When I have the good fortune to speak with ThinkPad users about our new ThinkPad X1 laptop there is invariably one overriding question that comes up: Why? There are other words wrapped around that question that may offer some form of variation, but distilled it is still simply a question of why? I’d like to try to answer some of those why questions here. Why bring a system like this to market? The X1 occupies an interesting spot in our portfolio. It’s our Halo product. Some here at Lenovo also call it a Hero product. It is a notebook that is designed to show our leadership, our innovation, and give a glimpse into where the entire notebook portfolio is heading as we look to the future. It is a culmination of a number of different design and technology elements that we’ve brought together to make the thinnest ThinkPad ever. Thinner even than our X301. Why would you not call this a follow-on to the X301? X301 was a great system. Everyone remembers the thin and light design. Remember your first car? All you remember are the positives – which is great. We are extremely proud of that notebook. With the new X1 we address some direct user feedback. We added standard volt i5 and i7 Intel processors for more computing power. We added mainstream SSD or HDD options. We also added dual monitor support off the system via VGA and either DisplayPort or...
