Lenovo today announced a new series of ThinkCentre M and Edge Series desktops and all-in-ones (AIOs) designed to fit the needs of today's demanding business environment via a range of models featuring a blend of essential features, powerful performance and affordable technology. The new desktops and AIOs not only include the latest generation of Intel Core processors for powerful performance, but also feature the latest in Lenovo design and performance innovations including blazing fast 15-second boot up times, intelligent cooling methods and productive multi-screen functionality.

"Business professionals working in highly productive and collaborative environments need PCs designed with their business needs in mind," said Tom Shell, vice president and general manager, Commercial Desktop Business Unit, Lenovo. "These new desktops give users and IT managers a more productive computing experience, whether it's better multi-tasking, powerful performance or space-saving design."

Lenovo today announced its new ThinkCentre M92p "tiny" desktop PC, the industry's first Intel vPro enabled one-litre desktop measuring just the width of a golf ball (34.5 mm). The ThinkCentre M92p, along with the new M72e tiny desktops, exhibits an innovative tiny form factor allowing it to fit in practically any space while maintaining first-class productivity with up to 3rd Generation Intel Core Processors.

The ThinkCentre tiny form factor is equipped with the latest desktop power manager for optimal energy efficiency and enhanced reliability and manageability features. It's the perfect desktop for users who need uncompromised computing power in a small package. Lenovo today also announced the new ThinkCentre M92z all-in-one (AIO) and the ThinkVision LT2323z wide monitor offering an improved VoIP experience.

Lenovo's online shop is now selling an Ivy Bridge-based laptop that promises to offer an "unbeatable entertainment and gaming experience". The laptop in question is the IdeaPad Y480 which features a 14-inch (1366 x 768) LED-backlit display, an Intel 3rd generation Core processor (either the 2.4 GHz i3-2370M or 2.3 GHz i7-3610QM), up to 8 GB of RAM, up to a 1 TB HDD (and a 32 GB SSD), and an NVIDIA GeForce GT 640M graphics card with 1 GB or 2 GB of VRAM.

Lenovo's 14-inch mobile PC is 32.8 mm (1.3-inch) thick and also has a brushed-metal chassis, a backlit keyboard (optional), a 1.0-megapixel webcam, Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11 b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0, JBL stereo speakers, a 6-in-1 card reader, two USB 3.0 ports, a HDMI output, and a 6-cell battery allowing up to 4 hours of use per charge.

The IdeaPad Y480 runs Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit) and it starts at $849.

Lenovo today launched its latest effort to eliminate slow boot up times with Lenovo Enhanced Experience 3 (EE3) for Windows 7. As the third version of an exclusive certification only available on Lenovo Think and Idea-branded PCs, EE3 certified products feature supreme Windows start-up performance and other optimization features. Lenovo EE3 will come standard on a wide range of Think and Idea-branded PCs shipping beginning in April.

Customers using traditional spinning disk hard drive (HDD) Lenovo PCs can start their PC on average 40 percent faster than typical Windows 7 PC1 users, thanks to Lenovo's RapidBoot technology, featured on all EE3 certified Lenovo PCs. RapidBoot uses optimized processes and hardware settings to allow Lenovo PCs to boot up faster.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, in cooperation with the firm named below, today announced a voluntary recall of the following consumer product. Consumers should stop using recalled products immediately unless otherwise instructed. It is illegal to resell or attempt to resell a recalled consumer product.

Name of Product: Lenovo ThinkCentre M70z and M90z computers

Units: About 13,000 (50,500 were previously recalled in March 2012)

Hazard: A defect in an internal component in the power supply can overheat and pose a fire hazard.

Kingston launched a fleet of new system-specific SO-DIMM memory packages. Each of these packages contain memory that's tested for 100% compatibility and rated performance on the notebook makes they're specific to. These include HP, Dell, Apple, Lenovo, Sony, and Toshiba. The new packages make it easy for ground-store buyers to pick the right memory for their notebooks off the rack, with minimal help from the storekeepers. Newer batches of Kingston DDR3 SO-DIMM memory for notebooks will implement the new packaging.

With eager OEMs such as ASUSTek, HP, Acer, and Lenovo breathing down its neck, Intel is reportedly pulling forward the official launch date of its 3rd Generation Core processor family based on 22 nm "Ivy Bridge" silicon, to the 23rd of April, from its older date of 29th April. 23rd April will be the day Intel announces all its processor models originally slated for the 29th.

