Lenovo launches entertainment notebooks

LAS VEGAS, USA: Lenovo has officially entered the U.S. consumer notebook market with three products for people willing to spend more than the basic-notebook price in order to get better entertainment features.

The notebooks fall under the new IdeaPad brand, which will be the consumer side ofLenovo's mobile PC business. The Chinese company is best known in the United States for its ThinkPad line of business notebooks.

The IdeaPad Y510, Y710, and U110 models are powered by Intel's dual-core Centrino mobile platform, use facial-recognition technology in combination with a 1.3-megapixel embedded camera for security, and have five Dolby Home Theater speakers. In addition, the notebooks have Wi-Fi support, DVD/CD recordable combo drives, touch-sensitive control surfaces, textured outer cases, and frameless screens. "They look very smooth, sleek, and clean," Craig Merrigan, VP of global consumer marketing for Lenovo, said.

As the PC evolves from a business machine to an entertainment device, design has become increasingly important to consumers. In the case of notebooks, style has become an attraction for people who carry their machines with them to coffee shops or other public places. Desktops also are evolving into pretty machines, which manufacturers hope will lead people to place them in the living room as entertainment hubs that deliver content to digital TVs.

Lenovo quietly introduced its first consumer notebook in the U.S. market in October. The 14-inch L3000 Y410 started at less than $740 in some retail stores, and the base model included a 1.46-GHz Pentium Dual Core T2310 processor, 1 Gbyte of memory, a 160-Gbyte hard drive, a dual-layer CD/DVD recordable drive, and Wi-Fi support. It also had a 1.3-megapixel camera and Dolby Home Theater speakers with subwoofer. Lenovo at the time played down the entry, saying it was based on existing product lines.

The latest products, however, are said to be brand new and are meant to go head-to-head with Hewlett-Packard's Pavilion entertainment notebooks and Dell's XPS line. Both combine sleek design with features for playing and organizing music and video, as well as editing and showing photos.

Lenovo is hoping its notebooks' design, VeriFace Face Recognition software, and Dolby Home Theater system will help differentiate them from rivals. The VeriFace software uses the notebooks' embedded camera to recognize a user's face for login, making it unnecessary to remember passwords. "Your face becomes your password," Merrigan said.

The sound system includes four speakers on the top of the machine -- front, top, and each side -- and a subwoofer underneath. The systems also include Lenovo's Multimedia Control Center software, which the company claims makes it easy to play movies, listen to music, and view photos. The notebooks also have touch-sensitive controls for choosing multimedia files and for setting volume and the built-in equalizer.

Source: Agencies