We’re betting Lenovo has something hot coming down the pipe for us to drool over because of the caption below the image on their fan page. It reads:

Another kind of launch set for tomorrow. Any guesses what it is?

You will want to check back with us tomorrow because we’ll post the news as soon as we get it from Lenovo. For now, what else can you spot in the shot? In the shot above you can see multiple cameras ready to record everything happening onboard. If you look closely at the right wall you can also see what looks like external hard drives or maybe even a pair of hard drives and an SSD (see image below). Is it hooked up to the camera to record the images?

It is hard to make out what the other tech toys are. If you know, comment below. We are pretty sure that mission critical work like the things aboard the Shuttle can’t rely on wireless to clean up what looks to be hundreds if not thousands of feet of wires hooking it all up.

Below is video of the actual launch:

Lenovo ThinkPads in Space Onboard Shuttle Endeavour is a post by Kevin Purcell from Notebooks.com.

The new feature is installed on ThinkPad notebooks under Absolute Software’s Computrace subscription service and allows owners to recover their machines in an easy manner. When you notice that you lost your computer, you can raise the alarm by contacting Absolute Software who will lock your notebook. Anyone who turns your machine on will be prompted to call a hotline through which they can get a free pre-paid shipping box and send the laptop to Lenovo who will return it to you at no cost!

The Lost & Found feature is now available on all ThinkPad notebooks. Even computers purchased before the release will receive an automatic update later in October which will give them the additional security of Lost & Found!

Lenovo’s Lost & Found Helps Owners Recover Missing Computers is a post by Bogdan Semida from Notebooks.com.

The researchers are trying to ultimately save lives, but in order to do that they need to drive directly into the storms that almost everyone else is fleeing.

Rob Bushway from GottaBeMobile spent a day with CSWR founder Joshua Wurman, who showed off all of the cool gear they use to track and intercept storms. Besides all of the Lenovo gear, Wurman’s team uses several mobile phones, wireless broadband cards and satellite phones to stay connected. He points out that he uses multiple wireless carriers because none of them have comprehensive coverage in rural areas.

Rob was kind enough to put together a comprehensive video of how CSWR uses mobile technology.

The team uses the following notebooks:

ThinkPad T400 laptops Used in the instrumented Probe and Disdrometer vehicles, these laptops play an important role in transferring data collected through the dozen weather pods that are placed in the path of a storm. These pods measure weather data, such as wind speed and temperature. The laptops also power diagnostic software used to test and monitor weather stations in the field.

ThinkPad W500 laptops Attached to the mounts inside the Probe and Disdrometer vehicles, the laptops run navigation, tracking and mapping software.

ThinkPad W700 laptops These laptops are used for housing a variety of radar and mapping applications for analyzing and displaying graphically demanding data and video without being tied to a desk. The laptops are also being used for public presentations of preliminary science results as well as in the field for a first analysis of data.

ThinkPad X200s laptops For lightweight and portability, the team is using these laptops to conduct tornado damage assessments.

IdeaPad S10 netbooks Individual scientists are using the netbooks as a quick and convenient way to check Internet weather forecasts and email.

As you can imagine, the team works outdoors a lot. All of Lenovo’s Thinkpads are semi-rugged, which means they can stand up to minor drops, spills and dirt without missing a beat. One ThinkPad that’s particularly useful for outdoor and in-vehicle usage is the T400 with a 680-nit outdoor display. As you can see in the above photo, CSWR drivers need to be able to read the display while driving.

Lenovo sent us a T400 with an outdoor display so we could try one ourselves. I lined up my MacBook Pro, HP 2730p and the T400 on a bench in my garden and turned set all of them to maximum brightness. I could easily read the T400′s display , but using it at full brightness really taxes the battery. The 2730p has a matte display, which makes it more readable than the glossy MacBook Pro, but it isn’t nearly as readable as the T400. The MacBook Pro is pretty much worthless outdoors because the screen is highly reflective. 

Storm Chasers Use ThinkPads, Trucks Full of Mobile Tech is a post by Xavier Lanier from Notebooks.com.

Lenovo says that its ThinkPads pass more military specifications compared to Dell’s ATG laptops and Panasonic’s business-rugged and semi-rugged laptops.

Police Departments like the Conover Police Department in North Carolina are using ThinkPad laptops to turn their patrol cars into mobile offices. Reduced time spent at the station writing reports gives officers extra time on patrol to protect their community. Officers are using ThinkPad T Series laptops to write and print incident reports, issue tickets and conduct criminal background checks from their cars. For IT Director, Chris Niver, Lenovo’s engineering made ThinkPad laptops the easy choice.

