by John Hobbes, posted 03/13/10 10:24 AM 
Those wily engineers over at Lenovo’s Yamato Thinking blog are showing the latest issue of a customer magazine Lenovo publishes in Japan, called Lenovoice. Not wanting their English speaking audience to miss out, they translated the first couple pages into English and attached a handy PDF file for your viewing. This edition talks a lot about the Yamato labs and the testing that goes on their. Apparently the folks at Yamato want to make sure people realize that ThinkPads have been and still are being designed in Japan, to rigorous standards. Hit the source link below to check out the two page PDF and if you like what you see, leave a comment for the Yamato Thinking folks. I imagine they would continue to offer something like this with enough feedback. Source: [Yamato Thinking] by John Hobbes, posted 03/13/10 10:05 AM  It’s that time of year again and we’ve got a wide array of coupons for Lenovo laptops. 5% off applies to most ThinkPads, while the SL Series get 10% and the last generation X200 Tablet & W700 get a decent 15% off. Every IdeaPad gets 15% off, including all the budget priced netbooks! If desktops are more your speed, the IdeaCentre lineup also gets 15% off. Being a St. Patrick’s Day Sale, this deal will end on March 17th. Clearly the best deals are on the already discounted last generation ThinkPads: the X200 Tablet and monster workstation W700. Hit the jump to check out the base configs and starting prices for the sale models! by John Hobbes, posted 03/12/10 9:00 AM Lenovo recently announced three new LCD monitors, all with 1080p resolution and ranging from 21.5 to 23.6 inches. The high end 23.6-inch model is also equipped with a multitouch screen and a design that would fit right in your home theater. Lenovo L2261 Wide
At the bottom of the excitement scale is the L2261 Wide 21.5-inch LCD. While not much to look at compared to the other ones, the L2261 does have a pretty high resolution for its size: 1920×1080 in a sub-22 inch panel. It will hook up to most notebooks and desktops just fine with VGA and DVI inputs, but a cheap 1080p LCD is just screaming for HDMI. Also notably absent is the ability to rotate the display to a portrait orientation.
Lenovo L2361p Wide
Stepping up to the L2361p Wide will get you 23-inches, a stylish design, HDMI input and a TV-like stand. This is a pretty strong shift in design for Lenovo’s monitors, clearly taking an aim for the consumer LCDs sold by competitors like Hewlett Packard. You also get integrated speakers & mic, 3 USB 2.0 ports and a 0.3MP webcam. To top off the chique design, the standard push buttons for power, monitor settings, etc have been replaced with slick capacitive touch buttons.
Lenovo L2461x Wide with multitouch
The big, bad L2461x Wide gets the largest of the displays at 23.6-inches and is also the only one with multitouch capabilities. You get speakers, mic, USB ports and webcam on the L2461x, but the USB ports now total 4 and the webcam is a respectable 2.0MP. The slick capacitive touch buttons are also here, but you now have certain “Windows shortcuts” featured as well. Brightness takes a step up to 300 nits and the panel is purported to have “120Hz MEMC technology (Motion Estimation,Motion Compensation).” Pricing & AvailabilityUnfortunately we don’t have any pricing or availability information on the L2261 or L2361p, but the touchscreen L2461x is listed at two vendors. The price is a not too shabby $549-580, but availability is “special order” or “call only” and you shouldn’t get your hopes of receiving one any time soon from them. There is also a listing on Lenovo’s Netherlands website with a €835 price tag, which converts to about $1145 USD. Don’t forget the GreenAs with most of Lenovo’s products these days, these new monitors are all Energy Star 5.0, WEEE and RoHS certified. This means they will be power efficient, easily recyclable and do not contain harmful substances like mercury or PBBs. You can also expect the packaging to be minimally wasteful and mostly recyclable. Hopefully they will include the nifty monitor packaging/bag announced last October. Hit the jump to get the full tech specs on each of these monitors (in the image gallery) Read the rest of this entry » by John Hobbes, posted 03/11/10 10:22 PM 
The folks over at LaptopMag have been taking a laser thermometer to the notebooks coming through their labs of late and put together an article chronicling the best and worst temperature offenders. Unsurprisingly at the top of their somewhat short list is the HP Envy 15. When our sister site, LogicHP, reviewed the pricey aluminum machine, they found it to be uncomfortably hot also. The wrist rest hit 103 degrees (Fahrenheit) and fan vents 110 degrees. On the opposite end of the spectrum is HP’s Mini 5102 netbook. A top quality netbook, the 5102 has an aluminum chassis with a robust cooling system that keeps temperatures around 90 degrees. That’s quite a difference from the Envy 15. While the ThinkPad T410 wasn’t on their “Hottest and Coolest” list, their review lists it as running 96 degrees on the touchpad and 103 on the bottom. If their system ran as cool as the one I reviewed, then the 10 degree cooler HP Mini must be downright chilly! Hit the source link below to check out the other hot & cool laptops. Looks like they also did an article on some steps you can take to keep your laptop running cooler. Source: [LaptopMag] by John Hobbes, posted 03/9/10 11:12 PM  Left: Dell Precision M4500 | Right: Lenovo ThinkPad W510 (not to scale) It’s okay Dell, we’ll pretend you have an original design. Although I guess to be fair, the top cover certainly is…original. by John Hobbes, posted 03/9/10 8:12 AM 
