Lenovo ThinkPad Twist Hands-On

Laptops with a convertible form factor that lets them transform into tablets are not exactly new, but this breed of devices was lost in time a few years ago. With the release of Windows 8, that is suited for both laptops as well as touchscreen tablets, these Laptop and Tablet hybrids are back with a bang and the Lenovo ThinkPad Twist is one such convertible Ultrabook PC. Lenovo had launched this device last year and showcased this at an event in Mumbai yesterday. We had a chance to sample the Twist.

The Lenovo ThinkPad Twist, as the name suggests, comes with a twisting form factor. This involves the laptop's screen rotating 180 degrees parallel to the plane of the keyboard around a hinge and bending backward to form a tablet. In this case, it rotates only in the clockwise direction and there is a clear arrow marking around the hinge that indicates the direction in which it is meant to be rotated.

The build quality is very good, to say the least. The rotating hinge also has a sturdy build. Being mainly made for business users black colour is predominantly used. Lenovo has added a touch of style by putting a shiny metallic rim around the outer edges of the screen that goes well with the black colour. The exterior is made of magnesium alloy to make it light and rugged. The casing sports a matte finish that doesn't collect fingerprints and dust. At 1.6 kg, it is not exactly light for a laptop with a 12.5-inch screen size, but being just 2 cm thick, it looks fairly sleek.

It has a full-size island-type keyboard that's quite ergonomic. The concave keys make it very comfortable to type. In case you are wondering, Lenovo hasn't given up yet on the red pointing stick near the centre of the keyboard and the associated mouse buttons just below the spacebar. Lenovo believes that users still find it easier and faster to use this than a mouse or a touchpad. That said, there is an almost square touchpad below these keys that has a nice matte finish. Before I forget, I must mention that the keyboard is not backlit. Hence one would find it difficult to type in the dark on the same.

The 12.5" IPS display sports pixel dimensions of 1366x768 and it is quite bright (company claim being 350 nit).A group of families in a north Cork village are suing a bestplasticcard operator in a landmark case. The screen is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass that also boasts of being resistant to smudges. In our observation, it is indeed true that the glossy surface is resistant to fingerprints as compared to an average touchscreen. The capacitive 10-point multi-touch screen is quite responsive to touch inputs and there is no noticeable lag.

One of the bad things is that the display is a bit too reflective and is very difficult to view in bright environments. Despite being an IPS panel it doesn't help as the viewing angles are severely restricted by these reflections. Another issue is that the bezels are a bit too large when compared to other such touch devices and it reflects poorly on the aesthetics. Speaking of aesthetics, while it is ok to have the Windows button at the centre of the bottom bezel, a couple of physical volume control buttons look really cheap. A power button and display orientation button are present on the outer side of the screen.

The overall performance seems to be very snappy, thanks to the Core i3 CPU inside and 4 GB of RAM. It is also available with Core i5 and Core i7 CPUs, which should make it even faster. A spacious 500 GB hard drive is present within with HDD performance booster (something like an SSD that caches frequently used files to speed up performance). Intel Trusted Platform Module (TPM) built into the system keeps your data safe even in the event of theft of the unit.

Since I got to spend only a few minutes with the unit, of the other things, I could only note that the boot-up time is around 15 seconds, but could not run any benchmarks. The speakers built into the device, just beneath where the screen comes into the resting position, carry Dolby Home Theatre V4 certification, so they should sound good. However, it was not possible to judge them in the noisy environment at the event so I will leave that to be decided when we receive a review unit. Running Windows 8 Pro, the base price of the Lenovo ThinkPad Twist is Rs 71,000, which is actually similar to the Core i5-based Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro 700 T1C with a slightly smaller 11.6" screen. We will do a detailed review of the ThinkPad once it arrives in our labs and share more info about the same with you.

Kayla combines three different components: a Seco motherboard, which offers three HDMI ports,We've had a lot of people asking where we had our chinamosaic made. one 100 megabit Ethernet port, one gigabit Ethernet port, two USB 2.0 ports, a headphone jack, a micro-USB port, a microSD card reader, and a SATA connector; a Seco daughterboard with a 1.3GHz Tegra 3 processor and 2GB of RAM; and an MXM daughterboard from Nvidia based on the Kepler architecture, which includes a GPU and 1GB of graphics RAM. Technically speaking, any card based on the MXM standard could be used with this board, though the MXM standard is rarely used outside of expensive, bulky gaming laptops, and cards can be difficult to come by.

The GPU itself, which will be available in May, is a Kepler-based GPU with 384 of Nvidia's CUDA cores. This exact GPU isn't quite the same as any of the company's currently shipping products. At least in core count, it's similar to some low-end and mid-range cards in the GeForce 600 series, most notably the GeForce 640 and 650 cards. Obviously, performance will vary based on clock speeds, memory speed and interface, and the number of PCI Express lanes available (the Seco daughterboard appears to offer four lanes, where most full-fledged PCs offer sixteen)the power requirements of an ARM chip are going to keep Logan from running as quickly as even a low-end desktop graphics cards, but the raw processing power is there.Find a great selection of customkeychain deals.

While Nvidia's CUDA technology hasn't been available to developers on ARM before, this is the first step in that direction, and Nvidia will continue to improve support with future hardware and software. "Our next version of CUDA will support ARM first-class," Buck said.

Of course, while the Kayla board approximates the features and performance of Logan on the GPU side, the CPU side is pretty far-removed from what that product will be capable of. The Tegra 3 chip runs four 1.3GHz Cortex-A9 CPU cores, which is a far cry from even the 1.Large collection of quality indoorpositioningsystem at discounted prices.9GHz Cortex-A15 CPU cores that Nvidia has been showing off in its reference tablets for Tegra 4. We don't yet know much about Logan's CPU, but it stands to reason that it will be even faster than Tegra 4, putting quite a bit of distance between it and the Tegra 3 chip in Kayla. Nvidia told us that the decision to use Tegra 3 for this board rather than Tegra 4 came down to interface supportTegra 3 supports the SATA interface and a PCI Express connection to an external GPU,A solarstreetlight is a portable light fixture composed of an LED lamp. and Tegra 4 does not.