Although not billed as a ‘ruggedized’ laptop at the time, the features offered far surpassed the other manufacturers. The fact that the ThinkPads came with a roll-cage design, shock resistant hard drive, built in security chip and the familiar red button as well as touchpad all as standard features really made my choice clear.”

The ThinkPad X200, X301, X200s, X200 tablet, T400, T500, R400 and SL300 notebooks each passed the following tests:

MIL810-F Method:

500.4 Low Pressure (altitude) – Tests operation at 15,000 feet

501.4 High Temperature – Simulates high heat conditions by baking the laptop up to 140°F

502.4 Low Temperature – Tests operation at -4°F

503.4 Temperature Shock – Fluctuates between -4 and up to 140°F to test operation

507.4 Humidity – Cycles 95 percent humidity through the environment

510.4 Sand and Dust – Blows dust for an extended amount of time

514.5 Vibration (operational and non-operational)

It’s good to see that Lenovo’s testing for ruggedness and users are sure to benefit, but some users will be better served with fully rugged notebooks, such as the Panasonic CF-15 series, which can withstand water and more severe drops and vibrations.

ThinkPads not designed to withstand rain and snow, but it’s hard to argue with the ruggedness provided at relatively low price points. The ThinkPad T400 with the 680-nit display starts at sale for as low as $649.

ThinkPads Get Tough, Meet Mil-Spec Standards is a post by Xavier Lanier from Notebooks.com.

The W700ds will start at around $3650, but the few users who actually end up ordering one of these will add other premium options.The W700ds can be configured with an Intel Quad-Core Extreme processor, dual SSDs, built-in Wacom digitizer and other pricey add-ons that can push the price tag north of $7,000.

The 10.6-inch secondary display adds 40% more screen real estate. This is large enough to run a web browser or your favorite email applicaition without losing sight of your work on the primary display.

While I like the concept of the W700ds, the secondary display does add some thickness and weight to an already hefty notebook. I think this innovation will strike a chord with a small segment of the market.

I think an extra screen would be more compelling on a smaller notebook, such as a T500.

CES 2009: Lenovo ThinkPad W700ds (video) is a post by Xavier Lanier from Notebooks.com.

The W700ds is the first mobile workstation to feature dual displays. Using a secondary display can increase productivity and be a godsend for digital content creators as their notebook displays can get crowded with tool palettes and menus in applications like Adobe Photoshop and CAD.

Rob Bushway from GottaBeMobile posted a quick demo of the W700ds and it looks pretty cool. The one downside he’s found so far is that when you extend the secondary display it cuts off any external displays.

I’ve been using the W700 on and off for the past couple of months and while it’s very powerful and has an excellent display, it’s big and bulky. The W700ds adds a few millimeters in thickness, which will make it even more unwieldy to transport. But the extra thickness and weight beats lugging around a secondary display, which can be a necessity for some professionals who need to work “on location.”

Here’s the full press release from Lenovo

Lenovo Lays Stake on Prime Screen Real-Estate with Industry’s First Dual Screen Mobile Workstation

ThinkPad W700ds mobile workstation brings ultimate intersection of innovation and performance

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, NC January 5, 2009: Lenovo today is bringing users the highest levels of mobile workstation innovation and performance with the introduction of the ThinkPad W700ds mobile workstation. The ThinkPad W700ds gives users prime screen real-estate as the first mobile workstation in the industry with two screens. Lenovo combines a new balance of unique design with complex engineering and unparalleled performance to give users in the most demanding of fields such as digital content creation, oil and gas exploration, computer-aided design and photography, the ultimate mobile workstation.

The ThinkPad W700ds dual screen mobile workstation challenged our international development team to engineer a notebook to fit the way workstation users work – in the office and on the road,” said Mark Cohen, vice president, Notebook Business Unit, Lenovo. Bringing this level of innovation to the most extreme PC users required continually balancing size and functionality with keeping the PC cool and quiet. This mobile workstation is the result of where Lenovo innovation and performance intersect.”

The Power of Two

Because many workstation users typically work with two monitors, Lenovo designed the ThinkPad W700ds mobile workstation with two screens, accommodating their work habits while on-the-go and eliminating the compromise of having only one display when operating in a mobile environment. Research has shown that extra screen real-estate with multiple monitors helps maximize user productivity versus single display solutions.1 Measuring almost 40 percent of the 17-inch primary screen, the 10.6-inch second screen gives users extra screen real-estate measuring approximately the size of a Lenovo IdeaPad S10 netbook.

