by John Hobbes, posted 12/19/09 4:08 PM
Most of you who have ordered from Lenovo in the past likely went through the painstaking process of checking your order status, waiting for that fateful message that your machine is ready to ship. You might not have known that Lenovo does have a certain number of pre-built configurations which can ship immediately, or at least that’s the idea.
Likely to help clear stock out in preparation for the new models launching at CES, Lenovo is offering a pretty stout discount on some of these ready-to-ship models, the details of which you can get below. The units they’re selling at this price are very limited, so don’t wait around on this one.
Click here to view the ready-to-ship models
Coupon code: USPINSTOCK
ThinkPad T500 – integrated graphics
- Price: $1,519 – $620 coupon = $899
- Specs: Core 2 Duo T8600 2.4GHz; Win7 Pro 32; 4GB DDR3 RAM
- 15.4″ WXGA LCD; 250GB 5400rpm; DVD Recordable
- Intel GMA 4500MHD graphics; 9-cell battery
ThinkPad T500 – discrete graphics
- Price: $1,849 – $750 coupon = $1,099
- Specs: Core 2 Duo P9600 2.8GHz; Win7 Pro 32; 4GB DDR3
- 15.4″ WXGA LCD; 320GB 7200rpm; DVD Recordable
- ATI 3650 256MB graphics; 9-cell battery
ThinkPad X200
- Price: $1,664 – $508 coupon = $1,156
- Specs: Core 2 Duo P8600 2.4GHz; Win7 Pro 32; 4GB DDR3
- 12.1″ WXGA LCD; 250GB 5400rpm; Intel GMA 4500MHD; 9-cell battery
by John Hobbes, posted 12/17/09 11:54 AM
As part of their plan for growth in new markets, Lenovo recently announced that their IdeaPad and IdeaCentre products will be released in Egypt. While Egypt isn’t traditionally considered one of the main emerging markets, Lenovo is moving in the right direction in expanding exposure to their newewst product lines.
“The IT sector in Egypt is rapidly growing thanks to the government’s adaptation to several initiatives such as ‘Computer For Every Student’ and ‘Computer for Every Home’. With the ongoing infrastructure projects and the government support to IT developments, we believe Egypt will continue to grow into one of the key regional markets for IT vendors who seek to grow their business,” said Khaled Kamel, Lenovo’s general manager Middle East, Egypt and Pakistan.
Source: [ITP.net]
by John Hobbes, posted 12/17/09 11:45 AM
Lenovo’s mobile division is working on releasing a new version of their OPhone. Dubbed the O1, it is reported to be China’s first 3G phone.
Much like in the U.S., there will be subsidizing available to bring the entry price of the phone down quite a bit. Unlike the U.S., people essentially deposit about 80% of the value of the phone into their mobile phone accounts and agree to use a certain amount of that credit each month for 2 years. In the end, they always get your money.
The OPhone O1 actually announced back in September, but is just now being released to market.
A few weeks ago, Lenovo announced they would be buying back their mobile division for more than twice what it was sold for 2 years ago.
by John Hobbes, posted 12/14/09 11:08 PM
A new architecture has been developed to increase the space available on a hard drive by reducing the bits wasted with the formatting architecture, which will debut with certain new Western Digital hard drives.
Once upon a time doing IT support as a part time job, and always for family & friends, I can recall the numerous questions about why their hard drive didn’t have all the GB it was supposed to. Those familiar with computers have known for quite some time that for a hard drive to operate, a certain amount of the physical storage media is used for logically organizing all your data.
As you can gather from the picture above, less space is wasted on logically organizing your data and thus more can be dedicated to actually storing it. Western Digital calls this Advanced Format and it can realize 7-11% more space than a drive that uses “legacy” formatting.
From the sound of things, this is an industry standard and not proprietary to Western Digital, so we should see this across all hard drives eventually. The only catch is that Windows XP does not natively support this, but Western Digital does offer a tool to remedy that.
