It looks like Lenovo is planning to come out with a slim, Windows-based MacBook Air rival that can actually rival the MacBook Air – at least thanks to a lower price. According to a leaked Lenovo roadmap, the company plans to release a 14-inch “mainstream” ThinkPad ultrabook by May or June next year with an $800-ish price tag. If the reported price holds, then that would make for an ultraslim that’s cheaper than the $999 MacBook Air.
The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 has finally been officially introduced. It’s not much of a surprise anymore since we already caught word of the MacBook Air-sized laptop when it was first leaked back in April. It’s still kind of a big deal though, because this ThinkPad looks pretty good. Not “awesome-good”, mind you. But if you can appreciate the ThinkPad line’s rather plain, business-black design, this definitely is the most handsome of the bunch with an ultraslim profile that measures less than an inch thick.
Lenovo quietly put out details for a new 12.5-inch ultraportable ThinkPad. With a slim profile that’s listed to measure as slim as the new MacBook Air at 0.71 inches (at their thickest points), it sounds like a notebook that deserved a little more of the usual hype. Tagged as the IdeaPad U260, the new notebook didn’t go all-in against the new Air though. For starters, this notebook packs a 320GB hard drive of the usual non-SSD variety that should be a little slower compared to the Air, but makes up for it with Intel’s ULV Core i3/i5 processors and 4GBs of memory.
If you’re one of those graphic-artist types looking for a performance notebook made for, um, graphic artistry, you might want to check out the ThinkPad W701, Lenovo’s current flagship for their ThinkPad W series. It’s actually an update to the existing W700 (launched a year ago), a massive 17-inch workhorse of a notebook that comes with a Wacom digitizer and pen on the palmrest and an extra retractable 10.6-inch screen (for the W701ds).
An update from lenovopress says that they’ll be coming up with new “exciting” products to announce this month, along with a link to the YouTube clip shown above. The clip of Lenovo’s Howard Dulaney doesn’t really hint at anything other than how IBM came up with the first ThinkPad tablet from way back (the touch-only ThinkPad 700T that also featured a 20MB solid state drive), but at the end, he talks about convertible tablets with removable displays. Is he talking about the U1 Hybrid? Are they hinting at more hybrid tablets with detachable screens? Will it be a significant Windows-based rival for Apple’s iPad? We won’t know until the month closes, but until they come out with an actual product launch, consider us intrigued.
