Year: 2013

Welcome back to the next episode in what seems to be turning out to be a series of posts on my experience of using my first Windows 8 tablet – a Lenovo ThinkPad 2.

The last post took a look at some of the software applications that Lenovo has provided for their tablet, and I’ll continue that look in this post. I ended that post somewhat abruptly when I discovered how awful Lenovo’s tutorial on Windows 8 was. Not only was it shockingly poor, but it is also built for the Desktop version of Internet Explorer. One might expect that a Windows 8 tutorial would take advantage of the Modern UI of Windows 8. Clearly Lenovo don’t think so.

To see how it should be done, I think it’s instructive to take a look at HP’s tutorial for Windows 8. It is fully a Modern UI App – no forcing the hapless user to open the Desktop web browser here. This tutorial, while it was originally designed by HP for use on their Windows 8 systems, is now freely available in the Windows Store for download and installation onto any Windows 8 system:

If you’re new to Windows 8, it’s worth taking a look at this tutorial.

OK, now onwards with the contents of Lenovo’s Companion App:

Ah, QuickLaunch turns out to be yet another Start Button replacement tool. I really don’t understand the attraction of these. I want to learn how to ride my bike, not go through life with training wheels clamped to it.

Next up is the trial version of Norton Internet Security that Lenovo installed on my ThinkPad. One of the first things I did was to uninstall it, and to revert to Microsoft’s Windows Defender, which is built into Windows 8. It’s sufficient protection, in my opinion.

Then we have a couple of adverts for two of Lenovo’s own utilities: Settings and QuickSnip. I’ll deal with them later.

Lenovo Blogs opens a scrolling view of links to Lenovo’s corporate blogs. Clicking on a link will open the blog post inside the Companion App, rather than switching to the web browser, which is a nice touch. E.g. the “8 Cool Things About The ThinkPad Tablet 2” post shown here:

Needless to say, the blogs are primarily a marketing tool, and present a rosy picture. I couldn’t help but comment on the above blog post to correct some of the rosiness.

The links to the Lenovo channels on YouTube and Twitter are further examples of marketing. Once again, these channels are displayed within the Companion App itself, rather than shelling out to a separate instance of the web browser. I suspect the same thing is supposed to happen for the Accessories tile, but all I got was a blank page and a plaintive message that there was “No matched content for this system”. There is in fact an online Lenovo shop in the Netherlands, so I suspect that once again the developers of the Companion App assume that we all live in the US of A.

And as I said in my last post, I have no interest in signing up for Lenovo’s Cloud Storage – I am already a satisfied SkyDrive user.

To summarise, the Companion App strikes me as primarily a Marketing tool from Lenovo. I think it can be uninstalled without any second thoughts. Right, that about wraps it up for the Companion App, now let’s take a look at the Settings App.

The Settings App is a bit strange on my system. I’m not sure whether it’s working as it is supposed to. If I look at the Settings App in the Windows Store, I see this:

It shows a screenshot of the Settings App that contains five major sections:

• Mobile Hotspots (for internet sharing)
• Power
• Location Awareness
• Camera
• Audio

Yet, when I open up the Settings App on my ThinkPad, this is what I see:

That is, just three:

• Power
• Location Awareness
• Audio

Yet, I have two cameras in the ThinkPad. Why aren’t the settings for these shown here? ‘Tis a puzzlement.

(Update 26 February 2013: Lenovo has just released a new version of the Settings App, and there is now an entry for the Camera Settings. They’ve also said that they are working on the Mobile Settings entry for the ThinkPad Tablet 2, so this should arrive at some point)

I suppose this App is OK, as far as it goes, but I think I would have liked to have seen the Power setting (in particular, the battery charge remaining) broken out into a separate tile that could be pinned to the Start Screen, or displayed in the Settings App tile itself. That would have been useful. Having to start up the Settings App, and then select the Power section – not so much.

There’s not much more to say about this App – it’s pretty ho-hum as it stands.

