We covered the announcement of the new X201 models last week, citing the major revisions as Core i5 and i7 processors, an updated fingerprint reader and the optional touchpad. Lenovo also recently updated their handy PSREF documents, which confirm to us that the X201 models officially support a maximum of 8GB RAM, via two 4GB sticks. This is great news for power users, who can now really take advantage of a 64-bit operating system.
Also of note is that the controversial, and optional, touchpad on the X201 is a $20 option. The X201 Tablet is particularly limited in its configuration options: you can’t even get an 8-cell battery, so expect those offers to expand in the coming weeks.
On the opposite side of Lenovo’s laptop spectrum, the value line G455 and G555 laptops are also now for sale. We knew at launch that both would be powered by AMD dual core processors, with the smaller G455 starting at $699 and the G555 at $729.
Lastly, you can also pick up the refreshed IdeaPad Y460. The overall design appears the same as the IdeaPad Y50 when I reviewed it, but with more powerful Core i3 and i5 processors and ATI graphics.
Hit the jump to check out the base specs and price of each model
Lenovo’s IdeaPad S10-3t netbook with convertible multitouch screen is now available with an 8-cell battery and is being sold at NewEgg for only $499 with $5 shipping.
The S10-3 is Lenovo’s latest netbook, announced at CES in January. They also announced the S10-3t version, which transforms the netbook’s 10.1-inch WSVGA screen into a multitouch panel that you can fold flat to use as a slate.
The S10-3 and S10-3t do use Intel’s new Pine Trail Atom processors, with the full specs being standard for netbook fare. You’ll get the 1.66GHz Atom N450 processor, Windows 7 Starter edition, 1GB DDR2 RAM, Intel GMA 3150 graphics, 250GB 5400rpm HDD, WiFi and a webcam for $499 plus $5 shipping.
While you may get two color choices through Lenovo.com, Cosmic Wonder and Cosmic Night, the specs are fixed and unimpressive. Compared to the NewEgg model, you get a smaller 160GB HDD and 4-cell battery for $50 more. You also have to wait for Lenovo to build and ship the “customizable” models, currently cited as within 16 days, whereas NewEgg has inventory on hand and generally ships in 1 day.
I’m guessing the “Cosmic Night” color is actually black, whereas the “Cosmic Wonder” is this art-deco color pattern. The NewEgg model is as shown above, in regular glossy black (aka Cosmic Night?). The NewEgg listing has more pictures of this 8-cell equipped IdeaPad, including a shot of the bottom.
Lenovo’s not slowing down, even after a blow-out CES, and has announced three new products powered by AMD processors: two notebooks and an all-in-one desktop with a multitouch display.
The G455 and G555 notebooks are your typical budget-model systems with 16:9 displays in 14 and 15 inch sizes and sporting a similar design to Lenovo’s other recently announced budget notebooks. AMD’s Turion II dual core processors will be available, although expect a lower end CPU in the base models. You of course also get the benefit of ATI’s Radeon integrated graphics, a step above the Intel craptasia that infests mosts budget PCs.
Pricing will start at $449 and models should be available starting in March.
With a near identical design as the IdeaCentre C310 announced at CES, the C315 adds multitouch capability to the 20-inch all-in-one and the same AMD platform you’ll find in the G4×5 notebooks. You get some extra software Lenovo developed for their Idea products that add some functionality to the touchscreen, and of course Windows 7 is decently touch optimized as it is.
Pricing starts at $649 and it should hit U.S. shores in April.
Lenovo’s ecommerce website is very much a real-time affair, in that things can change in an instant. Over the past couple days, 3G was added to the ThinkPad X100e and the value-line G560 notebook is available for purchase.
Gobi 2000 3G with GPS now on ThinkPad X100e
As we covered back in December, Lenovo has been planning to add Qualcomm’s new Gobi 2000 wireless chipset to their ThinkPads. You can read the details on this new card here, but unfortunately you can’t add the Gobi 2000 to any X100e model. It is only available on the $649 “Elite” configuration, which adds Win7 Pro, 2GB RAM and a 250B hard drive over the base $449 model.
The “Enhanced” configuration is identical to the “Elite” save for the Gobi 2000 and is $100 cheaper, giving you an idea of how much the card adds to the system cost.
