Lenovo makes space for AMD chips on ThinkPad laptops

04.01.2010
Lenovo is looking beyond long-term partner Intel and beginning to offer budget ThinkPad laptops based on Advanced Micro Devices' processors, the company said on Monday.

The company announced a new line of ThinkPad Edge laptops that will include AMD's single-core and dual-core Athlon Neo and Turion Neo processors.

ThinkPad Edge laptops will be priced between US$500 and $800, said Charles Sune, global marketing manager at Lenovo. The first Edge offering, priced starting at $549, will include a 13.3-inch screen. More Edge laptops will be released later this year with screen sizes between 13 inches and 15 inches and either AMD Turion and low-power Athlon Neo chips.

AMD Athlon Neo chips will also be offered in the new ThinkPad X100e ultrathin laptop, which offers the portability of netbooks but adequate performance to run multimedia applications. Priced starting at $449, the laptop weighs under 3 pounds (0.45 kilograms) and includes an 11.6-inch screen.

The X100e will support up to 250GB of hard drive storage, up to 4GB of memory, and include ATI Radeon 3200 integrated graphics. It will offer up to two hours of battery life on a three-cell battery, and five hours on a six-cell battery.

The new laptops will be available immediately and will be on display at the Consumer Electronics Show, which will be held in Las Vegas between Jan. 7 and 10.