Lenovo to offer AMD ThinkPad

Notebooks

Published: Friday 20th November, 2009 | Author: Sylvie Barak
Companies: AMD (All AMD content), Lenovo (All Lenovo content)

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Think netbook

It would appear that AMD has finally cracked the hard Chinese nut that is Lenovo, with news leaking out that the notebook manufacturer is about to release a new ThinkPad laptop sporting an AMD processor.

The move would be revolutionary as neither Lenovo nor IBM - which originally created the ThinkPad brand - have ever used an AMD CPU for their premium notebooks. Not that this particular plastic model - the ThinkPad X100e - sounds like it's much of a premium, instead sounding like some sort of netbook/notebook hybrid based on an Athlon Neo MV-40.

Along with its netbook sized 11.6" display, the single core Athlon Neo MV-40 (1.60GHz, 512KB cache, 15W, 65nm SOI) is coupled with an AMD 780V core-logic with integrated ATI Radeon HD DirectX 10-supporting graphics engine.

Reports claim it also has up to 4GB of DDR2 memory, a hard drive of up to 500GB, three USB ports, Gigabit Ethernet, Wi-Fi, a webcam, Bluetooth, GPS and WWAN, 802.11b/g/n. It is also purported to have a spill-resistant keyboard, UltraNav trackpoint and business OS support.

What it doesn't reportedly have, however, is AMD's new Vision branding, despite the fact it's an all AMD affair. There is also no optical drive, no full disc encryption and no support for trusted platform modules. It's also a bit on the heavy side, weighing in at 1.5 kilos when sporting a six-cell battery.

But at a starting price of $449, what would you expect?

Next page: Think more expensive