I was very sad to read news on Friday that Lenovo was getting out of the small screen tablet market. It turns out, however, that it’s not true. Lenovo issued a press release yesterday stating that they “are not getting out of the small-screen Windows tablet business.” In addition to that they stated that they will have a new 8-inch and a new 10-inch Windows tablet ready for the holidays.
This is great news because it supports my theory that 8-inch Windows tablets haven’t done badly at all. While I believe that the innovation will be focused in the 10-13-inch tablet space over the next years the Dell Venue 8 Pro popularity, recent announcements from Microsoft and my own experience tells me that the 8-inch tablets aren’t bad at all. At $225 the Dell Venue 8 Pro is an absolutely brilliant tablet and as I cycle through them in my daily use, I can’t say that any of them are bad.
While new models are in the pipleline Lenovo did say that the Thinkpad 8 is now longer for sale in the US. The Miix 2 8 is out of stock right now too so let’s hope we get that one back on the shelves soon.
So let’s continue to think about low-end, mid-range and the high-end ultra-mobile PC space.
Info via GigaOM
All I read in the media on Friday was that Lenovo was discontinuing the sale of the ThinkPad 8 in the US.
I was looking for something more powerful, smaller and lighter than my Thinkpad Tablet 2. I held out upgrading until the Thinkpad 8 was announced.
No digitizer? So I went to my current Dell Venue 8 Pro.
If Lenovo reboots the Thinkpad 8 with a Wacom stick, I can see a Christmas present in my immediate future. If they promise a full sized USB port, I’ll preorder.
tablets without digitizer support suck and will continue to suck, whatever “the industry” will slap onto the market. sausage fingers, specially fat american sausage fingers are of no use for professional note taking and usability of legacy applications on (windows) tablets at all. it was this way from the early days of the light pen and it will persist into the upcoming future. if it would be other ways as “the industry” would like to make consumers believe, humanity never would have begon using pens, but would write eith their wurstfingers and finger paint. as we know early cave man did
some 10’000 years ago. but every high culture thereafter used pens or stylo’s.
I’d take an optical mouse in the bezel over an active digitizer.
Just use touchmousepointer -virtual touchpad. It takes up some screen real estate but is versatile.
http://www.lovesummertrue.com/touchmousepointer/en-us/index.html
I was one of those that ordered a 128GB Thinkpad 8, waited months, had Lenovo cancel and ask me to reorder, waited again and finally canceled when it became clear the product would never be delivered. All I have to say to Lenovo is don’t bother offering them if you can’t ever ship them. As for me, it have moved back to the Dell folks for tablets as well as laptops.
Ya, the ThinkPad 8 was constantly not in stock at Lenovo’s site. If they’re not going to keep in stock then they should say so earlier.
The winners in the current generation of 8″ tablets are Dell and ASUS. The others seems to just be also-ran machines. These also-ran makers seem to be doing the smart thing and throwing in the towel, cutting their losses, and conceding the current race to the two leaders.
There is a new generation of devices based on new chips due out this fall and/or early winter and the next generation race will begin. The dropouts from this generation seem to be committed to returning to the race when this next generation appears.