Notebook OEMs are expected to launch their products based on these chips at the earliest, by May. The date of market-availability of these chips in the retail channel, however, remains unclear. One possibility is that Intel will announce and make these chips available on the same day (23rd), while another possibility is that it announces these chips on the 23rd, allows the media to digest them (by posting reviews), and open them up for sale on the 29th. Two models every PC enthusiast and their cat are looking out for, are the Core i7-3770K and Core i5-3570K.

The worldwide PC market saw a slight increase in volume during the first quarter of 2012 (1Q12) compared to the same quarter in 2011, with shipments rising 2.3%, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker. The results are slightly above IDC's February projections of a 0.9% year-on-year decline due to hard disk drive (HDD) supply constraints in addition to weak economic conditions, competition from other devices, and uncertainty about Windows 8.

HDD supply remained a key constraint through most of the first quarter, although PC makers generally had better access to drives than customers in the retail and distribution channels. As a result, large PC vendors were able to maintain shipments by managing inventory or absorbing price increases, while the impact to shipments from smaller PC makers was in line with expectations.

Lenovo, the world's second largest PC maker, is showcasing for the first time in the UK a whole range of desktops, laptops and All-in-ones at its stand D70 at the Gadget Show live at the Birmingham NEC.

The IdeaCentre A720 All-in-One takes touch experience in the home to the next level - the industry's slimmest 27 inch screen features an innovative screen hinge that allows a more widely adjustable angle from -5 degrees to 90 degrees that allows for a more comfortable use in any position. The A720 is an ultra-stylish and fun addition for the modern home entertainment centre with integrated entertainment features such as room-shaking Dolby Home Theatre V4 audio and Lenovo High-Sense Webcam and Lenovo IdeaTouch. It combines all this with a frameless display that supports 10-point multi-touch capabilities for a greatly enhanced multi-user experience.

Lenovo, the second largest PC company in the world, today announced the appointment of Gianfranco Lanci as senior vice president (SVP) and president of Lenovo EMEA. Lanci, formerly CEO and president of Acer, will help lead the continued rapid growth of Lenovo's business across the region. Lenovo has been the fastest growing major PC company in the world for more than two years and last year acquired MEDION in Germany to help fuel continued growth in Europe. As part of today's announcement, Lanci is outlining plans to drive Lenovo to becoming a top three PC company in EMEA by 2013.

Announced back in January, at CES 2012, the IdeaPad S206 11.6-inch laptop is moving closer to its release date so its maker, Lenovo, has made a nice little video for it to entice potential buyers. The S206 features a 20.7 mm thick metallic casing, an AccuType keyboard, an AMD dual-core APU, a 0.3-megapixel webcam, 802.11 b/g/n WiFi, the Quick Start 'instant on' function, and a battery allowing for up to 4 hours of operation.

Recognizing standout marketing campaigns within the Intel Inside and Intel Brand Advantage programs, Intel Corporation feted a handful of companies with the first Intel Marketing Innovation Awards.

Fujitsu took the Grand Prix for its LIFEBOOK4Life campaign, being the best all-around entry among the various award categories. Fujitsu's campaign sought to increase brand relevance and drive sales for LIFEBOOK notebooks based on the second-generation Intel Core vPro processor family. The campaign targeted IT decision-makers in SMB, enterprise and the channel in 40 countries across Europe, the Middle East, Africa and India. The campaign resulted in a 65 percent sales increase by integrating innovative social media activities via LinkedIn, Facebook, word-of-mouth, augmented reality and viral videos with standard advertising.

Wintel (slang for Windows+Intel architecture) tablets, which launch along with Microsoft's latest Windows 8 operating system, which grab a greater market-share than WoA (Windows on ARM) tablets by the end of 2012, DigiTimes research predicts. This, despite the fact that the x86 and ARM versions of the operating system will be released simultaneously. PC majors such as HP, Dell, Lenovo, Acer, ASUStek and Toshiba, have all pledged 1-3 models of Wintel tablets by the end of 2012. Although still an emerging market-segment, tablets will see a clash between x86 and ARM architectures, as they are wooing for the same exact class of devices for the first time in computing history. Intel has made a lot of progress in miniaturizing the Atom processor, while led by the likes of Qualcomm and NVIDIA, ARM processors are getting stronger.

