We just got a chance to play with Lenovo's Skylight smartbook, which runs the company's new Skylight lightweight Linux OS on a 1Ghz Snapdragon. It's an impressively clean little package, with a 10.1-inch display, an integrated WWAN card, and a neat flip-out USB thumb drive for housing user data. Ports-wise you're not looking at much apart from mini-HDMI out, an SD card slot, and a second USB jack, although there is an internal microSD slot for more storage on top of the 8GB system drive. The idea is that all your personal info will live on the thumb drive, allowing users to just plug into any other Skylight and go -- and there were some hints that accessories like Skype handsets would eventually fit into that slot and connect over USB. As for the OS itself, the six-panel interface was certainly workable, although clearly not production-ready: it managed to load webpages and do some light Twittering, although there was some stuttering along the way. We're big fans of the chiclet keyboards Lenovo's got going here, but the mulitouch touchpad still needs some work. The biggest sell of this thing over a netbook seems to be its promised 12 hours of battery life and its trim body, but at $499 (when most netbooks are at least $100 cheaper) we aren't sure we get it. We can't get that thinness of it out of our head, but we'll be waiting on the AT&T subsided pricing on this one. Video walkthrough after the break.
posted January 5th 2010 3:18PM
I'm a broken record, but SDK and an App Store for both devices please. :)
@povrazor O.o? This is a linux device, SDK = gcc.
@iofthestorm GCC is just a compiler. If you want to use anything like graphics hardware, the touch screen, the accelerometer, you need libraries. If they use standard Linux ports of SDL, OpenGL and so on, then great. We still need a document or two that says this.
Side B, the App Store. Unless you're a subscription online service, it's not worth your time to make an app unless you can charge for it.
@iofthestorm Liliput says, The overall user interface is quite interesting. While the smartbook is running Linux, you’ll never see a command line or any of the usual desktop apps. Instead, there’s a dock at the bottom of the device that lets you access all the available applications. Right now there’s just over two dozen, but there could be more or fewer by the time the Skylight is available to the public. Details: http://bit.ly/lenovo-skylight-leak-details
gotta lower that price before i'd consider it
im tryna find the words to describe this 'book without being disrespectfullllllll
DAMN GIRL damn yous a sexy bitch, a sexy bitch
Once again this device is going to fail miserably, there are netbook that have battery life same as the device and it run a porper os. If I am looking for a device that is portable, I would have a carry an android phone or an iphone. In the end, it might satisfied a niche segment of a market, but it will not be very popular.
@k2001 i do not think it will fail at all, this is the first one. ofcourse its gona cost more.
This this looks awesome, although the x100e looks even more awesome.
But this thing looks different, and that's what it takes to charge a premium in the netbook market.
Wait. Why is it so expensive?
what's with the jumbo USB stick
I wonder if the USB stick could be replaced with a normal one? If so, it would be really easy to expand the memory, or to sync music/videos with the laptop when you are away from the desktop. Good travel item and a perfect candidate for Android/ChromeOS?
Lenovo has really picked up their game in terms of design. Between this and the x100e, I'd say they are definitely heading in the right direction, at least in regard to aesthetics. Need to work on that price point.
http://foryouredification.wordpress.com/
Way to expensive for a smartbook.
Yes, the lappie is something I'd want, but not the price. I've been hoping that someone would introduce a sub-notebook soon, with ARM-based power (via Snapdragon or Tegra, whathaveyou), small onboard (expandable) storage, wifi/bluetooth, mini-hdmi-out, etc, but at a sub-$250 price. Perhaps a tablet form for sub-$300. An easy buy for me.
Recently, we've seen a few of these come out, but this one is too much.
@(Unverified) You're too generous... *I'd* be willing to have this @ $199 IF it had a 10Mpixel camera, more RAM so it didn't stutter during multitasking, a GPU so graphics tasks loaded faster and 1080p out so I could use it for mobile presentations.
I'm annoyed with Google, all those adds in every video is annoying.
@derekdevine Adblock plus for FF, fanboy nz for opera, there is an extention for chrome aswell.
i really appreciate how they offer a variety of OS's to branch out to more people.
smart! ^-^
Big, folding, iPhone with a physical keyboard...
I LOVE the form factor on this thing, really thin and light, great keyboard. For my browsing and writing, I could see myself ditching my EeePC for this.
I really want to see what everyone comes up with on the new Atoms, though: if someone can get pretty close to the thinness and weight, passive cooling, and still let me run Windows stuff (like my work VPN), it would be better. So far, though all the Pine Trail stuff looks to me like it's as big or bigger than the previous gen.
@VidRoth There's very few VPNs that don't run on Linux (even on ARM and MIPS too) so I'd be very surprised if you had something that realistically only ran in Windows. If you're using a Cisco VPN you can use vpnc (which is FOSS) to connect to your work VPN. If it is IPSec or PTPP those will work too.
I've got vpnc configure to connect to my work VPN right now and it works great (even better than Cisco's software since vpnc gives me more control over routing =).
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