The second screen easily slides out from the PC cover behind the primary screen, and it can also be adjusted to fit a user’s viewing angle by up to 30 degrees, similarly to how a car’s rear view mirror tilts. This unique feature and test of engineering only adds a few millimeters in additional thickness to the mobile workstation over its predecessor, the ThinkPad W700 mobile workstation.

The second screen complements the primary optional 400-nit WUXGA display which provides up to twice the brightness of earlier ThinkPad mobile workstations. The primary screen’s 72 percent wide color gamut enables more than 50 percent greater color intensity for an uncompromised viewing experience.

Intersection of Innovation and Performance

With its second screen, the ThinkPad W700ds mobile workstation builds on the breakthrough capabilities offered in the ThinkPad W700 mobile workstation that included the industry’s first built-in digitizer and color calibrator for mobile workstations.

Ideal for digital content creators and users, the optional digitizer provides high resolution, pressure high resolution, pressure sensitive control of the primary screen, the primary and the secondary screen or a specific defined area of either screen. Select models also come with a color calibrator that quickly and automatically adjusts the screen’s color to give true-to-life images and rendering 2D and 3D images, which are important items for digital content creators.

Professional photographer, Phil Borges commented, The Lenovo ThinkPad W700 is the ultimate in portable workstations for photographers. The built in calibration and the ultra bright monitor make it possible for me to do work on the road that I would normally have to wait to do in the studio. The W700′s two built-in hard drives make backing up photos while I’m on the road or in the studio a snap. Normally the process takes me a couple of hours, but with the W700 backup time is cut in half. Now the new ThinkPad W700ds takes it one step further with a second screen, allowing me to move all my working palets to the second screen and giving me more real estate on the main screen for photo editing.”

The ThinkPad W700ds mobile workstation gives users the latest technologies that are essential for work in data and graphics-intensive fields such as computer-assisted design, computer-aided manufacturing and others. Top processing and graphics performance includes choices of Intel® mobile quad core and extreme processors with optional dual hard drives with RAID configurations and choices of NVIDIA® Quadro FX mobile graphics. The mobile workstation offers up to 8 GB of high speed DDR3 memory and choices of solid state drive storage and traditional hard disk drives for a maximum of 960 GB of possible total storage. The mobile workstation also carries certifications from more than 20 independent software applications.

The ThinkPad W700ds mobile workstation offers a rich, customizable multimedia experience with optional â„¢ DVD burner/player and high speed UDMA compact flash reader, support for Dual Link DVI, Display Port and VGA, a 7-in-1 multicard reader and five USB ports. In addition to WiFi, for connectivity beyond the office, select models support WiMAX. Security features include an optional fingerprint reader, a smartcard reader and hard drives with full-disk encryption.

The powerhouse mobile workstation also balances its functionality with staying cool and quiet. Lenovo engineered a dual thermal solution to keep the ThinkPad W700ds mobile workstation running as cool as ThinkPad notebooks and quieter than the ambient noise in a typical office.

Pricing and Availability2

The ThinkPad W700ds mobile workstation is available immediately through www.lenovo.com and business partners. Pricing for models starts at $3,663.

About Lenovo

Lenovo (HKSE: 992) (ADR: LNVGY) is dedicated to building exceptionally engineered personal computers. Lenovo’s business model is built on innovation, operational efficiency and customer satisfaction as well as a focus on investment in emerging markets. Formed by Lenovo Group’s acquisition of the former IBM Personal Computing Division, the company develops, manufactures and markets reliable, high-quality, secure and easy-to-use technology products and services worldwide. Lenovo has major research centers in Yamato, Japan; Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, China; and Raleigh, North Carolina. For more information see www.lenovo.com.

1Suzanne Ross: Microsoft Research News & Highlights Two Screens Are Better Than One”

2Prices do not include tax or shipping and are subject to change without notice and is tied to specific terms and conditions. Reseller prices may vary. Price does not include all advertised features. All offers subject to availability. Lenovo reserves the right to alter product offerings and specifications at any time without notice.

video from GottabeMobile, via jkontherun

ThinkPad W700ds: Workstation with Dual-Displays is a post by Xavier Lanier from Notebooks.com.

The ThinkPads are equipped with Ericsson mobile broadband modules. The notebooks will come with 30 days of free AT&T DataConnect service.