This summer Lenovo is going to roll out a new line of all-in-one desktops, the Ivy Bridge-powered ThinkCentre M92z. Set to arrive in July, the M92z PCs will have a slim design (that makes them resemble regular monitors), 20-inch or 23-inch touchscreens, discrete graphics (Nvidia or AMD, it's still uncertain), and will run Windows 7 while being Windows 8 Ready.

In addition to the M92z, Lenovo is also expected to release in July the M72z and an Edge 92z All-in-Ones.

Towards the end of 2012, Intel will alter Thunderbolt specification from a copper wire-based interconnect to a fiber-optic or photonic interconnect. An analysis by DigiTimes which takes into account information by industry sources, states that Thunderbolt will become standard for PCs only in 2013, and that too the optical one. This comes even as copper wire-based Thunderbolt is beginning to feature on some high-end socket LGA1155 motherboards based on Intel 7-series chipset.

Thunderbolt will get its big push in 2013, when the port will be standard on mainstream desktops and notebooks by OEM majors such as Lenovo, and several PC motherboard vendors, such as ASUS. The optical Thunderbolt IO, apart from allowing greater cable-lengths than 6 m (a limitation of copper-wire Thunderbolt), could push bandwidth greater than 10 Gbps, as a possible incentive for the industry to facilitate the transition to the optical variant.

Lenovo and SugarSync today announced Lenovo Cloud Storage by SugarSync, the first Cloud storage service to be integrated as an out-of-box experience broadly on Lenovo's PCs and tablets. Lenovo and SugarSync are working together to offer an industry-leading cloud service so consumers can access, sync and backup their files, photos, music and movies across their devices. Lenovo Cloud Storage by SugarSync will be available on new Lenovo ThinkPad and IdeaPad laptops and Android tablet products worldwide outside of China starting in April. The ability to download Lenovo Cloud Storage by SugarSync is available beginning today.

Lenovo Cloud Storage by SugarSync gives users a free 5 GB account to instantly auto-sync their files, photos, videos and music to the Cloud from their Lenovo PC, tablet or any mobile device so their content is always available when they start using their device. Upgrades for additional storage capability are available for a fee.

Providing more proof that Ivy Bridge is closing in fast, Amazon has put up for pre-order a Lenovo laptop which is powered by an Intel 3rd generation Core processor. The laptop in question is named IdeaPad Y480 (20934FU) and it features a 1.3-inch thick chassis, a 14-inch display, a 2.3 GHz Core i7-3610QM CPU, 8 GB of RAM, a 750 GB hard drive and an NVIDIA GeForce GT 630M 1 GB graphics card.

The Y480 also packs two 1.5 W JBL speakers, it runs Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit and apparently has a battery life of only 3.5 hours. The price tag of this new IdeaPad is $999.99.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, in cooperation with the firm named below, today announced a voluntary recall of the following consumer product. Consumers should stop using recalled products immediately unless otherwise instructed. It is illegal to resell or attempt to resell a recalled consumer product.

Name of Product: Lenovo ThinkCentre M70z and M90z computers

Units: About 50,500

While it won't confirm an exit from the netbook market, Lenovo has distanced itself from this platform by deciding to stop selling netbooks through its online store. Lenovo's Atom-powered machines can still be found through resellers but the company's website is currently only selling some AMD-based models like the (11.6-inch) IdeaPad S205 and ThinkPad X130e.

Spokesman Ray Gorman revealed that Lenovo's Atom netbooks are "not being replaced in the near future" so it seems Cedar Trail is a no-go for yet another PC maker (Dell also said no to the platform and to netbooks in general).

Consumer interest for netbooks has fallen since tablets came into play so it seems Lenovo is just going with the market, putting netbooks on hold while pushing forward its tablet line which starts at just $209 with the IdeaPad Tablet A1.

To help customers address the inefficiencies and lost costs of managing multiple support vendors, Dell ProSupport for Multivendor has been globally expanded beyond x86 to include support for storage, networking and UNIX products. This expansion also includes support for additional vendors for servers, desktops and laptops. By consolidating support under one service provider, customers can ensure consistent processes and reduce the resources required to manage complex services contracts from multiple vendors, ultimately simplifying IT management and reducing their IT costs.

