Lenovo’s ThinkPad T400s laptop, created to give business users a thin and light yet powerful, feature-packed PC with sensor display and MultiTouch and SimpleTap technology, has come to the MICS Distribution Company and is available for orders.

Lenovo’s designers sweat every detail, and the new laptop includes a series of significant enhancements invented to make the laptop more intuitive and easier to use, leading to an improved overall computing experience.

Adding a "Touch" of Simplicity to Touch Screens

Touch screens are designed to make interaction with a PC natural and intuitive, however, often users must switch between touch screen gestures and pressing hardware buttons. Lenovo designed SimpleTap, a ThinkVantage Technology, to enable uninterrupted use of people’s touch screens by giving them access to hardware-based functions that may be more easily accessed via touch input. For Tablet users, that means staying in tablet mode longer while on-the-go, saving time and being more productive.

To use SimpleTap, simply double tap anywhere on the screen to launch the application. A clean and efficient gridof colorful and transparent square tiles, inspired by the classic 15 Puzzle, opens on top of the work beneath and allows users to choose several hardware-based functions including: turning on or off the wireless radio, ThinkLight and microphone, previewing the camera, enabling mute, adjusting the volume or screen brightness, locking the screen or putting the PC to sleep. To exit SimpleTap, just tap once anywhere on the screen to close the grid and continue working. As a quick access interface, SimpleTap allows users to get in, perform a function and get out quickly.

Designed to be highly customizable, individuals can create their own tiles to enhance their personal productivity. For example, a sales professional could create a tile that launches a sales presentation with just the tap of a finger. A health professional could similarly create a tile that pulls up a patient’s medical information instantaneously. Or a consumer could quickly access his or her favorite website. Users can arrange the tiles however they choose by dragging and grouping them together, and designed to be fun to use, the tiles can even be flicked around the screen.

Designed for Thin and Light

Inspired by Lenovo’s thinnest and lightest full-function laptop, the featherweight ThinkPad X301, Lenovo engineered its latest laptop, the ThinkPad T400s, to be super-slim at just 0.83 inches thin1 and ultra-light starting under four pounds. The laptop achieves its skinny frame thanks to the thin 14.1-inch LED screen, solid state drive storage and the second generation Top Cover Roll Cage, which Lenovo first introduced in the ThinkPad X300 laptop. The roll cage’s monocoque carbon reinforced fiber, also used in bicycle frames and airplanes, helps keep the laptop extremely light yet surprisingly sturdy. With this design the laptop weighs nearly 20 percent less than its ThinkPad T400 predecessor, also making it much thinner and lighter than the Dell E6400 and HP 6930P laptops.

Loaded for Performance

The ThinkPad T Series is comprised of Lenovo’s most powerful and performance-heavy laptops. The ThinkPad T400s laptop allows users to enjoy the best of both worlds – thin and light mobility without sacrificing the powerful performance they need.

The model comes with:

• Intel® 2.53 GHz Core™2Duo processors (standard voltage) and graphics
• 250 GB hard drive storage
• 9.5 mm slim DVD burner
• Ethernet, WiFi and optional WiMAX, WWAN, 3 Bluetooth and ultrawideband connectivity
• 34mm Express Card slot
• 5-in-1 multimedia card reader
• Nearly six hours of battery life
• Supports up to two monitors via a Display Port and VGA connector
• Meets the Energy Star 5.0 criteria for energy efficiency

Design Matters

Users spend a lot of time on their keyboards, and a comfortable, easy to use keyboard plays a big role in their overall satisfaction with their PC. Knowing this, Lenovo spends a lot of time perfecting the design of its keyboard. Lenovo found the average user hits the Delete and the Escape key 700 times each a week. To help improve the typing experience, Lenovo made these buttons larger. With many people eating lunch at their desks, Lenovo tightened up the spaces between the keys to help avoid crumbs that would otherwise fall below the keyboard. Improvements were also made to the touchpad in order to help keep the laptop thin. The new touchpad lays flush with the palm rest and has a new, textured feel that allows users to feel the touchpad’s location without looking down. And with multitouch technology on the touchpad, users can easily scroll, pinch and zoom through documents. Lenovo designer, David Hill, discusses many of these improvements in a video on his blog.