Las Vegas –Lenovo is trying to change the game in the notebook market place with a new PC form factor that delivers two different computing platforms in one unit.
Called the U1 in Lenovo’s IdeaPad series, this hybrid notebook will feature a detachable screen, two processors, two operating systems that work together in a clamshell laptop case. By flipping a switch, the user then can pull out a multi-touch slate tablet that acts like an oversized smartphone.
The Lenovo IdeaPad U1 was announced at CES yesterday, but will be made available on June 1 of this year with an estimated retail price of $999. Hwa Wu, spokesperson for Lenovo said that the company is currently working on a go to market strategy for the U1 that will involve the channel. Those details will be announced at a later date, she said.
”The consumers are early adopters who enjoy the convenience and portability of a mobile device, but also want to have all the online and editing functionality of a notebook. By offering them two devices in one, we are offering them a way to switch seamlessly between two different lifestyle experiences,” Wu said.
Carmi Levy, a Toronto-based independent research analyst, has been following this product fairly closely and said that the U1 addresses the key limitation of tablets, namely their inability to support heavy duty text entry. “It’s the kind of dual personality machine that justifies its price by bundling in the relatively unencumbered user experience of a slate or tablet with the productivity advantages of a more conventional laptop form factor. If you added external keyboards, additional storage and additional peripherals to a standard tablet, you’d have a more expensive, less integrated alternative to the U1 Hybrid,” Levy said.
Lenovo over the past 18 months has pushed hard into the SMB space with its product portfolio, but the U1 may not exactly be part of that portfolio when the product is finally available. Wu said the goal for the U1 is to create the concept from a convergence of consumer experiences. “We see this both as a convergence and divergence product. We are converging the mobile tablet functionality with that of a notebook. At the same time, we are offering them a way to detach and only operate and carry what they need for an on-the-go lifestyle. This is really a consumer experience driven product,” Wu added.
Levy said that the detachable nature and dual OS-architecture of the device will require some slight tweaks to the way people work. “For example, they’d have to make sure their files are loaded on the screen’s memory before detaching it from the keyboard,” he said. These are minor considerations, Levy admits, but the dual-OS build may also limit take-up in business environments, as IT departments prefer client-side simplicity, and this device is anything but simple. Linux on the slate side will also cause some shops to look elsewhere.
Despite these obstacles, Levy believes the U1 hybrid will find a home in workflow applications that require end-users to switch modes and up until now haven’t had anything remotely close to a solution.
The U1 will try to establish a new computing genre for Lenevo but Wu cautions that this hybrid notebook isn’t just a large screen smart phone. The two devices can synchronize to work as one with the ability to share battery power, 3G wireless, data and documents. In this way, the base laptop system can serve as a hub and docking station and the slate tablet as a mobile device. The two PCs have been engineered to work together and independently through Lenovo’s hybrid switch technology that can toggle between the two processors (the tablet uses the Qualcomm ARM chip, while the main CPU is an Intel Core 2 Duo SU). For instance, users can surf the Web in laptop mode and then continue from the same point without interruption if they detach to tablet mode.
“We are not making a large smart phone, but have provided an interface that supports an excellent touch and online experience and screen resolution that’s optimized for the U1 screen size,” she said.
Levy said that it’s nice to see vendors willing to stretch the form factor bounds. More importantly, it’s nice to see such innovation coming to market in advance of Apple’s anticipated tablet announcement later this month. “This shows that competition in this space is healthy, which can only be beneficial to consumers and businesses as the economy slowly turns around and they come to grips with a very different set of technology needs,” he said.
The IdeaPad U1’s has a scarlet red exterior with a footprint just smaller than a piece of notebook paper weighing 3.8 pounds. The system sports a 11.6 inch HD LED screen and runs Windows 7. When the 1.6 pound, multitouch screen is removed, it becomes an independent slate tablet running Lenovo’s customized Skylight operating system.