all of us who grew up with convertibles did not have great IPS screen with 178 degrees viewing angle). I don't need a keyboard dock, since I am using it as a digital notepad. All these fluff just adds unnecessary excuses to jack up the price. You are arguing as if your Atom slate is going to a primary device... which if that is your assumption then you are sorely mistaken. People who need a Tablet PC as a replacement for their desktop/laptop would automatically go for Core i tablets... and at prices of $1.2k, it's about a 20-30% markup vs equivalent laptops, so it is not too bad. People who are going for Atom slates are obviously not going to use it as their primary device, and we will not justify plonking down $800 for that piece of junk, which is a >100% markup over their non-tablet counterparts (i.e. netbook).

I paid a little under $1k for my quad core notebook last year, with max HDD, max RAM and discrete graphics. You expect me to pay almost the same price for an Atom slate? Think again. No matter how you analyze it, a $800 Atom slate is a 100%+ markup. Only iSheeps pay those kind of prices.

I've waited almost a bloody 6mth to get at this point only to find that Atom slates are going to be overpriced, it doesnt help to have cheerleaders who think that their price is fair. I purchased the Dell Latitude ST for less than $400 earlier this year, GOOD price but it was too damn slow. Looks like I may have to wait another year. This is ridiculous! Btw, the cost price of the current Dell Latitude ST is probably the similar to the upcoming Atom slates, the only difference in component cost is N-Trig to Wacom. I only hope that people will purchase tons of Atom slates to find that they are overpriced slow devices and return them, then the refurb market will be flooded

[Rommie2k6]

Just another rant, read a report that the $800 TPT2 has a keyboard and a "bundled" MS office. Jesus Christ, what the hell? Can't they sell these extra crap separately. If no KB and no MS office, I'm sure they can lower it to a more reasonable $600 price point. Incidentally without the extra nonsense it can be done - Samsung's Series 5 is starting off at $649. We need more competition to lower this price point!

[Pianomanos]

It looks like the $800 for the Tablet 2 includes both the keyboard dock and the pen (wacom?). Compare with the Samsung Ativ Smart PC (aka Series 5 hybrid), which is $750 with keyboard and pen (wacom). Also compare with the previous generation of atom-based tablets, like the Fujitsu Q550 which was $850 with pen (n-trig) but no keyboard.

To some people, the extra $50 over the Samsung may be worth the Thinkpad name and the (presumably) better construction. Also, it looks like all of the new atom-based tablets will be thinner, lighter, longer-running, slightly faster, and slightly cheaper then the previous generation. It also looks like they will mostly come with wacom digitizers rather than the n-trig ones on the previous generation (HP Slate, Fujitsu Q550, and Motion CL900), which is definitely a good thing.

[Bronsky]

If no KB and no MS office, I'm sure they can lower it to a more reasonable $600 price point. Incidentally without the extra nonsense it can be done - Samsung's Series 5 is starting off at $649. We need more competition to lower this price point!

If Lenovo follows its normal pattern, the TP2 should be released with a 25% coupon. That would put it at your dream price.

[Erik Latranyi]

The biggest issue is the Atom's poor reputation.

We do not know how Clover Trail tablets will perform with Windows 8, so all this speculation about "value" is ignorance on display.

[dceggert]

It looks like the $800 for the Tablet 2 includes both the keyboard dock and the pen (wacom?). Compare with the Samsung Ativ Smart PC (aka Series 5 hybrid), which is $750 with keyboard and pen (wacom). Also compare with the previous generation of atom-based tablets, like the Fujitsu Q550 which was $850 with pen (n-trig) but no keyboard.

To some people, the extra $50 over the Samsung may be worth the Thinkpad name and the (presumably) better construction. Also, it looks like all of the new atom-based tablets will be thinner, lighter, longer-running, slightly faster, and slightly cheaper then the previous generation. It also looks like they will mostly come with wacom digitizers rather than the n-trig ones on the previous generation (HP Slate, Fujitsu Q550, and Motion CL900), which is definitely a good thing.