This is great news for ThinkPad buyers. Most of the ThinkPad line effectively got a little cheaper for those who were planning to get a 3G card. For those who aren’t sure if the want 3G (or can’t afford the monthly payments) they can always sign up for an AT&T DataConnect plan later. This is especially good news for businesses who have to order ThinkPads in volume and can have trouble predicting exactly which employee will need 3G service.

Lenovo isn’t the first to make 3G modems standard equipment in some of its product lines. Several Sony notebook lines, including the Z, SZ, TZ and TT, have come with Sprint or AT&T compatible cards for years.

Gartner projects enormous growth in mobile broadband subscribers over the next few years.

I’ve used mobile broadband modems for the past seven years and consider them a “must have” for mobile professionals. They really make it possible to work anywhere- I’ve blogged from WiFi-less conferences, checked email from a beach in Kauai, watched TV in my car (as a passenger) and read news aboard airplanes while still on the ground thanks to my USB modem.

AT&T’s plans range from $20 to $60 per month. The $20 plan provides for a pathetic 10MB per month. You get 5GB of data transfer for $60, which you can burn very quickly. International plans are much more expensive – $229.99 per month includes 5GB of domestic data and 200MB of international roaming. I’ve talked to several industry execs and none of them even have international plans.

All ThinkPad SL, T and X Series Notebooks Get 3G is a post by Xavier Lanier from Notebooks.com.

According to Tom, the X200s is about as thin as the ThinkPad X300. Optimized for professionals on the move, the X200s can run for up to 13.2 hours with an extended 8-cell battery.

The ThinkPad X200t will replace the X61t. The new X200t has a maximum runtime of 10.5 hours with the optional 8-cell battery. It features many improvements over the X61t including improved inking sensitivity, an optional webcam and stereo speakers. Lenovo’s also improved touch sensitivity and palm rejection. The display now swivels in either direction.

update:Our friends over at GottabBeMobile got their hands on a ThinkPad X200t prototype:

Both the ThinkPad X200t and X200s can be configured with up to 4GB of RAM and the latest Intel Core 2 Duo low-voltage and ultra low-voltage processors.

The X200t and X200s will have a full range of 2.5-inch storage solutions, including 64GB or 128GB solid state drives, up to 320GB 5400 rpm drives or up to 160GB high-speed 7200 rpm drives. This breadth of drive options is lacking from several of Lenovo’s competitors’ thin and light systems, which often use 1.8-inch drives that spin as low as 4200rpm.

Lenovo also introduced a new Ultrabase that will be compatible across the ThinkPad X200 product line. The Ultrabase can be outfited with an optical drive (DVD or Blu-ray Disc) or a second hard drive. It can also charge a second battery.

Business notebook manufacturers have been bragging a lot about long runtimes lately, but as with other manufacturers you’ll have to shell out a steep premium to get the maximum runtimes of 13.2 and 10.5 hours that Lenovo claims. According to Lenovo, Pricing for optimized models of the ThinkPad X200s notebook starts at $2,242 and the ThinkPad X200 Tablet starts at $2,323. Much of that cost is due to still expensive SSD prices. The best bang for your buck in terms of battery life improvement is to opt for LED displays, which improve battery performance by about 20% compared to notebooks with LCD displays.

The X200s and X200t will be available from Lenovo.com and business resellers starting next week.

ThinkPad X200s Specifications
Processors
Intel Core 2 Duo, SL9400, SL9300, SU 9300
Operating System
Vista Home Basic 32, Vista Home Business 32, 64, Vista Ultimate 32, Vista Home Premium 32
Hard Drive
80, 160, 250, 320 GB/5400 rpm
100, 160 GB/7200 rpm
200 GB 7200 rpm full disk encryption
64, 128 GB SSD
Memory
Up to 4 GB 1066 MHz DDR3 memory
Wireless/Connectivity
Intel WiFI link 5100, 5300
WiMAX.WiFi link 5350
ThinkPad 11b/g wireless LAN Mini PCI
ExpressCard Adapter III
Gigabit ethernet
Ultrawide band
Bluetooth 2.0
WiMAX models available later in 2008
Security
Standard: ThinkVantage Client Security with Password Manager, TPM 1.2 chip, BIOS disable of all ports
Optional: integrated Fingerprint Reader, Smartcard reader, full-disk encryption HDD, optional Softex Omnipass and Ultimaco Safeguard Easy
Other
Optional: integrated digital mic, security cable slot, select models feature next-generation ThinkPad Roll Cage
Dimensions