Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch confirmed on company's site, scheduled for December launch

Announced quietly on its site today, Lenovo's pushing its Ultrabook legacy forward with the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch. Details on the 14-inch device are light at the moment, but from what we can glean, this Windows 8-based machine will feature an "HD+" display, which should translate to a 1,600 x 900 resolution, and come housed in a carbon fiber construction. And as its moniker points out, this particular Ultrabook one ups its keyboard-only predecessor with the addition of a touch screen. It's slated for launch sometime this December, so stay tuned for further details on pricing and availability.

[Source: Engadget]

Intel presents PowerUp with Ultrabook

After four months of DJ submissions, voting and club nights across the UK, the PowerUp with Ultrabook story has come to a close with the London final taking place in a converted gallery in Shoreditch. 

onedotzero and Marshmallow Laser Feast created an interactive digital set, powered entirely by Ultrabooks, especially for the finale of Intel's PowerUp with Ultrabook DJ talent search. Our six breakthrough DJs played alongside Benji B backed by the biggest set of their lives.

Visit the Facebook page to learn all about how the incredible set was created and find out the stories behind our winners: 
http://bit.ly/ultrabookP

[sponsored]

Are apps organising your kid’s lives?

Apparently, whatever we need in life, there’s an app for it.  And with the meteoric rise of the android smartphone, portable tablet and light and compact notebook showing no sign of slowing down, this probably won’t come as much surprise to you.  

With the sheer volume of handy apps available, the majority of us are beginning to wonder how we ever survived without having a tool to regularly check the weather in the Outer Hebrides or track our daily bowl movements (yes, this is a real app) We’re using apps increasingly to organise both our business and social lives and reaping the benefits in both.

However, the demographic most reliant on electronic devices to organise their lives are students, who have turned to technology for every day tasks such as checking grades, ticking items off their things to do list and organising their homework schedule.  

Our kids have grown up using this ever-improving technology and are becoming increasingly reliant on apps to determine their every move.  Long gone are the days of having to stock up on dictionaries, calculators and note-books, new terms now are all about getting the right apps on the right device. 

Within an increasing number of schools, rather than being punished for having a phone at school, teachers are beginning to embrace the technology and alternative learning opportunities apps offer them.   Teachers are regularly using apps such as Socrative and Skitch to engage students with educational exercises and interactive activities that the whole class can share.   

Aside from the educational benefits, students are benefitting from apps such as Stylebook to organise their wardrobe and make outfit decisions based on the clothes they have available.

It’s not just the teens who are incorporating digital technology and apps into their everyday lives; schools, pre-schools and even nurseries are using apps to help them educate, inspire and organise children - playing interactive learning games to help children with their letter formation and word pronunciation, and flashcard apps to help with revision and study.  [Advertorial]

Lenovo outs 15-inch IdeaPad U510 Ultrabook with Ivy Bridge CPU, optical drive: $679 and up (update: hands-on)

Lenovo's IFA itinerary is marathon-length. It unveiled no fewer than three tablets yesterday, not to mention three new IdeaPad S Series notebooks, and today it's serving up more laptops. Let's hit the high-profile guy first: Lenovo's IdeaPad Series lineup of Ultrabooks is getting its first 15-inch model, the Windows 8-running U510. The machine weighs 4.85 pounds (2.2kg) and measures 0.83 inches (21mm) thin, which is hefty for an Ultrabook but gives it enough room for a DVD burner or an optional Blu-ray drive. The 15.6-inch display's resolution is a ho-hum 1,366 x 768, which is exactly what you'll find on the IdeaPad U310. The laptop will be available with up to a Core i7 Ivy Bridge CPU, up to 8GB of RAM and a 500GB, 750GB or 1TB hard drive and optional 24/32GB SSD cache. Connections include USB 2.0, USB 3.0, VGA and HDMI, and there's an SD card reader as well. Lenovo rates the machine for six hours of battery life. The U510 will set you back $679 (for the entry-level configuration) when it goes on sale in September. For now, you can check out our hands-on photos below.

[Source: Engadget]

Lenovo's ultra-thin X1 Carbon ultrabook will be available August 21st, starts at $1,399

Lenovo's known for making good laptops much more than it's known for making attractivelaptops, but when the company announced the ThinkPad X1 Carbon in May it seemed to have checked both boxes. Now the company's revealed when you'll actually be able to get an X1 Carbon into your hands: August 21st. The 14-inch, three-pound ultrabook is all of 18mm thick at its thickest point, and will come in several different configurations ranging from $1,399 to $1,849. The base price gets you a 1.7GHz Intel Core i5-3317U processor and a 128GB SSD, and you get more storage and more processing power as you move up the price tiers (there's also a 3G option available in all but the base model).

