Originally posted on January 6, 2010 @ 8:55 am
I’ve always had a soft spot for Lenovo products. They’re well-designed, and they are what you can call sturdy. So when Lenovo unleashed a torrent of new products at CES 2010, I eagerly checked out their new offerings. This new smartbook, called the Lenovo IdeaPad U1, is still being developed, but I’d like to get my hands on one when it comes out. You see, the Lenovo IdeaPad U1 Smartbook is a clamshell laptop that can actually split in two.
So what you get is a typical netbook running Windows 7, but when you detach the screen – yes, I said detach – it suddenly turns into a tablet smartbook running Skylight Linux. Okay, say it with me: whoa. In fact, I’m going to say it again for you: WHOA.
The new Lenovo IdeaPad U1 Hybrid weighs in at 3.8 lbs when in notebook form, and only 1.6 lbs when you use it as a tablet. It comes with a detachable 11.6-inch LED-lit display that rotates into landscape and portrait mode, and supports two-fingered multi-touch no matter if you’re on Windows 7 or the Skylight environment.
Oh, did I mention that the netbook and the tablet smartbook run different hardware? The netbook itself is rocking an Intel Core 2 Duo SU4100 1.3GHz processor, 4GB of DDR3 RAM, an 128 GB SSD for storage and Intel GMA graphics, with Windows 7 installed. Once you detach the screen, you’ll be getting a tocuhscreen smartbook powered by a Qualcomm ARM Snapdragon processor – the same one running on the Nexus One – plus 16GB flash drive for storage, 0.5GB of RAM (DDR1) and Snapdragon integrated graphics.
To be honest, I’ve seen so many different netbooks come out at the same time running the exact same specs that I’ve lost interest in checking out a company’s new offerings. But this is definitely a game-changer.