Lenovo U110 on sale, shares MacBook Air CPU

Lenovo today held its last IdeaPad unveiling for the US this season with the formal launch of the IdeaPad U110. The final version of the PC announced in January is now billed as a crossover ultraportable designed equally for fashionable users as well as serious travelers. Externally, the 11-inch system has a textured metal shell that recalls Lenovo's "Cloud of Promise" Olympic theme and is one of Lenovo's most compact systems yet, weighing under 2.5 pounds and measuring between 0.7 and 0.9 inches thick.

The system is also relatively unique among ultraportables with a face detection system for secure logins and a set of media keys for navigation.

In its finished form, the U110 is only the second computer to use the same CPU as the MacBook Air, running a low-voltage 1.6GHz Core 2 Duo that still shares the same 800MHz bus and 4MB of L2 cache as for larger notebooks. Unlike the thinner Apple system, the new IdeaPad uses its extra thickness to store a DVD burner as well as a more traditional 120GB hard disk. The base system sells for $1,900 and comes with 2GB of memory as well as both four- and seven-cell batteries but can be expanded to 3GB of memory through an expansion slot.

Lenovo is taking orders today, but ships the PC in black or red shell colors within two to three weeks.

Filed under: computers
Other story tags: Intel, MacBook Air, Core 2, Lenovo, IdeaPad