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Lenovo shares with us its varied Windows 8 product lineup.What a year it's been for Lenovo, the world's largest or second largest PC maker, depending on which market research firm is tallying up the numbers. Either way, Lenovo's been able to not only weather the global storm of a downed economy and slumping PC sales, but thrive it in, earning the CEO a $3 million performance bonus (which he carved up and handed out to employees). The introduction of Windows 8 allows Lenovo to start thinking outside of the box of traditional PC design, and several of those products were on display at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). Let's take a look.
Purveyor of PC knowledge and Online Editor Jimmy Thang zigzagged through booths and attendees to where Lenovo had set up camp and was treated to a demonstration of several products, one of the more interesting being the 27-inch IdeaCentre Horizon. It's a slim all-in-one (AIO) system with the power supply integrated into the frame, but the real selling point is its ability to lay flat and function as a tabletop PC.
When the Horizon sits flat on the table, it automatically switches over to Lenovo's custom "Aura" skin, which itself is a touch friendly interface with a Minority Report feel to it. You can move photos and videos across the screen, resize images and rotate for a better viewing angle, and play pre-loaded games, with or without some game-related accessories. Here's a closer look:
Lenovo was also excited to show off its mobile products, particularly its wireless touch monitor. It weighs 2.4 pounds, is slim, has a built-in battery pack, and syncs up with your PC or notebook. There's also a wired version that attaches via USB 3.0 and weighs 1.6 pounds. These aren't Lenovo-specific accessories; all you need is a Windows PC. Lenovo says it chose Wi-Fi connectivity over WiDi because the latter would "eliminate [support with] so many PCs."
Another neat product Lenovo showed us (one of many, as you'll see in the video) is the Helix, a Windows 8 hybrid notebook/tablet powered by an Intel Core processor rather than Clover Trail. One unique feature is that the display can sit on the keyboard dock either facing the front as a notebook or facing the back and folded down, which maintains a tablet profile but taps into the dock's built-in battery for extra run time.
The big surprise was the very first Clover Trail phone that was just recently unveiled. It has a dual-core 2GHz processor, 6.9mm thin, very light, and a 5.5-inch screen.
Have a look, and be sure to check back often throughout the week for more CES coverage and videos. You can also subscribe to our YouTube channel at MaximumPCMag.
Comments are closed on this article
beta212
January 09, 2013 at 7:54pm
Hmm, don't know what to think here of the 27". On one hand you can finally do some serious work on a tablet this size, but it's too big to be carried around, which completely misses the point of being a tablet. Maybe a smaller factor? And the UI is laggy, as seen when the person attempts to drag a photo, and rotating the central thingy.
That's something I cannot stand, but considering the fact that most people type as slow as hell on a tablet compared to a keyboard, it shouldn't be a issue. Not sure if it's clover trail, or just lame OEM designs, probably some of both, as my previous netbook was definitely "not enough" for word processing, and even starting word made it crash, which is pretty bad considering it had 1GB of ram...
Bullwinkle J Moose
January 10, 2013 at 4:17am
So, you want something a bit smaller but still have enough power to play crisis from a remote location, like Crisis on the can?
Something without the lag?
Something that can optimally compress and stream a live video feed without slowdowns from a powerful base computer or even a tower in the next room?
Yeah, well I had that idea years ago and even posted about it here as well as other places>
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/mit_software_turns_your_mobile_phone_supercomputer
Just give it more time
It took Sony 5 years to turn my digital disk player design into a marketable product after all
They still can't work as fast as I think, but we are making progress
Cregan89
January 10, 2013 at 12:02pm
Anybody can think up a new product (how about a tablet with the thickness and weight of a piece of paper, with an 8K holographic display, a 1 month battery life, and the processing power of a supercomputer).
Engineering it and building it is a whole other story...