Source: [Western Digital PDF file] via [Geek.com]
by John Hobbes, posted 12/14/09 12:51 PM
It’s not the first time, and it won’t be the last. Lenovo Australia has listed the rather long-in-the-tooth IdeaPad S10e netbook on their website for a cool $109,998.90. Happy Holidays Aussies!
OK, so they did fix it. Gotta give ‘em some credit I suppose.
Source: [Gizmodo]
by John Hobbes, posted 12/8/09 4:44 PM
Today we bring you a very hot, and very limited, deal on Lenovo ThinkPads. The T Series and X Series deals are about as good as we’ve seen before, with the exception of the Black Friday/Cyber Monday T400 deal, but the W Series are particularly exceptional.
Lenovo is taking noticeably larger discounts off all W Series models, on top of the stackable 20% coupon. Heck, the dual screened W700ds is under $1700! If you have been contemplating a W Series, this is the best price we’ve seen yet.
After the jump is a complete breakdown of all models on sale, with prices, base specs and recommended upgrades.
How to get the deal
- Click here to start browsing ThinkPad notebooks
- Once you’ve selected and configured your ThinkPad of choice, add it to the shopping cart
- Apply coupon code in shopping cart with no spaces before/after: USPHOLIDAY
Note: Deal expires December 13
Read the rest of this entry »
by John Hobbes, posted 12/8/09 4:08 PM
An FCC filing by Realtek Semiconductor cites three ThinkPads that will use one of their wireless cards, with two unheard of models named.
We’ve heard a good deal about the ThinkPad X100e already, but the Mini 10 and Mini 11 are new. Some hypothesize that these could be the Intel Atom based ThinkPad netbooks, or another line of ThinkPads altogether, but I don’t think its either.
First of all, Dell and HP both use the Mini namesake for their netbooks. I suppose its not impossible that Lenovo is jumping on that bandwagon, but it would at the least be dumb. Also, names for new products certainly change over the course of the product’s development. It is perfectly feasible that when Lenovo supplied the product information to Realtek, likely many months ago, they had several potential product names and that is what was supplied by Realtek.
It just doesn’t make sense for Lenovo to have two lines of ThinkPad netbooks, or much less a separate CULV lineup, and in the end this is just paperwork.
Source: [Lilliputing]
by John Hobbes, posted 12/7/09 2:26 PM
Qualcomm’s recently announced that Lenovo will be including their latest 3G chipset in the next ThinkPad models. Dubbed the Gobi2000, it will support both HSPA and EV-DO networks, as well as a new feature dubbed Assisted GPS (AGPS).
AGPS sounds really cool, as it uses the cellular network to extend GPS coverage indoors and other areas where line-of-sight transmission to GPS satellites is blocked. Since the Gobi 2000 supports both major WWAN network types, it can work virtually anywhere in the world.
The Gobi 2000 will be offered on ThinkPad X, T and W Series models next year.
Source: [PCWorld]
by John Hobbes, posted 12/4/09 4:16 PM
Back at the end of October, Lenovo announced a number of new IdeaPad laptops, one being the high performance IdeaPad Y550p. It finally popped up on their site recently for purchase, and even better it is on sale.
Like a muscle car from the days of yore, Lenovo took their Y550 and stuffed Intel’s latest speed demon processor in it: the quad core Core i7. While the “base speed” of the chip may only be around 1.6GHz or 1.73GHz, Intel’s nifty “Turbo Boost” feature (unrelated to the dismal Flash-cache tech that debuted for Vista) can boost single core speeds up to a massive 2.8-3.06GHz. We actually covered a bit more on this topic earlier today.
Moving past the massive motor stuffed in the Y550p’s engine bay, it’s got a 15.6-inch 16:9 display powered by NVIDIA’s GeForce GT 240M graphics with 1GB RAM. You get all the goodies like an ExpressCard slot, HDMI output, card reader and up to 8GB DDR3 RAM.
