Lenovo touts energy efficiency, UWB power notebook

Lenovo plans to announce Tuesday that all of its X-, T- and R-series computers with Santa Rosa platforms will qualify for the Energy Star 4.0 rating that goes into effect on July 20.

The Energy Star program, which is overseen by the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy, revised its voluntary set of energy efficiency standards for computers for the first time in over a decade. Among the standards required to garner an Energy Star 4.0 sticker is a decreased power consumption while a computer is idle.

Intel's Santa Rosa (Centrino Pro or Intel Duo) platform, which is being touted on many laptops, means that the computer contains a T7000-series dual-core CPU, 802.11n support and a GM965 chipset.

Lenovo is also offering a download to make any previously purchased Santa Rosa ThinkPad notebooks offer the same energy efficiency.

The company also announced the ThinkPad T61p, an Energy Star 4.0 notebook that has a 15.4-inch LCD screen, the Santa Rosa platform, Nvidia Quadro FX 570M graphics certified to the Open GL graphics GPU standard, Intel Centrino Pro mobile technology and an internal roll cage for both its motherboard and LCD screen.

Lenovo ThinkPad T61p

(Credit: Lenovo)

The T61p notebook, which will be available July 17 starting at $1,814, also offers ultra-wideband (UWB), according to Tom Ribble, director of ThinkPad product marketing for Lenovo.

Lenovo ThinkPad roll cage for LCD screen and motherboard

(Credit: Lenovo)

UWB is a next-generation frequency similar to Bluetooth that can be used for communicating with peripheral devices. UWB offers an average data exchange of about 100 megabits per second compared with Bluetooth's 3Mbps.

The Formula One racing team Lenovo co-sponsors with AT&T is using the T61p as part of the company's campaign to demonstrate the T61p's engineering computing power and robustness.

While Lenovo has been rolling out these features individually on its other computers, this is the first time the company has offered this combo of features, along with UWB capability on a notebook, said Ribble.