Lenovo is possibly maybe thinking about an OLED ThinkPad T500
By Tim Stevens 
posted June 24th 2009 11:32AM
posted June 24th 2009 11:32AM
posted June 24th 2009 11:32AM
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It would be thinner. But the reduced battery life and susceptibility to burn-in seems like a horrible tradeoff to me.
Reduced battery life?
Uhhmmm.... Seeing as how OLED uses LESS power you should get MORE battery life.
No, I work with OLEDs every day. On our particular panel, if more than 20% of the pixels (actually sub-pixels, meaning the separate red, green and blue elements in a pixel) are on, then the panel takes more power than an LCD. If a large number of them are on, the power usage can be several times what the LCD takes.
OLED display drivers (the hardware chips, not the software driver) have little tricks in them like reducing the brightness of large white areas to keep the power usage down and to prevent heat buildup because the heat makes the pixels burn out even quicker. This circuitry is called ACL. The Sony OLED TV does this, for example. It's quite a shocker to see your super amazing, very expensive OLED TV dim a window as you make it larger.
good to known.
but what is about the quality,refresh rate and how much glassy is the oled screen.
Refresh rate is the same. Pixel response is MUCH faster. I have no idea what glassy means.
All of this is peanuts next to the problem of the pixels aging too quickly to me. I'm using a 3 year old laptop right now, I'd like my future laptops to last as long. Pixel life is improving right now, that and power are the biggest things the OLED companies are working on at the moment. Maybe in a couple years they'll shed these problems and be able to compete with LCD.
Interesting about the burn-in. How bad is it?
ZOMG im really getting tired i want ALL OLED NAOW
It's time to sell my kidneys.. and legs?
Too bad Al Gore lobbied to make selling your own body parts for money illegal.... Politicians have to ruin all our fun :'(
Will there be a shift from LED to OLED in the near future?
LED is a backlight technology compared to CCFL (traditional LCD backlighting). OLED is an actual display technology that will be replacing LCD. Far more efficient, MUCH thinner, ability to be transparent, use less power, better color reproductions, truer blacks, and in the long run much cheaper (especially for TVs where transportation cost has a huge impact).
Right now, if you want to go check out an OLED screen, I believe the Samsung Impression on AT&T uses OLED technology.
I am expecting a big shift in the next few years. I hope for a BIG change in the macbook pro line, mainly that they integrate high quality OLED, up the graphics and L2 cache in the 13 inch model, offer a black aluminum model, Blu-ray would be nice too.... oh yeah, kick the processor up into high gear....
I bring up apple because lenovo and apple both produce some of the best laptops marketed for each OS. I see lenovo as an equal to Apple right now because of their amazing quality.I just can't look at dell right now as a ultra high quality innovator.... in my opinion Dell (and HP...) should stop flooding the market with lots of mediocre machines and produce some cost effective computers that are streamlined in manufacturing so that they can bring top notch specs to the main stream market.
Don't believe the hype. I work with OLED displays every day right now. They use more power than LED-backlight LCDs. The only way to make the power even comparable is to make the UI all black (look at the Zune HD for example), and even then you're lucky to break even.
And these power problems with with hacks like ACL (automated current limit) built into the displays that compromise display quality just to get the power down to still far worse than LCD.
me likes OLED...so shiny!
So OLED will be bombarding our eyeballs beyond 2009?
Last I heard there were still some longevity obstacles to overcome for long-hour-session devices like TVs, monitors, etc, even though Sony has released their TV thing out on the market, there were some concerns there too.
Is OLED sunlight-viewable? Is this discussion premature? Etc.
bjork
Haha, that's what I said too. "WTF is Bjork doing on that screen?"
bjork....with princess leia hair (?!)
She cute!
I think if LCD progresses the LED backlight technology to the point that every pixle is lit by its own LED bulb, then OLED has no reason to exist. It's really all about the black levels at this point.
ha! y'all read the interview magazine article! http://www.interviewmagazine.com/music/bjork/
Come on Lenovo, give us the bloody OLED already. And while you're at it, get some HD4xxx graphics cards in there!
There's this thing I really like about my current Thinkpad, which is that I can run it all day long on its 9-cell + Ultrabay batteries. I realize there's a subset of business apps that require some amount of 3D horsepower. Those users are already served by proper portable workstations. If you want to game, buy a desktop or, if you must, a notebook that's optimized with the stupid crap that gamers want, like enormous speakers and 11-minutes-on-a-charge battery lifespans. Thinkpad T-series notebooks are damned near perfect for their intended purpose as semi-rugged, reconfigurable business machines, and adding an enormous waste of power, creator of waste heat and source of additional system failures such as most GPUs is really at odds with that purpose.
I hope you're aware of this feature called "switchable graphics". The on-board Intel is for you, the discrete powerhouse is for the rest of us. And if you're so interested in battery life, get a T400s or X301 rather a 15" behemoth.