Both of the configurations for sale on Lenovo.com have 4GB DDR3 RAM and the requisite Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit, along with Intel WiFi 5100 and Bluetooth. The $150 price difference between the two models buys you the faster Core i7-820QM processor and larger 500GB hard drive.
The coupon code expires on December 7th and you can get all the details on how to get the discount below!
Y550p base model – 324164U
- Price: $1,249 – 10% coupon = $1,124
- Specs: Core i7-720QM (1.6-2.8GHz, 6MB L2); 4GB DDR3; Win7 Home Premium 64-bit
- NVIDIA GeForce GT 240M 1GB; 15.6″ HD LED display (1366×768); 320GB HDD
- DVD recordable; 6-cell; Intel WiFi 5100; Bluetooth
Y550p upgraded model – 324162U
- Price: $1,399 – 10% coupon = $1,259
- Adds additional specs: Core i7-820QM (1.73-3.06GHz, 8MB L2); 500B HDD
How to get the deal
- Click here to configure the IdeaPad Y550p of your choice
- Apply coupon code in shopping cart w/no spaces before or after: USPSEARCH
by John Hobbes, posted 12/4/09 1:34 PM
Back in October we briefly covered Intel’s new Core i7 Turbo Boost feature, which allows for each of the four cores to be independently throttled to higher speeds based on demand and thermal load.
A few of you had questions on how exactly this would work and we just had another reader step up with some details on how/when the cores are throttled. I’ve reposted his original comment below for your absorption. If anyone has any additional clarification, please feel free to share in the comments!
The Core i7-720QM can use a maximum multiplier of 13, 13, 18 and 21 when 4, 3, 2 and 1 core are active.
In all Core i7 CPUs, the multiplier is completely dynamic and can be constantly changing. It can transition between the above 4 values hundreds of times a second based on load and how many cores are in the active state.
If you are running a single threaded activity and only a single core is in the active state, the multiplier can go as high as 21. If any background activity kicks in and wakes up a second core, the maximum multiplier will instantly drop to 18. If a third or fourth core becomes active then the maximum multiplier drops down to 13. As soon as the background tasks are completed, cores can go back to sleep which allows the maximum multiplier to increase. This is happening constantly.
Software like CPU-Z that samples the multiplier once per second might not give you a clear idea of what the constantly changing multiplier is up to. Intel recommends using the high performance timers within the CPU to accurately calculate the average multiplier over each 1 second interval. This method is outlined in the November 2008 Intel Turbo White Paper and is the method that both RealTemp and i7 Turbo use which can be downloaded from here.
http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/3/3/1794507/RealTempBeta.zip
i7 Turbo will clearly show you what each thread of your Core i7 CPU is up to.
unclewebb says:
The Core i7-720QM can use a maximum multiplier of 13, 13, 18 and 21 when 4, 3, 2 and 1 core are active.
In all Core i7 CPUs, the multiplier is completely dynamic and can be constantly changing. It can transition between the above 4 values hundreds of times a second based on load and how many cores are in the active state.
If you are running a single threaded activity and only a single core is in the active state, the multiplier can go as high as 21. If any background activity kicks in and wakes up a second core, the maximum multiplier will instantly drop to 18. If a third or fourth core becomes active then the maximum multiplier drops down to 13. As soon as the background tasks are completed, cores can go back to sleep which allows the maximum multiplier to increase. This is happening constantly.
Software like CPU-Z that samples the multiplier once per second might not give you a clear idea of what the constantly changing multiplier is up to. Intel recommends using the high performance timers within the CPU to accurately calculate the average multiplier over each 1 second interval. This method is outlined in the November 2008 Intel Turbo White Paper and is the method that both RealTemp and i7 Turbo use which can be downloaded from here.
http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/3/3/1794507/RealTempBeta.zip
i7 Turbo will clearly show you what each thread of your Core i7 CPU is up to.
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