Ad: Manage updates with the Download App
ie8 fix

think

Lenovo recalls 100,000 ThinkPad batteries

Here we go again. Last year, Lenovo recalled more than half a million batteries as a participant in the widespread Sony laptop battery recall that included Apple, Dell, Toshiba, and others. Lenovo today announced it is recalling 100,000 Sanyo batteries that it sells with its ThinkPad laptops.

The company has received four complaints about lithium ion batteries overheating and damaging ThinkPad laptops when the batteries were dropped or otherwise struck on the corner. The batteries in question are the extended, nine-cell battery, which Lenovo sells as an upgrade option on three ThinkPad lines: the R Series (R60 and R60e), … Read more

Make your Thinkpad into a Wii. Sort of.

Following up on my fetish for getting my Thinkpad's motion sensor to do more than just protect the hard disk, I checked out a clever hack that turns the sensor into a motion controller and makes games respond when you tilt the laptop. Just like the Wii's motion-sensor controller, but way more expensive.

An introduction to the process, and relevant links, are on the Lenovo "Inside the Box" blog.

I followed the instructions and was quickly playing Tux Racer, a game where you guide a belly-sliding penguin down a snowy slalom course. The Thinkpad's tilt … Read more

You've got the map, I've got the motion

I just got a new ThinkPad T60, and I've become a bit obsessive about it. I've been hanging out on the ThinkPad forums and reading the ThinkPad designers' blog. And I just found something for ThinkPads that's so cool it actually made me giggle: The Google Maps Thinkpad controller app, a.k.a. gmaps, by Tatsuhiko Miyagawa, an engineer at Six Apart. (The YouTube video below is his.) It uses the orientation and motion sensor of the ThinkPad hard disk's Active Protection System to enable you to navigate your Google map by tilting your laptop. Tilt … Read more

Lenovo's new Tablet PC conquers screen glare

Expectations for the Tablet PC have fallen a bit in recent years, after the breathless predictions of the Tablet PC revolution from a few years ago. Only about 1 million tablets will be sold this year, out of more than 200 million overall PC sales.

Still, PC companies continue to offer doodlers and creative types a way to digitally capture their scribblings. Lenovo's got a new ThinkPad Tablet PC, the X60, that comes with a new display technology that is supposed to be easier to see under the glare from the sun.

The 12-inch screen also comes with what … Read more