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Lenovo launches Thinkpads SL410 and SL510
THE CHINESE HEIR of IBM's PC business, Lenovo has launched its Thinkpad SL410 and SL510 that run Windows 7, declaring that the notebooks are a collaboration with Microsoft, which is brave.
Available now with prices ranging from £430 to over £600, the laptops each have an Intel Core 2 Duo processor, a 16:9 screen, HDMI and VGA outputs for high definition and standard external monitor displays, WiFi and Ethernet, a two-finger multi-touch touchpad, a webcam for video calls and a microphone mute button, and both machines use some "post-consumer recycled materials" whatever those are, but at least it sounds green. Oddly enough, Bluetooth is only an option.
For small and medium sized businesses (SMB), Lenovo is plugging its Think Vantage Technologies. Surely it means advantage technologies? These technologies are called Access Connections, Client Security Solutions, Rescue and Recovery, Presentation Director and System Update. All fairly self explanatory stuff. And when IT help is required, Lenovo's SMB service includes Priority Support and Online Data Backup.
Lenovo also has its "Enhanced Experience Certification", which it says enables PCs to start-up significantly faster. The comparison it gives is PCs with identical configurations using Windows 7, XP and Vista. It says they demonstrate a 56 per cent faster start-up for the enhanced desktops that have Windows 7, compared to the PCs running Windows XP or Windows Vista. But as we all know that faster boot-up is what Windows 7 is all about, it was always going to be faster than XP or Vista, whatever PC is used.
Lenovo goes on to sell Enhanced Experience Certification as providing "a significant advancement in digital entertainment and personal productivity for consumers, small-to-medium business (SMB) and large enterprise customers."
However, The INQUIRER thinks that the only enhanced experience that's involved is limited to the amazing marketing hyperbole that flogs it. µ
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The goal of Micro$oft in Win7 was to "improve" the time-to-desktop during boot, by not reducing their bloat, mainly by pushing boot-time activities to when the desktop is up. The downside is that the time-to-usable-desktop could be slower than in previous Win versions where there was no such "optimization".
Lenovo's goal with the "Enhanced" experience stuff was to make time-to-desktop equal time-to-usable-desktop, and not make the time-to-desktop slower than for stock Win7. Based on what I've seen, it worksA. Naturally personal experiences will vary based on the level of system customization, as it remains a fact that Windows 7 is more bloated than Vista that was more bloated than XP, the bloated re-release of W2K.
Lenovo SL510 laptops have been around for at least the year I've been buying them. I bought a couple of dozen in February last year and a further 50 so far. Didn't you think it strange a range of laptops with Core 2 Duos was launching now, when Core i3 and suchlike have been the norm for a good while?
Also, all that software you mentioned is exactly what you get with every business Lenovo, and most of it is little changed from the IBM Thinkpad software. It's always been called ThinkVantage.
And you don't like marketing hyperbole - that would be easier to believe if you didn't repeat it all vertabim...
The common resolution these days seems to be "FullHD" 1920x1080, with a full 120 less scan lines than a 1920x1200 display.
Personally, I miss 1600x1200...
As for the Lenovo experience - I got one as my new work laptop. I am just glad my employer paid for it - I feel badly ripped off as it is. God knows how I'd feel if I'd actually parted with any hard-earned cash.
If we are giving Lenovo tips, how about listing the raw specs of each option and component. For example the screen rez, and move away from using TV specs/terms to describe displays, like FullHD.
As a previous commenter also mentioned, 1920*1200 is an essential min rez for any power user, and also, in 2011 I would expect much higher rez's to be available. 1920*1200 is so 2005!
It seems that the PC industry has gone consumer, and forgotten about the technical/power-user.
I meant "BIOS whitelist" issue. It is also practiced by HP...
Huge hype to sell nearly the same laptop from others (except for the decent keyboard). Please Lenovo, better try next time some 16:10 screens as a market differentiation key. In fact, if you provide us with a matte 16:10 screen, I promise to buy one Laptop from you (even despite the "BIOS blacklist" issue which block Lenovo users from using third party WLAN and 3G cards).
The real enhanced experience is the time wasted removing/uninstalling GIGS and GIGS of Lenovo bloatware.
The only utility of the lot that kind of works is the System Update- and it is not light on system resources either.
The light at the end of the tunnel is that the Thinkpads run pretty well once the Lenovo "Experience" is removed... it is only at this point that it could be called "Enhanced"