Lenovo Thinkpads to come with Linux

The move had already been promised in two earlier press releases, but now the company is coming up with the goods. Lenovo is also releasing the R61 for sale in Germany from January 22, 2008, although no announcement has been made regarding the date for release of the T61.

Both notebooks will be supplied with Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 (SLED 10) Service Pack 1, including Firefox, RealPlayer, Macromedia Flash Player and OpenOffice. The support provided by Lenovo for hardware, the operating system and driver installation should prove particularly interesting for business customers. The partnership in place between Lenovo and Novell means that customers can obtain system updates directly from Novell.

The T61 is powered by an Intel Core 2 Duo T7250 2.0GHz (800MHz FSB and 2MB L2 cache), supported by 1GB DDR2 RAM, an Intel GMA X3100 GM965 graphics card and a 14.1 inch LCD display with a resolution of 1366x768 pixels. Furthermore, the T61 boasts a 5400RPM 80GB hard disk drive, CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive and on-board wireless LAN.

At a price of US$ 949, it costs US$ 20 less than the same system supplied with Microsoft Vista Home Premium. The R61 has a similar level of equipment, but is quieter and less power hungry. It is also priced around the US$ 950 mark.