Take that, fat-cats in Congress!
OMG! Did you hear? Lenovo has just added a BIOS feature to its new ThinkPads allowing you to swap Ctrl and Fn! Apparently this was a big request for many people in the world and Lenovo, being good guys, listened intently and pushed this passed the faceless bureaucrats in accounting and GOT THIS THROUGH! Hope, people, is what Lenovo promised, and change is what you get.
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A pair of new additions have been announced for Lenovo’s ThinkPad line. So all of those business people who shunned Windows Vista and held onto XP can finally take the plunge to a new OS. These new notebooks are optimized to run Windows 7 along with a host of other little goodies.
You can always count on Lenovo to have a solid entry in pretty much any PC category. They were previously unrepresented in the home theater PC area, though, so they decided to get on that. The Q700 looks like a nettop, but has a lot more firepower: an actual Core2 (Duo or Quad) processor, 4GB of DDR3 RAM, up to 600GB of storage… although to save space they’ve gone with integrated graphics. They claim it’ll do 1080p with no problems, but as usual I’m skeptical (it depends on the source). I’d upgrade the processor if I were getting one.
Quick Version: The Lenovo IdeaPad S12 represents one of the first netbooks to feature VIA’s Nano platform as a configuration option. You’ll gain some extra horsepower over Intel’s Atom setup while saving about $70 off the total system price, making the Nano a good option for those of you who want to watch 720p video. All that power comes at a price, though: decreased battery life, as the included six-cell battery only manages a little over four hours.
Green Dam, a filtering software that’s supposed to protect China’s population from harmful content (and can be called a piece of garbage on more than one level), seems to trigger anticipatory obedience (you could also call it business sense, I guess) within some PC companies. Even though the Chinese government postponed its plans to make the software mandatory with all PC shipments in the country from July 1, Acer, Asustek and Lenovo already bundle their hardware with Green Dam.
UPDATE – Information from Lenovo after the jump.
Ah, the netbook. Back in 1999 or so I remember one of my co-workers spent over $3,000 for a mini Sony Vaio PCG-C1, the kind with the tiny keyboard and woefully underpowered processor. Fast forward a decade and we’ve come full circle with the netbook. These still woefully underpowered laptops still have tiny keyboards but they cost a pittance and, for a certain subset of users, they’re some of the most compelling pieces of hardware to come out ofTaiwan and Japan in years.
Origin Story
The netbook was supposed to save the PC industry. Cast your memory back to 2007. We were just on the edge of the global financial precipice. Desktop sales were flat and laptop sales were soaring. All seemed fine. But there was a problem: the laptop market was considerably different than the desktop market. Desktop PCs sat comfortably in a den and were upgraded over time. Junior wanted to play The Sims so he installed a new graphics card. Sis wanted a scanner – she added an all-in-one. Dad was going through a mid-life crisis so he bought a new case. PCs generated sales in peripherals and, once the PC was maxed out, it was relegated to the basement and a new one purchased. PCs cost a pittance to make and could be sold at a slight profit.
Laptops, on the other hand, were stagnant. You bought a laptop and held onto it. For many it became a main computer, but one you never upgraded. You could add some memory and plug in a printer, but you weren’t purchasing overpriced graphics cards or hard drives.
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Guess what the Lenovo fairy just brought us! This is the new Lenovo S10-2, a $399 ultralight with a 10-inch screen, Atom processor, and six-cell battery. It weighs 2.2 pounds and looks pretty sassy.
The S10-2 has three USB port, VGA-out, and bog standard audio-in and -out. Most interesting is the delicate polka dot styling on the laptop’s cover, perfect for nights on the beach or a weekend at the glue refinery.
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The world of nettops is a strange one, my friends. What are they for? Where do they go? Where do they come from? I don’t know the answers to these questions, but the fact is there are computers out there that are just as at home in the kitchen as in the office. And now one of them is from Lenovo. Obviously they’re loving that Intel sauce, because this IdeaCentre C300 is filled with Atom-y goodness — and so is the S12 12-inch laptop, which sports an Ion setup inside.
