A few days ago we brought you news of a possible new IdeaPad laptop which was subtly exposed in a Lenovo.com banner. Today the resourceful folks around the intarweb have exposed the landing-page-to-be for the new U450p, with a couple more details.

As you can see, the banner touts the 14-inch display that we knew was coming and while we figured it was going to be ultraportable, the ULV processor indicates Lenovo is aiming for ultrathin too. There’s even an optical drive, but what intrigues me is the phrase “nice 14″ display.” Do the copywriters just suck, or is that hinting at a better quality LCD? We can only hope.

Not too many 14-inch laptops lack an optical drive and the U450p won’t either, but it would have been interesting (if futile on Lenovo’s part) to see how such a machine did without an optical. It would save cost and size/weight, allowing them to perhaps invest the engineering elsewhere like battery capacity or opting for a Low Voltage processor instead of the more anemic ULV. To keep with the mainstream nature of consumer laptops, they also need to keep with a 2.5-inch hard drive, which is proving difficult in ultra-light machines.

Finally, if this is clearly not going to be a high performance model, why did they call it a U450p? I know this is just the ThinkPad purist in me speaking out, but the ‘p’ moniker is reserved for high performance models and the ’s’ for especially ultraportables. This should have been a U450s.

Stay tuned, we’ll bring you any updates on this new model as they come.

Source: [Engadget]