Saturday, March 12, 2011

Lenovo ThinkPad X220 Notebook offers 24 hrs of battery life
Computer maker Lenovo has formally announced its new ThinkPad X220 ultraportable notebook and ThinkPad X220 convertible tablet PC, incorporating second-generation Intel Core processors for plenty of computing oomph and promising road warriors up to 15 to 24 hours of battery life, depending on configuration.

“Put simply, The ThinkPad X Series has everything a modern road warrior needs without compromises - low weight, long battery life, and high performance,” said Lenovo’s VP for ThinkPad marketing Dilip Bhatia, in a statement. “We’ve refined the mobile computing experience to make it more productive and enjoyable with features like smart PC technologies and enhanced video and voice calling.”

Both the notebook and convertible tablet versions of the ThinkPad X220 feature a 300-nit, 12.5-inch high-definition screen with space-saving self-closing hinges, with the convertible tablet version getting a Gorilla Glass screen that can stand up to the bumps and scratches of mobile use. The systems use the Intel integrated graphics built into the Sandy Bridge chip, and select models will feature a USB 3.0 port for high-bandwidth connections to peripherals and storage devices. The systems will be available with a range of second-generation Intel Core and Intel vPro processors.

Lenovo says the X220s will get up to 15 hours of battery life with a standard 9-cell battery, and up to 24 hours of use by adding a new ThinkPad external battery - when configured with a ULV processor and an SSD drive, anyway. With a four-cell battery, the notebooks start out under four pounds.

Lenovo is touting the new ThinkPads as big productivity aids partly because users won’t have to wait around as long for the machines to get ready. Lenovo Enhanced Experience 2.0 improves shut down, start up, and resume times for the systems, and a new Instant Resume function maintains wireless and network connections for up to 99 minutes during sleep mode so connections don’t have to be re-established when the system wakes up. And the convertible notebook version will notify a user if they move the tablet without having the pen in the integrated pen-holder.

Lenovo says the ThinkPad X220s will be available in April with the ultraportable notebook starting at $899, and the convertible tablet starting at $1,199.

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Lenovo announces ThinkPad X220 Ultraportable Laptop
Lenovo-ThinkPad-X220-Ultraportable-LaptopLenovo has announced the ThinkPad X220 laptop, which is one of the early ultraportable laptops running on new processors based on Intel's Sandy Bridge microarchitecture.

The X220 comes with a 12.5-inch display and will be powered by Intel's Core i3, i5 or i7 processors running at clock speeds between 2.1GHz and 2.7GHz, Lenovo said in a statement. The laptop weighs less than 3 pounds (1.3 kilograms) with a four-cell battery.

The laptop can provide up to 15 hours of battery life with a nine-cell battery, according to Lenovo. The laptop's run time can stretch up to 24 hours with an external battery.

The company also announced a convertible variant of the X220 - the X220 Tablet - which will include a swivel touchscreen. The screen will accept multitouch input for users to manipulate photos, control applications or scroll down documents. The screen is based on Gorilla Glass technology for protection from scratches and cracks.

The X220 Tablet weighs 3.88 pounds with a four-cell battery.

The X220 and the X220 Tablet will both have hard-drive storage of up to 320GB or solid-state drive storage of up to 160GB. They will have up to 8GB of memory and select models will include USB 3.0 ports.

They also include a DisplayPort and VGA ports to attach monitors. The specification sheets for them do not list the availability of HDMI (high-definition multimedia interface) ports, which are commonly used to connect laptops to high-definition TV sets.

The X220 laptop will become available in April starting at US$899. Pricing for the X220 Tablet was not immediately available.

PC makers have just started announcing ultraportable laptops with Sandy Bridge chips. Dell said it would announce a lightweight laptop with Sandy Bridge microprocessors in the next few weeks.

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