Lenovo teams up with Novell for new, pricey Linux ThinkPads
If Linux is your thing, and you've got a good bit of cash to spare, Lenovo has just released a couple of attractive new options to their T60p line with Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 pre-installed. Linux and ThinkPads have always seemed a natural fit, and there is plenty of community support out there if you'd like to roll your own install, but a Lenovo-supported install should be nice for users who just want things to work out of the box. Unfortunately, that convenience comes at quite a cost, since the 14-inch "workstation" goes for $3100, while the 15-incher hits $3200. The laptops are pretty well specced, with a 2.33 GHz Core Duo T2700, 1GB of RAM, 100GB HDD, 256MB ATI FireGL V5200 graphics, DVD burning, 802.11a/b/g WiFi, a fingerprint reader and a 9-cell lithium-ion battery, but a similarly configured 14-inch T60p running Windows goes for a mere $2360. Quite a premium for convenience indeed.
UPDATE: If comments are any indication, Lenovo is already going to have a hard time convincing consumers of the value on these things. Well, the news just gets worse: according to LinuxPlanet, Lenovo isn't even going to pre-load SUSE. The laptop will ship with a blank hard drive, and the necessary drivers will be downloadable. Sure, they're throwing in some nifty unlimited phone support, but we're really not so sure this is going to fly. Thanks, Vasicila for the heads-up.