The Support App opens with a horizontally scrollable window showing six sections:

• User Guide
• Services and Warranty
• System Health
• Hints and Tips
• Knowledge Base
• Discussion Forum

The User Guide section launches the PDF file of the user guide in the Microsoft Reader App. While it may be thought to be a little more clumsy to launch the Reader, rather than display the user guide directly within the Support App, this does have one advantage. The Reader App is able to use the Devices in the Charms bar to print out pages from the user guide. The Support App (just like all the other Lenovo Apps) does not support Devices. What is more, the Reader App, unlike Microsoft’s Modern UI Internet Explorer and Mail Apps, can print out a subset of pages from the guide.

I do like the fact that the Service and Warranty section displays the exact state of the warranty on my ThinkPad. It tells me how many days I have left before something will inevitably break – just after the warranty runs out, or am I being overly cynical here?

The System Health section is a little useful. It does indicate the amount of free storage and the amount of installed memory. However, while it tantalisingly states that “You can run certain tests on your computer to check the condition of your hard disk drive”, it doesn’t actually tell you what these tests actually are and where to find them.

I’m also slightly disappointed that under the memory section, there is a clickable link that takes you to the online Lenovo shop where you can buy additional memory. Er, the ThinkPad 2 uses the Intel Clover Trail Atom chip – this only supports a maximum of 2GB memory, and more cannot be fitted. That link should never appear if this App is running on the ThinkPad 2.

Attention to detail is important, I think. It makes the difference between an acceptable user experience, and a great user experience. It also turns your users into active supporters of your products.

The rest of the sections (“Hints and Tips”, “Knowledge Base”, “Discussion Forum”) show information scraped from the various Lenovo resources and forums on the web. Like the Companion App, these are shown directly within the Support App itself, rather than shelling out to the web browser. For a quick overview, this is probably OK, but frankly, if I want to read the Lenovo ThinkPad forums, it is far easier to read them directly in a web browser. I can also interact, by replying to threads or making new ones. I cannot do this from within the Support App.

In summary, I find the App OK. It is good-looking, but without much depth. However, it can stay on my system.

The QuickSnip App is a simple image cropping tool, which uses the Share function in the Charms bar to pass on cropped images:

This App from Lenovo is like the majority of the current crop of Modern UI Apps provided by Microsoft: almost entirely useless.

I’ve just uninstalled it from my system.

Overall, I cannot say that the Lenovo Apps have provided a great experience. I still think that the ThinkPad 2 hardware is basically a solid product, and I’m still very happy with my purchase. But I don’t think I’m head over heels in love with it. Perhaps I’m just too rational – I doubt whether I could ever be an Apple fanboi either.

Following on from the last post, here’s some further thoughts on the software experience of the ThinkPad tablet.

One criticism that I’ve often read of PC OEMs is that they stuff their machines with bloat-ware. While I don’t think that Lenovo is quite as bad as some, it still comes with some software of questionable utility.

Here we see five utilities, I’ve already removed a couple; the inevitable anti-virus trial, and an application to access Lenovo’s cloud storage

Since I already use Skydrive (with luckily 25 GB free storage), I don’t need the hassle of managing more cloud storage.

Let’s take a look at the remaining five applications. First up, the Companion App.

Oh dear, this doesn’t look good. Basically lots of (questionable) style, and little (apparent) substance. OK, let’s take a look at the “Getting Started” section.

Oh gawd, another invitation to install Norton Internet Security. Look, people, Windows 8 comes with a perfectly good anti-virus and anti-malware software out of the box. A Pox on your suggested alternatives. I’ve been there, I’ve done that. I’ve paid the money, had the bloated software experience, and frankly – no more…

OK. What’s this “Customize your start menu” stuff?  Well, frankly, I haven’t a clue, because there’s nothing on that screen that is a link to take me to anything resembling a “Lenovo Quicklaunch”.  It’s dead. Fail number two.

So then I made the mistake of clicking on the “About Companion”  tile.

