CES 2011: Lenovo Readies ThinkPads

From PC World: At CES in Las Vegas this week, Lenovo will try to up the ante on rivals like Acer, Dell, and HP with a veritable full house of new PCs, including new ThinkPad Edge models for small- and medium-sized business users incorporating new rapid boot-up technology, videoconferencing, and "crossover" home entertainment.

Lenovo's new Edge E420s and E220s laptops will be outfitted with "Enhanced Experience (EE) 2.0" capabilities that boost boot-up times by about 30 percent, said Luis Hernandez, executive director for Lenovo's ThinkPad Transactional Business, at a press briefing.The two latest notebooks PCs will be geared to people who work for companies with anywhere between ten and 499 employees, an audience Lenovo first started targeting with the Edge line a year ago at CES 2010.

Other features of the 14.1-inch E420s and 12.5-inch E220s will include HDMI for TV connectivity; TV-like "infinity" screens; Dolby Home Theater Audio; and enhanced videoconferencing features such as 1080p high definition (HD) webcams, advanced white-balancing settings, and noise-canceling keyboards for screening out typing sounds in the background.

Lenovo's new Edge notebooks will also be available with several advanced security features: self-encrypting hard drives; BIOS port lock settings; a fingerprint reader usable for powering on the PC, and, for larger businesses, a hardware password manager for deploying authentication security across fleets of PCs. A slim slot-loading DVD burner is another option for the E420s.

Small- and medium-sized businesses are the biggest and fastest growing "commercial segment" in the PC market, projected to account for 67 percent by 2014, Hernandez contended, citing statistics from the IDC analyst group.

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