Lenovo today announced it is sharpening its focus on small to medium businesses (SMB) from top to bottom, beginning with the introduction of new products like the ThinkPad Edge 14 and 15 inch laptops. Designed for style and sophistication, select models offer an elegant backlit keyboard. The ThinkPad Edge laptops are already powering innovative SMBs like the Cupcake Stop in New York City. Lenovo also announced today the debut of new attention-grabbing worldwide ads showcasing the imagination, engineering and proven ability of Think-branded PC products.

"We're creating a full SMB program, starting with products like the ThinkPad Edge 14 and 15 inch laptops," said Jerry Paradise, director, Worldwide ThinkPad Product Marketing, Lenovo. "We have seen strong demand already for the ThinkPad Edge 13 inch, and we'll continue to expand the ThinkPad Edge lineup going forward, extending the same leadership in innovation, quality and reliability in SMB that we're known for with large enterprise customers."

Lenovo today announced that it is offering Elemental Accelerator software with select NVIDIA Quadro FX professional graphics solutions on ThinkStation S20 and D20 professional workstations. Elemental Accelerator works with NVIDIA Quadro FX graphics to add GPU-accelerated power and performance to the Adobe Creative Suite 4 workflow.

Lenovo workstations equipped with NVIDIA Quadro FX graphics and Elemental Accelerator let Adobe Creative Suite 4 users harness the power of the graphics processing unit (GPU) to perform high-speed, high-quality video encoding. This combination delivers dramatic time savings over conventional CPU-only encoding solutions. By executing demanding processing tasks on the GPU, Elemental Accelerator speeds up video transcoding and frees CPU resources to perform other tasks, helping to result in a faster, more efficient video editing and production environment.

AMD announced VISION Pro Technology, a new commercial PC platform brand that delivers a superior visual computing experience, and can help businesses increase productivity and gain competitive advantage by enabling visually stunning communications, marketing and sales materials.

Graphics matter more than ever in business communication and innovative companies are leveraging balanced PC platform technology to generate and view rich visual presentations, including videos and 3D graphics to communicate winning ideas. Studies show that more than 80 percent of human comprehension is gained visually and that the use of visual aids with oral presentations improves content retention as much as 6.5 times greater than using words alone. Furthermore, the increased viewing area provided by multiple monitors helps improve worker productivity by as much as 40 percent. Commercial PCs based on VISION Pro Technology from AMD offer out-of-the-box support for multiple monitors, seamless viewing of videos, use of video conferencing software, and the performance necessary to create and view rich presentations with embedded video and 3D graphics.

Lenovo today announced a new ThinkPad laptop Series, simply called "ThinkPad Edge," with 13, 14 and 15 inch models designed specifically for the small to medium sized business (SMB). The 13 inch model represents the first ThinkPad laptop to offer AMD dual core processor technology and to be offered on AMD's VISION Pro Technology. In addition to performance, the new laptops are designed with style and affordability in mind for today's budget-conscious customers. For example, they include new rich and vibrant color choices and a new contemporary keyboard. Lenovo is also expanding its retail sales channel to offer select ThinkPad Edge models in Best Buy stores.

"Small to medium business customers tell us they want PCs with bold yet professional designs, uncompromising durability and reliability with the latest technologies that meets their budgets," said Fran O'Sullivan, senior vice president, Think Product Group, Lenovo. "Our answer is the new ThinkPad Edge family of laptops. They deliver stunning technology and powerful performance at an unprecedented value."

Lenovo today announced the ThinkPad X100e, the company's first professional-grade ultraportable laptop starting below $500. The introduction pioneers a new category of PCs for today's business users that blends professional performance, usability and design with new color options at an extremely affordable price. The X100e also represents the first time Lenovo and AMD have collaborated to offer AMD processors on ThinkPad laptops and to leverage AMD's VisionPro branding.

"By listening to our customers and observing market trends, we identified an opportunity to create a new type of ultraportable laptop for business users," said Sam Dusi, vice president, ThinkPad Product Marketing. "Customers asked us for low cost and extreme portability without sacrificing usability or the manageability needed to run a business. By expanding the ultraportable ThinkPad X Series to reach prices under $500, the X100e delivers on all counts."

Lenovo this weekend officially announced its ThinkPad W700ds (ds stands for dual-screen), a mobile workstation with two fully functional LCD displays. Inside and round the back of the main 17-inch display is housed a second one, 10.6-inch in diagonal that can also be tilted up to 30 degrees like a car's rearview mirror. The secondary WXGA display (768x1280), allows users to own a workstation notebook with dual-monitor support for the first time. Wes Williams, product marketing manager for ThinkPads, said: "People that use high-end computers, whether they are professional photographers or work in other fields, all use two displays at their desktops ... What we were trying to do in building a mobile workstation is give them the same experience. Not only do you need a great display, great graphics, great processor and RAID hard drive with a workstation, but it is hard going back to a single display mode." The Lenovo ThinkPad W700ds is said to make its first appearance at CES, starting January 5, 2008. Among the other cool features that will be integrated inside the W700ds are the latest Intel Core 2 Quad 45nm processors, NVIDIA Quadro mobile graphics, up to 8GB of DDR3 memory, and a pair of hard drive/solid-state drive bays for up to 960GB of storage. The W700ds' starting price is expected to be $3,600 upon availability.

Absolute Software, Intel Corporation and Lenovo are bringing hardware-based anti-theft and computer-theft deterrence technology for notebook computers to businesses.

Select Lenovo ThinkPad T400 notebooks will be among the first notebooks to ship with support for Intel Anti-Theft PC Protection and Absolute Computrace technology built in. The new optional services will be available beginning in December.

These portable computers that resemble portable desktop replacements are classified under the portable workstation category, being equipped with workstation-class hardware and features that make them great companions of engineers, architects, or scientists on field-work that need abundant computing power that's also portable. Lenovo released the W700 and W500 earlier this month. They are taking orders.

Lenovo's highly-anticipated ThinkPad X300 notebook PC, designed to compete with Apple's MacBook Air is now shipping. The ultra-thin, ultraportable ThinkPad X300 notebook measures less than three-fourths of an inch at its thinnest point, or approximately the height of a U.S. quarter coin, and has a starting weight as low as 2.9 pounds. The ThinkPad X300 notebook combines a number of leading technologies such as 1.8-inch 64 GB SSD, a 13.3-inch LED backlight WXGA+ high resolution display, up to 4GB of DDR2 memory, built-in DVD burner, ultralong battery life and enhanced wireless connectivity. The ThinkPad X300 notebook starts at approximately $2,799. It is available immediately through Lenovo business partners and online at Lenovo.com.

The Lenovo ThinkPad X300 ultra-portable notebook with a 13.3-inch LED backlight display (1440x900 pixels), Intel Core 2 Duo ULV 2GHz CPU, Intel GMA X3100 integrated graphics, a 64GB solid state drive, 2GB DDR2 PC2-5300 memory, and an ultra-thin DVD burner is now available for preorder at select retailers. The X300 was first mentioned not long ago after Apple announced its MacBook Air. This model is supposed to be Lenovo's direct MacBook Air competitor. Aside from the main hardware specs, ThinkPad X300 offers built-in 802.11n wireless module, a Gigabit Ethernet connection, broadband wireless and WiMax support, Ultra-WideBand (UWB) technology, integrated web camera, fingerprint reader and more. Major online retailers such as BestBuy ($2,743.99) and Buy.com ($2,939.99) are starting to take preorders now.