Have you been following this Nvidia-Intel spat? Long story short: Nvidia suspects that Intel has been giving laptop manufacturers a sweet deal vis-à-vis Atom processors and Intel’s whole chipset+integrated graphics chip. This upsets Nvidia because its own laptop graphics platform, called Ion, hasn’t been able to find a way onto a laptop… until now! Yes, the Lenovo IdeaPad S12 will be the first laptop to use Nvidia’s Ion platform. It’ll be $449 when it launches next month.
Lenovo has a handsome little sale going on for the next couple of days on various laptop and desktop models. Most carry an instant “you pay what we pay” employee discount plus an additional 10% to 15% with coupon code USPSAVEBIG.
Lenovo is “exploring” the possibility of a ThankPad-branded netbook. Such a netbook would, one guesses, be the first specifically aimed at the business crowd. Does this mean that we’re beginning to see the blurring of the line between netbooks and notebooks? One can dream, friends. One can dream.
I’m sure we all have some data we’d like to squirrel away somewhere. Something you’d perhaps like to be only accessible to yourself. There are many ways to do this, but wouldn’t you prefer the security of a drive with an actual PIN pad on it? Well, whether you do or not, Lenovo makes one and you can certainly see the usefulness of such a thing. So is it any good?
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PMPs are perhaps more popular on the other side of the Pacific, but they’re picking up here among people who perhaps don’t want to take up their phone or mp3 player’s memory with a bunch of movies. Lenovo you probably associate with Thinkpads and other quality laptop products, but like most electronics companies, they’re always itching to get into another market. In this case they’re dipping their toes into PMPs, and I have to say that this thing isn’t a bad show for their first try.
There’s some changes going on at Lenovo. The corporation, of which the Chinese government is its largest shareholder, will turn its attention toward so-called emerging markets, such as the Middle East and Asia, China included. This necessarily comes at the expense of places like Western Europe and North America, where Lenovo will lessen its presence
We’re about to head off to GDC in San Francisco and mix it up with a bunch of game developers.
Sounds nerdy, yes, but these guys are on par with Hollywood FX artists in the depth and complexity of their craft. It’s no surprise that they need a bunch of beastly machines to make games like Mass Effect and Gears of War. Lenovo’s in the business of making said machines, and their latest look pretty solid, in addition to being well-designed.
![3351681436-acd842f746-o[1]](http://www.crunchgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/3351681436acd842f746o1.jpg "3351681436-acd842f746-o[1]")
I’m really gonna miss you, Pocket Yoga. Turns out the whole thing is a two-year old concept that’s never going to make it to market. Johnson Li, director of Lenovo’s Innovation Center in Beijing, says that Pocket Yoga was an experimental project that’s been simmering for a couple years but “is finished” now and won’t be developed or sold.
Interesting that it’s been around for two years, yet it still seems like a capable device by today’s standards. Oh well. Thanks for the memories, Pocket Yoga.
[via SlashGear]
Pocket Yoga? Okay. Hopefully that’s just a working codename for that VAIO P-like Lenovo computer that popped up last week. More images have surfaced over on Flickr along with the “Pocket Yoga” moniker. One photo, in particular, shows the Pocket Yoga being written on with a stylus, so it seems we’re looking at a touchscreen here.
What could you get for $700? Well, you could get a busted, stained MacBook off Craigslist, you could get a brand new Samsung NC20, or you could get an honest-to-god convertible touchscreen laptop. Not the latest model (far from it) but buddy, it’s a swivel-screen tablet PC! For $649!
Well hello there, Lenovo. Who knows what in the hell this thing really is, aside from the fact that it looks an awful lot like Sony’s don’t-call-it-a-netbook VAIO P. According to a translated version of Engadget Chinese, “A friend in Beijing in Beijing greeted the IBM Lenovo office. I think it is the concept of Lenovo machine, or even just a model can not be changed. The appearance of skin texture are” Ah, that’s much clearer now.
Lenovo announced two new smaller, cheaper desktop PCs today. The ThinkCentre M58e and A58 are built for the cost-conscious business consumer, with a starting price of $399. The PCs run cooler and quieter than previous ThinkCentres (as should be expected). Click on for the press release.
