14 DAY TRIAL // Like so many other companies, Lenovo unveiled a couple of notebooks a while ago but didn't start selling them just then, and it seems that the time has finally come for consumers to get their hands on them.
A long battery life is something that all customers would like to see on even the most powerful of mobile devices.
Unfortunately, the stronger a machine is, the more power it consumes, meaning that only entry-level notebooks have been able to really last for 5, 6 or more hours, at least those released up till the end of 2010.
The fact is that CPUs have been moving to more advanced process technologies (32nm in the case of Sandy Bridge, for instance), as have DRAM and NAND chips.
Coupled with all the energy saving technologies that various IT players invented, there are now even mainstream notebooks with battery lives of over 10 hours.
Two particularly noteworthy models were unveiled by Lenovo some time ago and appear to have now been listed as available for online order.
They are dubbed ThinkPad T420 and T520, which measure 14 inches and 15.6 inches in screen size, respectively.
The former has an Intel Core i3-2310M or Core i5-2520M processor at its heart, backed by 2 GB of DDR3 memory and paired with a HDD of 250 GB, while the latter has the same central piece options but better overall specs.
The main difference between the two, besides the size, is that the T420 has a display with a native resolution of up to 1,600 x 900 pixels, while the T520 can even support Full HD (1,920 x 1,080 pixels),
As for the rest of the feature sets, a DVD burner handles optical storage and playback of some multimedia, while WiFi and optional Bluetooth, WWAN and 720p HD webcams can also be added.
By default, the notebooks use 6-cell batteries, but if one were to pay $50 extra, for a 9-cell battery, they will be able to keep the ThinkPads running for up to 15 hours.