Welcome to the land of Exclamation Points!!!

Discover! Change is Good! Your Companion!

Er, basically – fuck off.

OK – onwards to the next point in our journey: the “Stay Connected” tile. This is, as expected an advert for the Lenovo Mobile Access service.

Well, this is all very well; but unfortunately, it doesn’t work for me, as I’ve documented here. I still haven’t had my connectivity issues resolved by Macheen’s Support service, so I’m continuing to use Vodafone’s service, thank you very much.

Update 25 February 2013: I’ve now heard back from Lenovo/Macheen Support, and they have indeed fixed my problems with Lenovo Mobile Access, so I can now choose to use their pay-as-you-go mobile access service. Excellent.

Update 30 December 2013: Ah, not so excellent. Lenovo/Macheen have deactivated my SIM card because I hadn’t used it for six months, and expect me to buy a new one to continue using their service. Sorry, guys, you’ve just lost a customer, and I’m certainly not recommending you to all my friends.

Onwards to the Lenovo Services, with its very busy graphic. This turns out to be an invitation to shell out money to enjoy extra warranty protection or premium support services.

While I have no objection in principle to this, I do wish that the developers of these web pages would realise that not everyone lives in the US of A and direct us to the local country services.

On to the “App Showcase”tile. Personally, I’m underwhelmed, but maybe that’s just me.

After all, I could just search for “Lenovo” in the Windows Store and see many more possibilities to choose from. Or not, as the case may be:

I’ll skip over the “Last Gadget Standing” tile, which is a transient advert for an event in the past, and the “rara.com” tile, which is an invite to download yet another music service and move swiftly on to the “How to DO Windows® 8” tile. Really, the title alone is enough to make me want to lose the will to live. Still, let’s steel ourselves and press on.

There are some ominous signs in the welcome message that this is not going to be a smooth experience. For example: “When you click the ‘Learn more’ button, you will be prompted to open the Desktop browser”. Oh dearie me; this does not bode well.

And sure enough:

Oh, dear god – is this really the best you could do?

I’m sorry. I really need to pause and take a deep breath at this point. I’ll carry on with exploring the Lenovo experience later on, when I’ve had a chance to recover.

I should just say that I do rather like the Lenovo ThinkPad 2 tablet. It’s just that the software that’s been tossed onto it rather sours the overall experience.

This is a test post made on my new Lenovo ThinkPad 2 using the handwriting recognition of Windows 8. I must admit that it’s pretty scarily good at recognising my scrawl.

You know, I think it is preferable for someone to acknowledge that they don’t know the answer, rather than to either studiously ignore the question, or make something up on the spot.

This has been brought to mind during my hunt for a suitable Windows 8 Tablet.

You may recall that I haven’t been too impressed with the current state of the Windows 8 Tablet market. Well, it’s now six weeks further on, so I’ve been gathering more data points in my search for a suitable tablet to invest in.

My shortlist of tablets came down in the end to

• the Lenovo Thinkpad 2
• the Dell Latitude 10
• the Asus Vivo Tab TF810c
• the HP Envy X2

The Lenovo and the Dell are pure tablets, while the Asus and HP are hybrid convertibles – they can be used as notebooks, but their keyboards completely detach when required. All four supposedly had active digitizers with proper pen support, which was one of my requirements.

I also had an outside candidate, the Microsoft Surface Pro. Outside, because although it uses the more powerful Intel Core i5 CPU, in place of the Intel Atom Z2760 CPU used in the above tablets, this in turn means that it has a shorter battery life, and requires a cooling fan. There’s also a question mark over whether it will be available in the Dutch market.

In the end, I dropped both the HP and the Asus from consideration. The HP, while it supposedly had an active digitizer, the pen was optional, and at the moment is completely unobtainable. In fact, it’s like the mythical unicorn – some people claim to have seen it, but in practice, it’s missing in action. The Asus looks good, and seems to have a decent build quality, but what finally knocked it out of consideration for me is the fact that Asus support is lagging badly. Unlike the other vendors, Asus still do not yet have updated software drivers available for their product, or the Intel Atom chipset. That’s not a good sign in my book.

