LenovoSkylightSmartbook
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Lenovo Skylight launch pushed off to July, IdeaPad U1 Hybrid still on track
Today in announced-at-CES product delays, we bring you the Lenovo Skylight. Last week when we inquired about the whereabouts of our review unit (or even an order page), we were told that the Skylight's April release date had been pushed, but Laptop has uncovered that the super thin, Snapdragon-powered smartbook has actually been significantly delayed until July. According to the a Lenovo spokesperson, the company is still working to get things just right, and we're actually not surprised considering the software we saw at CES was far from fully-baked. Oh, but there's good news! The IdeaPad U1 Hybrid, that awesome tablet / laptop combo, we also checked out at CES seems to be right on track for its June release date. Given that the tablet part of the U1 runs the same Skylight Linux OS as the smartbook, we're a bit skeptical on that one, but the that doesn't mean we aren't hoping and praying to get it in our hands ASAP.
Lenovo Skylight hands-on and impressions (video)
We just got a chance to play with Lenovo's Skylight smartbook, which runs the company's new Skylight lightweight Linux OS on a 1Ghz Snapdragon. It's an impressively clean little package, with a 10.1-inch display, an integrated WWAN card, and a neat flip-out USB thumb drive for housing user data. Ports-wise you're not looking at much apart from mini-HDMI out, an SD card slot, and a second USB jack, although there is an internal microSD slot for more storage on top of the 8GB system drive. The idea is that all your personal info will live on the thumb drive, allowing users to just plug into any other Skylight and go -- and there were some hints that accessories like Skype handsets would eventually fit into that slot and connect over USB. As for the OS itself, the six-panel interface was certainly workable, although clearly not production-ready: it managed to load webpages and do some light Twittering, although there was some stuttering along the way. We're big fans of the chiclet keyboards Lenovo's got going here, but the mulitouch touchpad still needs some work. The biggest sell of this thing over a netbook seems to be its promised 12 hours of battery life and its trim body, but at $499 (when most netbooks are at least $100 cheaper) we aren't sure we get it. We can't get that thinness of it out of our head, but we'll be waiting on the AT&T subsided pricing on this one. Video walkthrough after the break. %Gallery-81542%
