Lenovo, Microsoft Team Up for Windows 7 Certification

Lenovo announced on Sept. 28 that certain products will include "Windows 7 Lenovo Enhanced Experience" certification, signifying products optimized to run Microsoft's upcoming operating system.

The result of an engineering collaboration between the two companies, the certification supposedly allows Think and Idea PCs to boot up and shut down significantly faster, as well as run streamlined system-maintenance tools and enhanced multimedia.

Lenovo claims that certified Idea PCs will boot up 33 percent faster and shut down 50 percent faster than non-optimized PCs with an identical configuration running Windows XP or Vista. On certified Think PCs, Windows 7 allegedly starts 56 percent faster than systems running previous versions of Windows and can shut down in under 5 seconds.

Those certified PCs also include media enhancements such as a "high-definition graphics hardware decoder" and DirectX 10 in conjunction with Windows 7 features such as Aero Peek and Aero Flip.

With regard to system tools, the certification offers OneKey Rescue System 7.0 and Lenovo Rescue System 3.0, which offer data recovery and backup supposedly twice as fast as previous editions, in addition to boosted antivirus and system repair functions. 

Aside from its new software-platform offerings, Lenovo has been tinkering with the latest iterations of its hardware, particularly with regard to touch screens.

On Sept. 15, Lenovo started offering multitouch capabilities with its ThinkPad X200 tablet notebook and ThinkPad T400s laptop, along with a new technology called Simple Tap. That application, part of the ThinkVantage technology platform that comes bundled with ThinkPad machines, is designed to complement the multitouch capabilities integrated into Windows 7.  

For more about the ThinkPad X200 tablet and T400s notebook, please click here. 

In theory, the multitouch capability will make the ThinkPad X200 and T400s more useful to workers on the move, such as doctors and salespeople. Simple Tap enables the user to create small tiles on the touch screen that correspond to physical laptop keys; tapping certain tiles will then, for example, shut down the laptop or launch a PowerPoint presentation.