It seems like just yesterday that Windows 7 hit shelves and we were all clamoring for a Vista replacement. However time has flown since last October and we’re into Q2 2010 already, with the latest rumors on the intarweb pointing to Q4 for the release of Windows 7 SP1. There’s no word on what issues this service pack will address, but I’m sure there are still plenty of people with a list of stuff they would like to see fixed or improved. What do you want improved/fixed on Win7?So what do you want to see in SP1? I must say that overall my Win7 experience has been pretty good. I’m running 64-bit Ultimate on my ThinkPad X61 with 4GB RAM and a 7200rpm drive with great results. Performance is excellent, although I do have two regular bugs. When resuming from standby, Google Talk will start maxing out the CPU and I’ve got to restart it. Also resuming from standby, sometimes my IBM/Lenovo USB fingerprint keyboard won’t respond and I need to unplug/re-plug it. I also use a corporate T400 with a blank install of Win7 Enterprise, then loaded down with the usual corporate dragnet and a domain logon. I must say, despite having 3GB RAM (32-bit OS) and a 7200rpm drive, performance is terrible. Having setup an “offline” profile on this machine, it seems this is due mainly to the domain logon process. For whatever reason, it brings system performance to a halt and uses a ton of RAM. Another pain with the T400, entirely separate from Win7, is how video RAM is allocated. This model has switchable ATI graphics and with 3GB installed, it takes half a gig for the integrated graphics, even when running on discrete. I’m considering disabling the integrated graphics in the BIOS and seeing if I can reclaim that much needed RAM. Still, overall I’m rather happy with Windows 7 to date. I immediately miss the long overdue window management features (snapping and such) when I use a prior OS. Performance is also rather excellent on the new PCs that come through the lab, at least partially due to Lenovo’s Win7 Enhanced Experience on new models. Source: [The Reg] by John Hobbes, posted 03/8/10 9:38 AM  In honor of our recent ThinkPad T410 review and upgrade guide, today’s deal of the day features a 10% coupon code for the T410. This brings the starting price down to only $899 for a Core i5 system with 2GB RAM and Windows 7 Professional! You don’t have to stop there of course, as the T410 can be had with a wide variety of components to suit most anyone’s needs. You can even pick up the powerful Core i7 processor, up to 8GB RAM and a speedy SSD. Of course you get standard features like four USB 2.0 ports, eSATA, DisplayPort AND VGA output and Windows 7 Professional (64-bit is a no cost option as well). This deal will expire on March 10th, or sooner if enough units are ordered. Check out the details on how to get the deal below and hit up LogicBuy for more Lenovo coupons. Base specs for ThinkPad T410 with integrated graphics - Core i5-520M 2.4GHz; 14.1″ WXGA Anti-glare LED backlight; Intel HD graphics
- 2GB DDR3; 250GB Hard Drive; Ultra-slim DVD+/-RW; 6-cell battery
- 802.11n WiFi; 1-year Depot warranty; Windows 7 Professional 32-bit OS
How to get the deal - Click here to configure your Lenovo ThinkPad T410
- Apply coupon in shopping cart w/no spaces before/after: USP0304T410
Source: [LogicBuy] by John Hobbes, posted 03/8/10 9:22 AM 
At a recent security conference, Google engineers discussed the security features of the upcoming Chrome OS for netbooks. All Google Netbook products will ship with a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) to offer strong hardware-level security, which is one of the same technologies used on ThinkPads. Along with a standard TPM on all models, Google plans to release a version for businesses that would have additional management functionality, likely along with other features, that enterprise customers require for their machines. I can’t say I see much value for enterprises in adopting Chrome OS netbooks for a large group. A traditional user base requires far more capabilities in their PC than Chrome OS would offer, but there could be a very specific use case for such a machine somewhere. Source: [NetworkWorld] via [Engadget] by John Hobbes, posted 03/7/10 11:30 PM Recently we reviewed Lenovo’s ThinkPad T410, the latest in their bread & butter lineup with a new chassis and some nice design tweaks. One of the things Lenovo has stressed in the past is their desire to improve serviceability on their laptops. This took a decided nose dive around the T60 models, with the memory placed under the touchpad and a dozen screws holding the touchpad and keyboard in. And when you went to put the palm rest back on? You needed to be a Xen master to contort the palm rest such that every latch clicked into place, and even then you probably still had a creaky panel now. Lenovo has made some nice improvements in these areas, even over the T400 which had evolved from the hellish T60 and T61’s. Let’s dive in Read the rest of this entry » by John Hobbes, posted 03/6/10 10:49 PM 
Today we bring you a sweet 30% coupon for Lenovo’s Multimedia Remote with Keyboard. Unimaginative name aside, this looks like a really cool device: a small, wireless trackball + keyboard for controlling your PC from a distance. If anyone picks one of these up and wants to write a review, we’d love to publish it on the site. I’ll even send you a little goodie as a thanks! The coupon brings the price down to $41.99 with free shipping, but you may have to pay sales tax. This deal ends on March 9th, but may expire earlier once the coupon allotment is up. How to get the deal - Click here to view the Lenovo Multimedia Remote with Keyboard
- Apply coupon in shopping cart w/no spaces before/after: USPCM16336
| |
Send a Tip
RSS Feed
Follow us on Twitter
14-inch Lenovo Value Line G450 Laptop in Grey (2949CGU) with 
Lenovo Multimedia Remote with keyboard (57Y6336) on sale for $59.99 - 
Loading ...