While we’re talking about the X100e, why aren’t 7200rpm drives offered on this machine? There aren’t even any 7200rpm models listed in the PSREF sheets. If HP can put a 7200rpm drive in its “business netbook,” Lenovo should definitely have one to help offset the slower CPU and limited amount of RAM.
Right now there is only one model available, the 06792AU in black. It is actually a rather decent system, with a 2.13GHz Core i3 CPU, 4GB DDR3 RAM, 320GB hard drive and DVDRW. But why would someone want to pay $849 for a “value line” system? That’s mainstream pricing right there.
Part of the issue is the Core i3 processor. Lenovo typically puts Intel’s low-bin processors in their value machines, i.e. parts that are based on high end CPU’s but with some features disabled to lower the cost. None of these are available based on the new CPU’s yet, but it’s a safe bet there will be.
Then Lenovo also has to compete with itself. Their consumer product line has gotten very full, very fast and products are overlapping in many ways. This is a topic for a whole other post, but suffice it to say there needs to be some blood letting in the consumer PC products.
If you were enamored by Lenovo’s convertible tablet netbook, but wanted a bit more oomph from the Intel Atom processor, your wish has been granted.
Since the new Atom PineTrail platform doesn’t actually increase performance over the previous Atom, the higher clocked 1.83GHz N470 processor is a welcome addition to netbooks. Previously nearly every netbook had the 1.6GHz N450 chip, so this should provide a noticeable performance increase, especially if you can stuff in some additional RAM as well.
Luckily the only S10-3t model that has the N470 also comes with Win7 Home Premium and 2GB RAM, a nice upgrade over the standard netbook. The high end S10-3t is currently priced at $649 and you can view the models here.
If you missed the rather subtle announcement at CES, Lenovo is debuting a new feature on their IdeaPad Y560 and Y460 models. Dubbed ReadyDrive, this technology combines SSDs and spinning drives to maximize performance and still offer low cost, high capacity storage.
Boot time is said to be especially improved, with a claim from Lenovo of up to a 66% reduction. Unfortunately this system will only be available on these select IdeaPads for now, but a ThinkPad version isn’t out of the question.
Matt Kohut covered this topic well, so I’ll let him cover the important details:
The breakthrough is using a Lenovo patent-pending technology that connects both the SSD and HDD simultaneously as one big, contiguous drive. Unlike my setup above, this storage is dynamically pooled and managed. The end user does not need to do anything. The system manages the SSD depending on usage. Programs, documents, and other files are dynamically moved on and off of the SSD so that you can always get the fastest speed possible.
This sounds like a neat system, but its success will be determined by two things. The first is of course price: I know Lenovo is very sensitive to price, so they wouldn’t do this if it was going to be cost prohibitive, but value in the eyes of the customers is what matters in the end.
The exact implementation will also be important to ReadyDrive’s success with customers. A black box that magically routes all the data where it would best go sounds nice on paper, but in practice it must be flawless. One question that enters my mind is partitioning. It would be safe to assume that there must be at least one partition on the HDD where ReadyDrive can play with all its data, but can there be an additional one that remains untouched? Questions, questions.
If you thought Lenovo’s gander of brand new products and highly revised ThinkPads were all she wrote, then you don’t know the new Lenovo. The IdeaPad line gets some refreshed Y Series models, revised “value line” G Series and brand new V Series. Is that enough letters of the alphabet for you?
Hit the jump for a breakdown of each model, along with official pics
VP of design David Hill has just published a new blog post discussing the surprisingly fast (initial) design process for the sexy new Skylight smartbook.
Lenovo turned quite a lot of heads at CES this year and their Skylight smartbook was a big part of that. So sleek, so thin and so light – it goes past anything Lenovo had designed in the past. You might be surprised to know that Richard Sapper, the world famous designer who first came up with the ThinkPad design, was contacted for Skylight.
Sapper was clearly interested in breaking the mold with us. His enthusiasm dimmed, however, when he was informed of the deadline for completing the design concept. The design had to be locked before the Christmas holiday in order to maintain the very aggressive schedule. I think the words Sapper used were “you must be joking, I need time to design such a thing” . The worst part was that it had not been formally decided if Sapper would be retained to create the design.
The new Lenovo IdeaPad S10-3 is the company’s third generation 10-inch netbook, bringing a fresh new design and a multitouch tablet model to the fold.
