Penryn beginning to pop up in Lenovo's X61 ThinkPads

While we're short on formal announcements, various retailers are displaying Lenovo ThinkPad X61 wares with Intel's latest chips inside. A Penryn T8100-powered X61 is on MacMall with 1GB of RAM and a 120GB HDD for $1,550, while a T8300 version goes for $1,610. Specs are otherwise the same as existing ThinkPads, and no tablet version is offered. It's starting to feel like laptop manufacturers are stringing us along here, instead of offering next-gen laptops to match Intel's next-gen chips, but it's still early in the game, and maybe we're just paranoid. In other news, Lenovo has begun delivering SUSE Linux-based ThinkPad R61 and T61 laptops, with prices starting at $949 -- quite the improvement on 2006's "efforts."

[Via Laptoping]

Read - Penryn ThinkPads
Read - Linux ThinkPads

[cmonkey @ Jan 14th 2008 11:35AM]

There's no reason to design new laptops until a new northbridge comes out. Penyrn is just a drop in replacement for the existing Merom CPUs.

[Andrew @ Jan 14th 2008 11:58AM]

Agreed. Best stave off your new laptop purchase until August. :(

[Denver_80203 @ Jan 14th 2008 11:49AM]

You can thank me for the updates since I just bought a machine from them.

Ahhh the inevitable sting of technologies' buyer's remorse.

[Kamall @ Jan 14th 2008 12:14PM]

I suppose wait until Montevina in later 2008 for radically different notebooks, new designs? Some of the designs from manufacturers are getting a bit old.

I hear Montevina will be very power efficient, and allow for smaller notebooks, yay for 10/11" ultraportables!

And Nehalem in 2009 will be entirely different, no more "Core" articheture after that?

Man, Intel is on a roll, bam bam bam!

[wickedpheonix @ Jan 14th 2008 2:28PM]

yep I'm waiting for a Montevina-chipset Lenovo tablet - hopefully one will come about by or near the time I go to college :D

[mattydread @ Jan 14th 2008 3:46PM]

Gotta love that pointing stick! I wish more laptop brands offered them.