Lenovo's floppy-equipped ThinkPad G50 for Japan

China's Lenovo is giving Japan some love with the new mid-range ThinkPad G50. It's a bit on the chunky side, and weighs in at a hefty 7.3 pounds, but we suppose that's to make room for the rather odd inclusion of a built-in floppy drive. The rest of the specs are a bit more standard, like the 15-inch display that ranges in resolution from XGA to SXGA+ (1,400 x 1,050), and the Celeron M or low-end Core Duo processor options. The base model is pretty bare on specs, with a mere 256MB of RAM, CD-ROM drive and 40GB HDD. We're not quite sure how the Core Duo models manage for specs, other than the PC card slot, gigabit Ethernet and four USB 2.0 ports that all the models share, but there's only room for improvement. The laptop is 2-inches thick at its biggest, and 1-inch thick at its thinnest, making room for a 2 hour battery, that manages 2.5 hours of juice for the Core Duo setups. So bust out that Commander Keen floppy, dig up 135,450 Yen ($1169 USD) and snap this thing up before someone else gets suckered into it.

[Via Impress]

[Freshjives @ Jul 15th 2006 1:36PM]

I don't know, it looks too '90s for me. I don't like the old-style mouse and shape. I'd much rather prefer to snap up a Ferrari Laptop. ;)

[kids @ Jul 15th 2006 1:42PM]

Yes it looks like fake.

[Sam @ Jul 15th 2006 2:13PM]

A flopy drive? Have laptops already reached the top of the hill and is this the start of the decline?

[herenot @ Jul 15th 2006 2:16PM]

nah. I'll wait for the one with the 5.25inch drive.

[jogia @ Jul 15th 2006 3:45PM]

Does anyone have insight into why the Japanese market pc has a floppy drive? Are floppies still in use there?

[Tull @ Jul 15th 2006 4:27PM]

@ #4

Hahahaha, I've still got boxes upon boxes of those damnable 5.25 inch floppies in the basement, I think about it now and it still makes me laugh. My younger brother found them and asked me what type of record player played them, I laughed for a good 15 minutes after that.

[Basketcase456 @ Jul 15th 2006 5:30PM]

Commander Keen floppy's, who uses those. I got all 7 from the internet. I'm proud there are still people out there that play that beside me.

[Pedro @ Jul 15th 2006 5:49PM]

You young whipper-snappers should think yourself lucky!

I still have CRATES of punch cards leftover!

I'll buy a laptop when I can load onto it my 20-meters-of-punchcard-encoded Tic-Tac-Toe program...

[Matt @ Jul 15th 2006 9:07PM]

I normally support the ThinkPad line (Infact I am typing this on a T60 right now) but what in the world was Lenovo thinking on this one?

[Rusty @ Jul 16th 2006 2:33AM]

And here I was thinking about getting rid of my morse code equipment. Thanks Japan! With the "reintroduction" of the floppy drive, perhaps I can clean up on Ebay LOL

[John Doe @ Jul 16th 2006 5:18AM]

"I'll buy a laptop when I can load onto it my 20-meters-of-punchcard-encoded Tic-Tac-Toe program..."


OCR it. :xP

[dapkniht @ Jul 17th 2006 9:41AM]

Yup they still use them in Japan. Many desktops still ship with floppy into Japan market and this is nothing more than a mobile desktop which saves space

[mark @ Jul 17th 2006 4:11PM]

Now this is some funny comedy that is coming to Sky yes am i right if this is true then the world of technology has come to a standstill and we are going back in time my friends.