As the legend of our IdeaPad Yoga grows, we go straight to the source to learn about the boundary-busting PC’s most striking aspect—its design—with one of the people who created it. Andreas Schupp is Strategy Director of the Lenovo Industrial Design Center. Our conversation with him follows. What was the inspiration for the design? The IdeaPad Yoga concept dates back to 2004 when the design team in Beijing started looking at new form factor opportunities. The inspiration of the Yoga came from observing how the human body bends when practicing yoga. The first prototypes of the Yoga design can be traced back to 2004; our Yoga concept PC won the Red Dot “Best of the Best” Design Award in 2005. The concept created new standards for laptop usability and innovation at that time, and we’re excited to realize this revolutionary concept today. Tell us about how the screen moves and how that supports the four modes of use. Yoga’s most outstanding feature is the touch screen, which can rotate a full 360 degrees. This enables new ways to use the product. You can do more than just use it as an Ultrabook laptop or tablet though; you can change to “Stand” mode for looking at pictures or watching movies and “Tent” mode for playing games, video chatting or whatever else you like. So the original form factor dates to 2004, but was that done with touch in mind? It was just a concept but, yes, it...
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It happens every day. A customer calls into our help centers and finds out that his system needs a repair that is not covered by warranty. Perhaps the warranty has expired. Perhaps the system sustained accidental damage and was not covered under our Accidental Damage Protection Service. In any case, the customer is faced with buying a replacement part and is told how much that part + labor (if Lenovo is performing the work) will cost. The next reaction is predictable and follow’s Kubler-Ross’ famous five steps. You must have put the wrong part number in. Check again. Why does this part cost so much? You guys are ripping me off Please oh please make an exception for me! I should have never bought this crummy model Fine. Take my credit card and send me the part. While we can’t act as your psychiatrist, we can at least help you understand why spare parts may cost more than something generic you can find on Amazon. When you buy parts from Lenovo, you’re buying an original, genuine part that has been regression tested with your particular model of machine. This testing is performed during our initial development and continues through the life of the system as we receive warranty parts back and test for ongoing defects. We guarantee that the replacement part you...
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Mechanical Engineering student Joey Banks kicks off our new Road Test series where users test-drive Lenovo products in their daily lives. The Lenovo U-Series laptops have always offered an attractive design to consumers, and the U410 is no exception. Available in Sapphire Blue, Graphite Gray, and Metallic Red, Lenovo is certain to have a color for everyone’s personality. Immediately upon opening its lid, the first thing I noticed was its gorgeous screen. Embedded in a remarkably thin bezel, the 14” high-definition display stands out. Colors are extremely vibrant and using the device in direct sunlight comes without challenge. Lenovo has implemented a sleek metal design encasing the AccuType Keyboard, which enhances both the stability and durability of the U410, traits that are all too rare in today’s market. Unbelievably, although the Lenovo U410 weighs in at just over 1.8kg, users will find that the machine still packs quite a bit of horsepower beneath its exterior. Models are available to be fitted with the Intel® 3rd generation Core™ i3, i5, or i7 processors and can also harness up to 8GB DDR3 memory. If you’re like me and are continuously purchasing music, movies, and other content from the Internet, you may often worry about the capacity of the hard drive in your machine. In addition to the 32GB SSD cache, which is responsible for a 40 percent faster boot time than a traditional laptop, the U410 can be configured...
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Media have crowned 2012 the Year of the Ultrabook, and from the scores of Ultrabook devices announced recently, there’s considerable consumer interest in these new devices. Intel has defined the Ultrabook category based upon specifications for thinness while also taking into account battery life, responsiveness and other performance measures. Since years of design and development tell us that each new product is about continually making laptops thinner, lighter and with longer battery life, it begs the question: Will all laptops eventually become Ultrabook devices? Ignore the market’s price factor since technology costs decrease over time, especially as demand rises, and the question becomes even more relevant. Ultrabook devices are just as much about the user experience as being thin and light. Think about tablets: they’re instantly on with long battery life, and they’re instantly connected to the Web. Ultrabook devices take these tablet qualities and combine them in a thin and elegant design coupled with greater performance. For example, our latest Ultrabook devices--the IdeaPad U310 and U410--come in around 0.7" (17.8 mm) thin and 3.7 pounds (1.7 kg). They get eight hours of battery life and are ultra-responsive in boot up and resume from sleep, equipped with either with a solid state drive or traditional hard drive. With Lenovo’s Smart Update always-on, always-connected technology, the Ultrabook can automatically...
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Using a Tablet PC should be fun as long as you don't forget these four simple rules. Tablets make life easier, but only if you know the Tablet do's and don'ts. Share this infographic using the embed code below: <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/products/us/tablet/"><img src="http://www.lenovo.com/shop/americas/content/img_lib/misc/Lenovo_Dos_Donts_Final_500.jpg" alt="Tablet Safety instructions" width="500" height="1031" /> </a>
