The consumer notebook market is the new battleground for system builders, and Lenovo sensed that it could squeeze some nice income out of it. The Chinese notebook manufacturer has announced the availability of a new series of consumer notebooks, nicknamed the IdeaPad.

The latest Lenovo products are aiming at both gamers and home users and represent a low-budget line of notebooks to go with Lenovo's already existing ThinkPad business-oriented line. The IdeaPad line will include various sizes of notebooks, as well as an ultra-portable / ultra-mobile laptop PC that is due to arrive until March.

According to Lenovo spokespersons, the IdeaPad U110 ultra-portable notebook will feature an 11-inch display and will weigh a little above one kilogram. It will be built around an Intel processor and will ship in either hard disk drive configuration or with a flash-based solid state drive. Moreover, the laptop will be fit with a shock sensor to protect the hard-disk should the notebook fall off the desk. The protective technology is called Active Protection and is already implemented inside the ThinkPad product line.

Lenovo has also announced the IdeaPad Y710 notebook dedicated to the gaming sector. The Y710 comes with an additional set of controls and macro keys that are supposed to optimize the keyboard for gaming. Overclockers will rejoice finding a slider control that allows on-the-fly CPU overclocking. The laptop is equipped with an Intel Core 2 Duo processor, wireless networking, and an optional Blu-ray Disc drive, and an ATI graphics card to go with the 17-inch display.

The notebook also features four speakers and a subwoofer, as well as an inductive touch surface between the keyboard and screen to light up the multimedia controls, depending on users' actions. For instance, when media content is being played, the notebook will turn on the movie and sound equalizer controls.

Lenovo has announced the new notebook line to be showcased at the Consumer Electronics Show, where further details will be provided.