Every model comes with 4GB of RAM, a 14-inch, 1600 x 900 display, Lenovo's excellent ThinkPad Precision keyboard, and Intel's Integrated graphics. The X1 Carbon also features Lenovo's nifty Rapid Charge feature, which can fill 80 percent of the battery in 30 minutes. We liked what we saw from the svelte ultrabook when it was first announced, and though its price is certainly premium the X1 Carbon appears to fit its billing.

[Source: The Verge]

Taiwan market: Lenovo announces new ultrabook with carbon-fiber chassis

Lenovo has announced its latest ultrabook – ThinkPad X1 Carbon – in Taiwan, adopting a carbon-fiber reinforced plastic chassis to strengthen its sturdiness, while reducing thickness.

The ThinkPad X1 Carbon features a weight of 1.36kg, a thickness of 1.88cm at its thinnest place and a 14-inch panel.

Lenovo's continued rising shipments are starting to gain the company advantages over component purchasing as well as its channel marketing. Meanwhile, the company has also been aggressively establishing new plants in countries such as Japan and Brazil, and is reportedly planning to set up plants in Germany, a country that has a rather high employee salary rate, according to sources from the upstream supply chain.

The sources noted that Lenovo is expecting to further enhance its manufacturing quality through better management and is hoping to achieve similar results to Apple, which also adopts strict quality controls over its products. With ODMs to start seeing more purchasing restrictions from Lenovo, figuring out a way to respond to the vendor's requests will become a new lesson for the ODMs

[Source: DIGITIMES]

HP ENVY 14 Spectre Ultrabook Launched

This January, those with an eye for design should prepare to be haunted by the beauty of the HP ENVY 14 Spectre Ultrabook experience – with new jaw-dropping unparalleled use of glass and stunning performance. 

Designed for those that expect the extraordinary, this statement in quality blends together materials on an ultrabook and captures today’s emerging spirit of entrepreneurship, collaboration and strong visual identity.

 “Sleek, midnight black glass on the outside and stark contrast silver on the inside make Spectre extraordinary, defying conventional notebook design,” said Louis Perrin, director, consumer products, Personal Systems Group, HP EMEA. “We chose the name for our first ENVY Ultrabook to evoke mystery and to satisfy those who expect the unexpected.”

Breathtaking engineering and design

One of HP’s most advanced notebooks, the HP ENVY 14 Spectre is 20 millimeters thin and weighs in at just 1.8kg(1). Beautiful yet tough it features lightweight, scratch resistant glass on the lid, display, palmrest and HP ImagePad, a material largely recognised for its use on the screens of smartphones, portable media players and LCD displays.

Featuring the latest advances in display engineering and chassis design, the HP Spectre fits a full 35.56 cm (14”) screen inside a 33.78cm (13.3”) body. It sounds impossible, but looks incredible allowing creatives to stretch content across a phenomenal high-definition (HD) (2) HP Radiance display producing higher resolution, richer colour, better brightness and wider viewing angles than traditional notebook displays.

 

An intelligent HP Radiance Backlit keyboard, using individual LEDs dedicated to each keycap, senses a person’s presence, lighting up when they’re near and dimming down when they’re not – a bright and brilliant idea only from HP that adds greatly to the aesthetic experience.

 

Astonishing Sound

The HP ENVY 14 Spectre creates a sound heaven thanks to the matching audio-grade speaker mesh and Beats Audio™, an exclusive, high-performance technology developed by HP and Beats by Dr. Dre. Its front-positioned speaker system provides pure, unrestrained sound. Whilst the ultrabook boasts an aluminum analog volume dial, giving the Spectre an interesting retro twist, and external sound on/off button, providing precise volume control, even with the lid closed. 

 

Built-in HP Wireless Audio turns any home into a stage by streaming music to multiple speakers. Uncompressed audio can be streamed to up to four external devices or directly to any KleerNet-compatible device.

Uncompromising performance

Blazingly fast, the HP ENVY 14 Spectre is powered by the latest Intel® Core™ processors(3) featuring Intel Rapid Start Technology, 128 gigabyte (GB) of Solid State Drive (SSD) (4) storage and 9 hours of battery life.(5) Eliminating the need for external dongles, the HP Spectre features an array of input and output options, including Gigabit Ethernet, USB 3.0, HDMI and Mini Displayport. In addition, the HP ImagePad provides precise multifinger touch navigation and the HP TrueVision HD(1) Webcam provides brighter, cleaner HD images.

It offers a performance-tuned software image, full versions of Adobe Photoshop® and Premiere Element and two years of preinstalled Norton™ Internet Security. A world-class design also deserves world-class service, so the notebook comes with a premium phone line for technical support that is dedicated exclusively to HP ENVY users.

Pricing and availability

The HP ENVY 14 Spectre notebook PC is expected to be available at end of March with a starting price of £1,199-(6) through selective distribution in UK.