IdeapadU400
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Lenovo's ThinkPad T430u Ultrabook targets the business set with discrete graphics and 1TB in storage, arrives in Q3 for $849
While plenty of companies will spend CES showing off their first Ultrabooks, Lenovo is already going back for seconds. The outfit just announced the ThinkPad T430u, a more business-focused follow-up to the IdeaPad U300s we reviewed back in November. More than anything, though, what has us intrigued is that it packs optional NVIDIA graphics, making this the first so-called Ultrabook we've seen with a dedicated GPU. Add in a 14-inch (1366 x 768) display, up to 1TB of hard drive storage and a modest six hours of rated battery life, and it sounds more like a full-fledged laptop than an Ultrabook. Semantics aside, with a starting price of $849 this could be a tempting deal for businesses looking to outfit their employees with something portable, well-performing and inexpensive. Not to mention, it might just be a worthy competitor to the HP Folio, our favorite business-centric Ultrabook at the moment. Just make sure IT can wait patiently -- the T430u isn't slated to go on sale until Q3 of this year.
Circuit City starts shipping Lenovo IdeaPad U400, reminds you it still exists
Remember Circuit City? It may no longer exist in your local mall (or alongside the 405) but somehow it's wangled a flock of Lenovo's new IdeaPad U400s -- ahead of the company's own official store. This thin yet powerful object of desire has a 14-inch 1366 x 768 Backlit LED screen, 6GB of DDR3 RAM, 1GB ATI Radeon HD6470M graphics and a 2.40GHz Intel Core i5-2430m processor. Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit is stashed on the 750GB HDD and the whole thing is rated to run for four-hours on the built-in battery. If you want one to be slung on the back of a UPS truck on its way to your domicile, it'll set you back $920 -- a little more than the $850 that Lenny had promised, but isn't it worth a little bit extra to get one before anyone else? [Thanks, Elliott]
