Lenovo Celebrates ThinkPad 20th, Releases Windows 8 TabletLenovo Celebrates ThinkPad 20th, Releases Windows 8 Tablet

Thursday night in an event at New York's Museum of Modern Art Lenovo celebrated the 20th anniversary of the ThinkPad and released new systems, one of them a Windows 8 tablet.

The Lenovo Thinkpad Tablet 2, available with the launch of Windows 8 in October, appears from the specs to use Intel's Atom-based Clover Trail dual-core System on Chip. Clover Trail-based devices should have not only high performance and compactness, but power management capabilities well beyond anything heretofore seen in Windows systems.

According to Lenovo, the Tablet 2 measures 10.3 x 6.5 x .39 in (262.6 x 164 x 9.8mm) and weighs 1.3 Ibs (650 g). The display is an LED backlit 10.1-inch anti-glare display and supports HD WXGA (1366 x 768). It has an optional keyboard and dock, as well as an optional digitizer and pen. It has front (2 MP, webcam with LED) and rear (8 MP 720 HP, auto focus with LED flash) cameras. There is a full-size USB port and a MicroSD slot, and a WWAN model for cellular data access (AT&T-locked) with support for Lenovo Mobile Access pay-as-you go plans.

The Tablet 2 runs Windows 8 Pro, not Windows RT, so it is compatible with existing Windows code and can be managed on a Windows domain.

Lenovo also released two new ultrabooks, the ThinkPad X1 Carbon and the ThinkPad T430u.

ThinkPad is the oldest brand name in notebook computers and considered high-end for all its 20 years. The original ThinkPads, the 700, 700C, and 700T, were released in October 1992. The most distinguishing feature was the TrackPoint, a red "eraser head" knob in the middle of the keyboard used as a pointing device.

In 2005 ThinkPad, along with the rest of the IBM personal computer business, was acquired by Lenovo.