It was then down to a choice between the Lenovo or the Dell. I liked the fact that the Dell had a replaceable battery, but on the other hand, the prices for the accessories were always higher than for the Lenovo range. So my choice came down to the Lenovo Thinkpad 2.

The problem was, that there was not just the one model in the Thinkpad 2 range, there was a veritable army of them, and it was far from clear as to what precisely the differences might be, or what what be available in the Dutch market.

Lenovo publish documents that detail the models that are available in Western Europe. The first time I looked, last December, there were only a few to choose from. Then, in January, more became available. There seemed to be two series of products: the 3679 series and the 3682 series. From the published information (as of January 2013), that detailed the models as follows:

Type-model	Storage	Tablet Pen	WWAN	NFC	O.S.
3679-23G	64GB	No	None	None	Win8 32
3679-24G	64GB	Pen	Yes	None	Win8 Pro32
3679-25G	64GB	Pen	Yes	NFC	Win8 Pro32
3679-2PG	32GB	No	None	None	Win8 32
3679-4HG	64GB	No	Yes	None	Win8 32

Type-model	Storage	Tablet Pen	WWAN	NFC	O.S.
3682-28G	64GB	Pen	None	None	Win8 Pro32
3682-29G	64GB	Pen	None	NFC	Win8 Pro32
3682-25G	32GB	No	None	None	Win8 32
3682-42G	64GB	No	Yes	None	Win8 Pro32
3682-4FG	64GB	Pen	Yes	NFC	Win8 Pro32

However, when I looked at the sites of the Dutch retailers, I was seeing a completely different series of numbers:

N3S23MH – 64GB, Win 8 (not clear whether it has the pen or NFC)
N3S25MH – 64GB, Win 8 Pro (not clear whether it has the pen or NFC)
N3S4HMH – 64GB, Win 8 (not clear whether it has the pen or NFC)
N3S2PMH – 32GB, Win 8 (not clear whether it has the pen or NFC)

Looking at all the sets of numbers, and the prices, then I was fairly sure that the mapping would be:

3679-23G – N3S23MH
3679-24G – ?
3679-25G  – N3S25MH
3679-2PG – N3S2PMH
3679-4HG – N3S4HMH

However, I had no clue as to what the difference was between the 3679 and the 3682 series.

I documented all this in the Lenovo Thinkpad forum, and hoped that someone from Lenovo would pop along to clear up the confusion.

No such luck.

And there it stood until a few days ago when I saw that one of the Dutch retailers (only the one so far) had the N3S25MH model arriving in stock. So, I emailed the retailer to ask whether this model shipped with the digitizer and the pen.

No response.

Yesterday, the model was showing as in stock, so I asked again. I also took a chance and ordered it.

Of course, as soon as my order was accepted, I had a reply from the retailer that (1) this model did not come with a pen, but that (2) I could order a pen part number FRU39T0803. Naturally, this pen was NOT the Thinkpad 2 pen, but something else entirely. 

Clearly, either this salesperson did not have a clue, or my assumption that the N3S25MH model was the 3679-25G model was completely wrong. I might add that a few weeks back, I was reliably informed by another Dutch reseller that the N3S23MH model came with a digitizer and pen (it doesn’t).

Well, the Thinkpad 2 arrived today, and I’m relieved to report that the N3S25MH is exactly the same as the 3679-25G model – it even says this on the box. So it came with the pen, with WWAN and NFC.

It also came with a large sticky label plastered on the back saying NON-ENCRYPTION. I suspect that this is the difference between the 3679 series and the 3682 series. The latter has the TPM hardware fitted and enabled, while the former does not.

It is a bit frustrating that we have to figure all this out by ourselves. Lenovo don’t make it clear, and their resellers, judging from my experience of the Dutch resellers, don’t have a clue.