"Our customers rely on the expertise, global network and 24x7 availability of Dell ProSupport for their Dell systems and can now experience those same benefits across their entire environment," said Doug Schmitt, vice president, Dell Services. "With the latest expansion of Dell ProSupport for Multivendor, customers around the world can rely on Dell for all of their support needs. From end-user systems to complex data centers and everything in between, customers will save time and money and receive the same award-winning support they've come to expect from Dell ProSupport."

Apple shipped nearly 23.4 million mobile PCs in Q4'11, up 128% Y/Y, and over 62.8 million mobile PCs in 2011, up 132% Y/Y, according to preliminary results from the latest NPD DisplaySearch Quarterly Mobile PC Shipment and Forecast Report. Nearly 80% of Apple's mobile PC shipments were iPads, more than 18.7 million shipped in the quarter, up 156% Y/Y, and 48.4 million units for the year, up 183% Y/Y.

Overall mobile PC shipments grew 12% Q/Q and 44% Y/Y, reaching 88 million units in Q4'11. This was driven by continuing strong demand for tablets. Tablet PC shipment growth was 42% Q/Q and 210% Y/Y, reaching 31.7 million units in Q4'11. Notebook PC shipments were flat Q/Q but up nearly 11% Y/Y, reaching 56.3 million units. As expected, consumer mobile PC adoption was focused on tablets, holding up demand in notebooks.

"Entering 2012, Lenovo/IBM's rise in reliability will be an important boost for the company. Although Apple's market share has risen over the last 12 months, its reliability has declined. The comparatively smaller Toshiba and Samsung are illustrating interesting reliability trends worth watching over the coming year," stated David Milman, CEO of RESCUECOM. For 2012, Rescuecom now includes all manufacturers with a market share of at least above one percent in this report.

The computer reliability report scores for 2012 are:

1. Lenovo/IBM (281)
2. Toshiba (190)
3. Samsung (156)
4. Apple (151)
5. Asus (126)
6. HP/Compaq (100)
7. Dell (68)
8. Sony (64)
9. Acer (40)

Announced last month at CES, the IdeaPad U300e 13.3-inch ultrabook has now become available through Lenovo's online shop. The U300e is just 0.7" thin, it runs Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit), and has a one-piece aluminum shell, a breathable keyboard (using Intel's Advanced Cooling Technology), an LED-backlit (1366 x 768) display, a glass touchpad, and BIOS-embedded anti-theft protection.

The model put up for order by Lenovo (269224U) packs a 1.6 GHz Core i5-2467M CPU, Intel HD 3000 graphics, 4 GB of RAM, a 500 GB HDD and a 32 GB SSD, a 1.3 MP webcam, Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11 b/g/n WiFi, WiDi support, one USB 3.0 ports, a HDMI output, and a 4-cell battery providing up to 7 hours of operation. This configuration costs $959.20 (thanks to a web promotion and an eCoupon) and is available here.

Lenovo Group reported results for its third fiscal quarter ended December 31, 2011, highlighted by record highs in quarterly sales, pre-tax income and market share, and the 11th quarter in a row that Lenovo has grown faster than the industry as a whole. For the ninth quarter in a row, the Company grew faster than any of the top four PC manufacturers, a result of Lenovo's continued focus on balanced growth across all geographies, customer segments and product lines. During the third quarter, Lenovo recorded its highest-ever worldwide market share of 14.0* percent, and its highest-ever market share in China of 35.3 percent, an increase of 3.7 and 3.1 share points year-over-year respectively.

During the third fiscal quarter Lenovo's pre-tax income increased 59 percent year-over-year, to a record high of US$192 million.

Although the current generation of "Ultrabooks" don't really conform to a rigid specification apart from being really slim, unlike the next-generation Ivy Bridge-based ones which will have to conform to a specification laid down by Intel, the name "Ultrabooks" (short for ultra-portable/slim notebooks) has stuck. With Intel's newest processing platform just a couple of months away, notebooks manufacturers are reportedly lowering prices of current-generation Ultrabooks.

The move to lower prices of Ultrabooks is simply to clear inventories and pave the way for the next-generation. The prices will be cut significantly. Acer's Ultrabook S3 already saw its price drop to US $799 from $999; while HP's Ultrabooks will see prices cut by as much as 25 percent. Price of Lenovo's Ultrabook will go down by up to 21 percent. In short, every $999-ish Ultrabook will see its price go down to $749-799.