New Thinkpads Due Out This Month

LenovoT61pToday Lenovo announced their newest laptop, the ThinkPad T61p. Touted as Lenovo’s highest-performing and greenest notebook, this 15.4-inch widescreen mobile workstation is Linux-certified, features an 802.11n connection, NVIDIA’s Quatro FX chipset, and optional Ultra-Wideband wireless.

The ThinkPad T61p raises the bar on performance with Lenovo’s Ultra Connect II wireless design helping improve WWAN and WLAN 802.11n performance, new NVIDIA® Quadro FX 57OM graphics certified to the open GL graphics GPU standard, Intel® Centrino® Pro mobile technology and long battery life with more control via Battery Stretch. Users can even opt for next-generation wireless capabilities with Ultra-Wideband. With Lenovo’s new cooling system, the notebook runs three decibels quieter over previous models and up to 10 percent cooler even under the most intensive tasks. Tops for security, the notebook offers optional port disablement, 32-byte password protection, an integrated fingerprint reader and full disk encryption.

Certified to run applications of more than 20 independent software vendors, the workstation is also certified to run the Novell® SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 operating system and is supported by Lenovo’s Help Center for hardware issues. The notebook is also certified to run Red Hat and Turbo Linux operating systems.


No final word on battery life but expect that Lenovo might be able to put up some impressive numbers. They claim a “70 percent improvement in efficiency over previous generation notebooks with power management features providing customers maximum energy savings up to 47 percent greater than before.” So if it uses a standard 4-cell battery similar to the T61’s battery, you should see a jump from 2.5 hours to 4.25 hours if that 70% figure is accurate – all the while using about half as much energy to charge it.

The ThinkPad T61p will start at $1814 and will be available through Lenovo’s Business Partners division starting this month.

Lenovo ThinkPad T Series