Building the Perfect Laptop

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SMALL IS COSTLY

The X300 arrives as portable computing is breaking out, after decades in which desktop PCs dominated. For the first time ever, more laptops are expected to sell in the U.S. this year than desktops, industry analysts say. At the same time, the miniaturization of electronics has allowed tech outfits to pack so much into high-end mobile phones that they have become, essentially, small computers.

These trends are the culmination of a 40-year quest to fulfill the potential of mobile computing. Back in the late 1960s, scientists envisioned portables even before it was possible to build a desktop PC. In the early 1980s, computing pioneers produced suitcase-size "luggables," and later in the decade they delivered full-powered laptops slim enough to slip into an attaché case. The 1990s brought personal digital assistants such as the Palm Pilot (PALM). And this decade ushered in smartphones like the BlackBerry (RIMM) for businesspeople and the iPhone for consumers. The vision that Microsoft (MSFT) founder Bill Gates articulated nearly two decades ago, of having information at your fingertips, is at last being realized. "Portable computing has been a mind-blowing success," says Gates in an interview.

It's still difficult to design and build an excellent portable computer, however. Making things small adds cost. So when engineers and designers set out to create new portables, they have to stretch to produce something that's compact, powerful, and affordable. That's the challenge that Lenovo's ThinkPad team faced when they set out to create the X300 all those months ago.

The effort started with Hill, a bespectacled 50-year-old Oklahoman who rebuilds motorcycles in his spare time. At Lenovo, where he is director of corporate identity and design, he's known as the keeper of the ThinkPad tradition.

The original design concept, created by consultant Richard Sapper, was that ThinkPads would be simple, elegant, matte-black machines with precise, 90-degree corners. Introduced in 1992, the ThinkPad went on to become the longest-lasting design franchise in computing history. By 2007, on its 15th anniversary, more than 30 million had been sold. After Lenovo bought IBM's PC company and Chairman Yang signaled that he wanted innovative design and engineering, Hill took that as a personal challenge to design the thinnest, lightest, and most elegant ThinkPad ever.

He started out, in June, 2006, with two radical thoughts. One was to push the idea of simplicity further than any computer company ever had before. Like other laptops, ThinkPads have plugs and switches on the sides and back, and labels on the bottom. What if they made a machine that showed nothing on the outside but a logo on the top and a latch on the front? He even toyed with the idea of eliminating the electrical cord. The machine could be powered by setting it in a special cradle. Hill and colleagues built a prototype of such a machine—with a plain outer shell on the bottom. Only when you opened it were the plugs exposed.

Hill's other idea was to make the PC very small, less than 10 inches across and less than one inch thick. Yet he wanted it to have a full-size keyboard, so he dusted off a design from the mid-1990s: a keyboard that folded up when the laptop was closed and opened out to full size when the machine was opened. The "butterfly" keyboard had caused a sensation when it was first introduced on a ThinkPad in 1995.

This was the beginning of the X300, the "concept phase" of development. Like most ThinkPads, this one got its start in the U.S. The planners, project leaders, and some of the designers are in North Carolina. The more detailed design and engineering work is done by a team in Yamato, Japan. Manufacturing and purchasing take place in Shenzhen, China.

Hill refined his design concepts through discussions with Sapper and design colleagues in Japan and China.