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]

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!

ThinkPad T Series starting at $873 after 5% coupon

• ThinkPad T410 starting at $873 | Read our ThinkPad T410 First Impressions or posts about the T410
• ThinkPad T410s starting at $1329 | Read our ThinkPad T400s Review or posts about the T410s
• ThinkPad T510 starting at $892 | Read posts about the ThinkPad T510

ThinkPad W Series starting at $1519, with 5-15% coupons

• ThinkPad W510 starting at $1519 after 5% coupon | Read posts about the W510
• ThinkPad W700 starting at $1699 after 15% coupon

ThinkPad X Series starting at $426, with 5-20% coupons

• ThinkPad X100e starting at $426 after 5% coupon | Read posts about the ThinkPad X100e
• ThinkPad X200 Tablet starting at $1252 after 15% coupon | Read our ThinkPad X200 Tablet Review

Click here to browse Lenovo’s St. Patrick’s Day Sale

ThinkPad Edge starting at $550 after 5% coupon

• ThinkPad Edge 13 AMD starting at $550 | Read posts about the ThinkPad Edge
• ThinkPad Edge 13 Intel starting at $759

ThinkPad SL Series starting at $449 after 10% coupon

• ThinkPad SL410 & SL510 starting at $449

Click here to browse Lenovo’s St. Patrick’s Day Sale

IdeaPad S Series netbooks starting at $313 after 15% coupon

• IdeaPad S10-3 Pine Trail netbook starting at $313 | Read posts about the S10-3
• IdeaPad S10-3t Pine Trail convertible tablet netbook starting at $466
• IdeaPad S12 netbook starting at $364 | Read our IdeaPad S12 review
• IdeaPad S12 netbook with NVIDIA Ion starting at $509 | Read posts about NVIDIA Ion

IdeaPad Y Series starting at $509 after 15% coupon

• IdeaPad Y450 starting at $509 | Read our IdeaPad Y450 review
• New IdeaPad Y460 starting at $764 | Read posts about the IdeaPad Y460
• IdeaPad Y550 starting at $568
• IdeaPad Y550p starting at $891

Click here to browse Lenovo’s St. Patrick’s Day Sale

IdeaPad U Series starting at $568 after 15% coupon

• IdeaPad U150 starting at $594
• IdeaPad U350 starting at $594
• IdeaPad U450p starting at $568
• IdeaPad U550 starting at $577

Lenovo G Series starting at $458

• G550 (Core 2 Duo 15.6-inch) starting at $458
• G450 (Core 2 Duo, 14-inch) starting at $483
• G560 (Core i3, 15.6-inch) starting at $594
• G460 (Core i3, 14-inch)  starting at $679
• G555 (AMD Turion dual core, 15.6-inch) starting at $568
• G455 (AMD Athlon dual core, 14-inch) starting at $551

Click here to browse Lenovo’s St. Patrick’s Day Sale

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 & Availability

Unfortunately 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 Green

As 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)

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]

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.

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]

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

1. Click here to configure your Lenovo ThinkPad T410
2. Apply coupon in shopping cart w/no spaces before/after: USP0304T410

Source: [LogicBuy]

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]

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

Find the latest Lenovo ThinkPad T410 coupons at LogicBuy

Bottom Access Panel

We first turn to the underside of the T410, where we thankfully find an access panel not seen on the T Series since the T4x days (T400s excluded). While this panel houses only one of the two memory DIMM slots, it does provide single-screw access to a RAM module and the Mini-PCI Express slot for the WWAN module. Our T410 came with the new Gobi 2000 GPS/WWAN card, which you see populated here. If you order a module sans WWAN card, you will still get the antennae pre-installed and awaiting your card of choice.

Under Keyboard

At this point, I figured it was time to find the other memory slot, indicated to be under the keyboard. Expecting to have to finagle with a dozen tiny screws, I scoured the underside for the familiar keyboard icon next to the appropriate screw holes. A bit dumbfounded, I only found one keyboard screw, and it was under the access panel I’d already removed. The screw holding on the access panel also sinks into the keyboard, making for a grand total of only two screws holding the keyboard in place.

The new T410 keyboard mounting relies on the structural stiffness of the chassis, as well as a bit of a lever action at the top of the keyboard. The keyboard itself has a lip that slides under the top part of the bezel, which when counter-secured by the screws provides a significant amount of stiffness. Having learned their lessons with keyboard flex on the T400, it seems like they’ve got a solid solution here. But more on the keyboard later – we have a whole post dedicated to keyboards coming up soon.

With the keyboard freed from its one remaining screw, we see some familiar sights. Heatsink, WiFi card….where’s the other DIMM? Peek-a-boo, there it is! It was hiding under a nifty dust shield.

This would be the slot to populate with a large capacity module, particularly a 4GB module since the T410 now supports 8GB max. Enjoying the view of the exposed roll cage, we also notice the new Intel 6200 WiFi card. Whew, these things just keep getting smaller and smaller. Should you feel the need to drop in a new card, the WiFi Mini-PCI Express slot is in plain view as well.

Ultrabay

This is one of the few negative traits passed on from the T400s, as yanking the Ultrabay now requires two hands and access to the underside of the notebook. Prior models had a spring loaded latch that could be released with a single switch that was accessible with the notebook in a normal, upright position.

This new design requires that you flip the notebook over, hold the small lock switch back and then push the mechanical slider to pop the drive out. Unfortunately even the new docking stations don’t offer a second Ultrabay, so you have no choice but to flip your notebook over for Ultrabay swaps. This and the loss of LED indicators are my biggest pet peeves with the new designs, hands down.

It is also worth noting that the latest info suggests there will be no supported Ultrabay batteries on the new T410/T510/W510 ThinkPads, although the T410s can still use one.

Hard Drive

One thing Lenovo has done right for the past several generations is the hard drive and the T410 doesn’t mess with that perfection. A single screw gets you access to the standard 2.5-inch drive, with its handy-dandy pull tab and shock absorbing rubber rails mounted on a metal roll cage. This is the sweet spot for that SSD you’ve been itching to purchase. Go ahead, do it, you know you want to.

SIM card

As a closing note, the very infrequently accessed SIM card is located under the battery. Once you’ve installed your WWAN card of choice, just pop in your SIM card and get surfing. Who needs WiFi?

Conclusion

I’m rather impressed with the two screw access to the entirety of the T410’s RAM and wireless cards, with only one more screw keeping the hard drive out of your mitts. Under the keyboard memory slots are no fun for anyone, but packaging demands are what they are and having one DIMM accessible via the underside is a plus. Lenovo thoughtfully offers most of their ThinkPads with an option to add your own WWAN card and they make it ridiculously easy to do so on the T410.

Unfortunately the only real big step backwards on the T410 is with the very device that is supposed to be easy to swap: the Ultrabay. People who rely on being able to easily swap drives without up-ending the PC on their desk are out of luck with the redesigned T410, T510 and W510 (the W701 and X201 are spared as they are not a chassis refresh). A docking station for the T410 that has a second Ultrabay would alleviate these issues for power users, but alas there is no such option at this time. At least you can still steam on with a second 2.5-inch drive (high capacity HDD with a primary SSD perhaps?) or optical drive.

Find the latest Lenovo ThinkPad T410 coupons at LogicBuy

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

1. Click here to view the Lenovo Multimedia Remote with Keyboard
2. Apply coupon in shopping cart w/no spaces before/after: USPCM16336