Oh wow, Lenovo finally got out of its own way. At least from a quick surface glance. I spent a few days looking for something for me to just type on. I gave up and got a new SSD for my X201 last night. But the heat is unmanageable (under warranty I had the fan replaced thrice, to no real avail).
Still, one can hope this is a good sign and I'll be able to get a non-suck, non-Apple, 12 inch machine this year.
Edit: Apparently it's a max of 8GB RAM which would be a huge sacrifice. FFS, Lenovo.
I'm still rocking my T410. With 8 GB of RAM and an SSD, it does quite well. However, I really want to get a lighter laptop with a high-DPI screen. Before Lenovo's recent announcements (the T-450 also looks quite good) I wasn't sure where to turn when my T410 no longer sufficed.
Yeah the older ThinkPads are perfect if they just had a tech refresh. The screens are useless, and the limit on CPU and RAM in them hurts, too.
I'm really annoyed. I went on to Lenovo right now to buy the new X1 - best news I've had all year. I go to select RAM, and it's capped at 8GB. Just to run my two dev machines I need at least 12GB (full Linux GUI + full Windows, dev setup in both). Pretty lame. (The new X250 is also capped at 8GB, doesn't offer a high-def screen. The new T450 fixes RAM, but apparently has only 1600x900 pixel screen, much less a proper 3K display. The T550 offers high-def screens, but has an offset keyboard. It's like Lenovo is just flailing around because there's no competition. ffs.)
I might get it anyways as my secondary in-bed laptop just to jot notes and code on, but at $3000 ($3388 with 3yr warranty) properly kitted, I expect more.
I've found 8GB to be acceptable for me, but it does seem strange that they would cap it at 8GB. And at this point, they should be offering high-DPI screens as an option on every ThinkPad model (or at least the T, X, and W series). My $400 phone should not have a better-looking screen than my $2000 laptop.
High-DPI PCs have been out for a couple of years. I don't have firsthand experience, but it's my understanding that while the Windows world had to play catch-up, it's fairly decent today. Linux support for high DPI varies depending on the desktop environment (I've heard it's abysmal to mediocre).
Windows support for high DPI (4k) is absolutely terrible! I recently tried setting up an MSI Ghost GS60 4k [1] for a client. By all means it was the greatest laptop I'd ever seen, until we came head-on with Windows 8's terrible (absolutely terrible) support for 4k screens. Scaling was inconsistent and several business applications did not scale at all, rendering them unusable with no viable alternative (apart from using an external monitor).
Still, one can hope this is a good sign and I'll be able to get a non-suck, non-Apple, 12 inch machine this year.
Edit: Apparently it's a max of 8GB RAM which would be a huge sacrifice. FFS, Lenovo.