The first thing you’ll notice is how different the S10-3 looks from the S10-2, which shared a lot of its aesthetics with the original S10. It comes off as more angular, with sharper edges and flat, rectangular sides that directly contrast with the S10-2. They even made the S10-3 a bit thinner, losing about a tenth of an inch from the last generation.
Announced late today, Lenovo’s IdeaPad U1 is a hybrid laptop that features a detachable slate-style tablet screen. With the screen attached to the laptop base the system is powered by an Intel CULV processor, but when detached it becomes a tablet smartbook powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 1GHz processor and runs the Skylight smartbook’s custom Linux OS.
Let me start off with this: wow. WOW. Now that that is out of the way, let’s talk turkey about this innovative little machine.
The IdeaPad U1 has one of Intel’s latest Core 2 Duo CULV processors, a 128GB SSD, 4GB DDR3 RAM and all the other usual bits & pieces stored in the base. The display itself is an 11.6-inch two-finger multitouch LCD that houses a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, 512MB DDR1 RAM and a 16GB SSD, perfect for running the same custom Linux OS that Lenovo uses on the unannounced Skylight smartbook.
When the slate is plugged into the base, the CULV chip will run Windows 7 Home Premium for up to 6 hours, giving you a full computing experience. The slate running by itself boosts that runtime to a very respectable 8 hours, revolving around the multitouch LCD and Skylight OS interface. The LCD even has an accelerometer that will rotate the display as you need it.
This is all really cool, but it will cost you a cool $999 to start. You practically get two computers for that price, a CULV and a smartbook. It won’t break any performance records, but it’s hard to argue with the utility. More photos and the remaining specs listed below!
Ultra Small Form Factor Lenovo IdeaCentre Q700 Desktop PC (30151MU) on sale for $649.99 - $50 off - 15% stackable coupon: USPSTPATRICKSDAY (Expires March 17) = $509.15 plus FREE shipping.
12.1-inch Lenovo ThinkPad X200T Multi-touch Tablet PC (7448CTO) on sale with $540 instant discount and 15% stackable coupon (Expires soon)plus FREE shipping. Available for online customization, now with Windows 7 pre-loaded. It features faster Core 2 Duo CPU, two-finger capacitive multi-touch screen & pre-installed SimpleTap application (an icon-based control panel). To get this deal:
1. Click here to start at Lenovo.com 2. Select enhanced ThinkPad X200 Tablet with Multi-touch screen 3. Customize, click Summary Review & Add to cart Tip: Windows 7 64-bit is free upgrade 4. Apply coupon code: USPSTPATRICKSDAY upon checkout.
You pay: $2,139 - $540 instant discount - 15% stackable coupon (expires March 17) = $1,359.15 plus FREE shipping. That's the lowest price currently for the X200 Tablet with Multi-touch.
15.6-inch Lenovo G550 29586PU Laptop with pre-loaded Windows 7 Home Premium 32-bit OS on sale for $669 - $130 instant discount - 15% coupon code: USPSTPATRICKSDAY (expires March 17) = $458.15 plus FREE shipping. To get this deal:
1. Click here to start at Lenovo store 2. Select the middle listed model: Lenovo G550 config: 29586PU 3. Click Customize & buy, Summary review & Add to cart 4. Apply coupon code USPSTPATRICKSDAY during checkout
21.5-inch Lenovo L215P 1080p HDMI LCD Monitor with built-in Webcam, Microphone & USB Hub on sale for $199.99 - $20 off - 10% stackable coupon (expires soon) = $161.99 plus FREE shipping.
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New low price. Lenovo IdeaCentre A600 (30116CU) 21.5" All-in-One Destkop PC cut from $799 - $150 off -
Ultra Small Form Factor Lenovo IdeaCentre Q700 Desktop PC (30151MU) on sale for $649.99 - $50 off - 
12.1-inch Lenovo ThinkPad X200T Multi-touch Tablet PC (7448CTO) on sale with $540 instant discount and 
15.6-inch Lenovo G550 29586PU Laptop with pre-loaded 
21.5-inch Lenovo L215P 1080p HDMI LCD Monitor with built-in Webcam, Microphone & USB Hub on sale for $199.99 - $20 off - 
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