Combines Thin and Light With Powerful Performance
Lenovo announced the ThinkPad T400s laptop, created to give business users a thin and light yet powerful, feature-packed PC. Lenovo’s designers sweat every detail, and the new laptop includes a series of significant enhancements invented to make the laptop more intuitive and easier to use, leading to an improved overall computing experience.
Designed for Thin and Light
Inspired by Lenovo’s thinnest and lightest full-function laptop, the featherweight ThinkPad X301, Lenovo engineered its latest laptop, the ThinkPad T400s, to be super-slim at just 0.83 inches thin1 and ultra-light starting under four pounds. The laptop achieves its skinny frame thanks to the thin 14.1-inch LED screen, solid state drive storage and the second generation Top Cover Roll Cage, which Lenovo first introduced in the ThinkPad X300 laptop. The roll cage’s monocoque carbon reinforced fiber, also used in bicycle frames and airplanes, helps keep the laptop extremely light yet surprisingly sturdy. With this design the laptop weighs nearly 20 percent less than its ThinkPad T400 predecessor, also making it much thinner and lighter than the Dell E6400 and HP 6930P laptops.
“We’ve created products like our ThinkPad T400s laptop to bring thin and light computing to mainstream corporate users,” said Peter Hortensius, senior vice president, ThinkPad, Lenovo. “We’ve applied thoughtful design in balancing the need for greater portability with strong performance and usability.”
Loaded for Performance
The ThinkPad T Series is comprised of Lenovo’s most powerful and performance-heavy laptops. The ThinkPad T400s laptop allows users to enjoy the best of both worlds — thin and light mobility without sacrificing the powerful performance they need.
The laptop comes with:
- Choices of Intel 2.53 GHz Core™2Duo processors (standard voltage) and graphics
- Choices of solid state drive storage up to 128 GB or 250 GB hard drive storage
- 9.5 mm slim DVD burner or Blu-Ray player
- Ethernet, WiFi and optional WiMAX, WWAN, Bluetooth and ultrawideband connectivity
- 34mm Express Card slot or 5-in-1 multimedia card reader
- Support for Lenovo’s ConstantConnect and Protect technology that allows users to maximize integration of their BlackBerry smartphone and ThinkPad laptop
- Nearly six hours of battery life
- Supports up to two monitors via a Display Port and VGA connector
- Meets the Energy Star 5.0 criteria for energy efficiency
- Built-in USB/eSATA port
Lenovo is also introducing three new options for ThinkPad T400s laptop users who want to expand their work space by connecting to other peripherals such as mice and keyboards, printers and monitors. The ThinkPad Port Replicator Series 3, ThinkPad Mini-Dock Series 3 and ThinkPad Mini Dock Plus 3 feature new slim and sleek footprints, provide one-step “rip and go” docking and include a range of multi-monitor support while meeting a variety of needs including support for USB, Display Port and eSATA.
Design Matters
Users spend a lot of time on their keyboards, and a comfortable, easy to use keyboard plays a big role in their overall satisfaction with their PC. Knowing this, Lenovo spends a lot of time perfecting the design of its keyboard. Lenovo found the average user hits the Delete and the Escape key 700 times each a week. To help improve the typing experience, Lenovo made these buttons larger. With many people eating lunch at their desks, Lenovo tightened up the spaces between the keys to help avoid crumbs that would otherwise fall below the keyboard. Improvements were also made to the touchpad in order to help keep the laptop thin. The new touchpad lays flush with the palm rest and has a new, textured feel that allows users to feel the touchpad’s location without looking down. And with multitouch technology on the touchpad, users can easily scroll, pinch and zoom through documents. Lenovo designer, David Hill, discusses many of these improvements in a video on his blog.
Because more people are using PC’s for unified communications at the office, at home or on the road, Lenovo optimized its latest laptop to make voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) calls simple. There are three main ingredients for a high quality VOIP experience — the quality of the video, the quality of the audio and the quality of the network connection. For a great video experience, Lenovo equipped the laptop with a two megapixel camera for better quality images and to help in low lighting conditions. Lenovo also pumped up the speaker volume more than two times greater than audio levels on the ThinkPad T400 laptop and added a convenient toggle switch at the top of the keyboard to increase and decrease volume. A similar feature can be found on the steering wheel of sports cars. Finally, Lenovo’s range of connectivity options give uses flexibility in how they want to connect online.
The constant clicking of keys can be distracting when on a conference call, so Lenovo optimized microphone placement and added dual digital microphones. This helps reduce ambient noise and improve speaker clarity. So users know whether they are on or off mute, Lenovo added separate speaker and mute buttons with LED lights to indicate which button is on. For an even faster VOIP experience, users can activate VOIP applications using the HotKey combination of the Function and F6 keys.
For even more convenience, Lenovo added the ability to power on the laptop with just the swipe of a finger on the fingerprint reader. And an always-on USB port keeps MP3 players, cameras and other peripherals charged when the laptop is in standby or hibernate mode.
Pricing and Availability
The ThinkPad T400s laptop is available beginning immediately through Lenovo business partners and www.lenovo.com. Models start at approximately $1,599. The ThinkPad Port Replicator Series 3, Mini Dock Series 3 and Mini Dock Plus Series 3 will be available immediately and start at $149, $199 and $229, respectively.