The N2600 dual core atom is posting benchmark numbers pretty close to twice as fast as the single core Z670. It is now in the league with the C2D of about the same clock speed. This while claiming longer battery life than the single core variant (see Q550 vs. Q552 specs for a comparison).

[bloodycape]

Well last I heard the new atoms are closer to the lower c2d. But how does the gpu compare?

[Bronsky]

Well last I heard the new atoms are closer to the lower c2d. But how does the gpu compare?

Intel has decided to use with Imagination's PowerVR SGX 544MP2, which, on paper, should compare favorably with other low powered GPUs. The problem is that Intel has failed to provide efficient drivers for the last few generations of its atom IGPUs. Hopefully, at the Atom W8 tablet event, someone will give the GPU a test drive.

[Steve B]

For what it's worth, the Passmark test score for the new atom is 602. The u7500 C2D 1.06 ghz runs at 613. That was out about 3-4 years ago or so on some of the Motion slates. So that's the comparison. My current core2duo sl9400, that runs at 1.86 ghz, gets something like 1300 on Passmark, so the new Atom still has a way to go. But it's a beginning.

Some people have made a big deal about the fact that current Atom cpu's still can only process things in order, and that that will be changing next year to non-sequential processing with the BayTrail cpu. So, I guess the idea is that ghz isn't the only thing to worry about.

All the demo videos look like the Atom runs Win8 very smoothly, but Windows has been trimmed down and cleaned up to run well on tablets with less power. I think the real issue is how it runs real Windows programs that actually demand some horsepower.

[Rommie2k6]

It looks like the $800 for the Tablet 2 includes both the keyboard dock and the pen (wacom?). Compare with the Samsung Ativ Smart PC (aka Series 5 hybrid), which is $750 with keyboard and pen (wacom). Also compare with the previous generation of atom-based tablets, like the Fujitsu Q550 which was $850 with pen (n-trig) but no keyboard.

To some people, the extra $50 over the Samsung may be worth the Thinkpad name and the (presumably) better construction. Also, it looks like all of the new atom-based tablets will be thinner, lighter, longer-running, slightly faster, and slightly cheaper then the previous generation. It also looks like they will mostly come with wacom digitizers rather than the n-trig ones on the previous generation (HP Slate, Fujitsu Q550, and Motion CL900), which is definitely a good thing.

Generally correct, but the Clover Trail atom will not be any faster than the N2600 Atom chips out today. There has been no improvement on the CPU side, but a big jump in GPU performance

A bit of history:
Z5X0/Z6X0 Atom - Used in 2011 atom tablets. The CPU is immensely slow (about 1/3 to 1/4 of a Core 2 Duo ULV CPU @1.2GHz). The GPU is also immensely slow, the performance is equivalent to the GPU on the Samsung Galaxy S phone released in 2010.
N2600 Atom - Used in the Q552 refresh and most 2011 netbooks. It's basically a dual core version of the Z5X0/Z6X0 Atom series and based on benchmark it is just below a Core 2 Duo ULV CPU@1.2GHz. The GPU was a big improvement that puts it around the iPad 2 performance
Clover Trail Atom - No significant changes to CPU, some clock speed, so expect similar CPU performance to the N2600 Atom series. GPU has a marginal improvement to put it around the iPad 3 performance level. In comparison to laptop GPU, that's about equivalent to the Intel GPU released for 1st-generation Core i series (assuming they don't f*** up the drivers).

So in conclusion, Atom slates in 2012 will have a CPU that is at best equivalent to a Core 2 Duo ULV @1.2GHz and a GPU that is equivalent to the Intel GPU released for 1st-generation Core i series (assuming the drivers are good). That's not too bad... but I wished they improved the CPU performance. Will have to wait for Bay Trail (Atom in 2013) for that to happen.