Most manufacturers phased out overly "clicky" keyboards many years ago, but there are still some brands that make more racket than others. If you type with the force of a jackhammer, you'll know it can drown out voices on a conference call, or at the very least annoy the person sitting next to you.
Which is why today's announcement of six new Lenovo ThinkPad businesss laptops (in the T, W and L Series) is so interesting. Buried in the announcement is a mention of "noise suppression technology". How quiet? Lenovo doesn't seem to be putting any specific claims behind this, other than saying it will help "eliminate distracting clicking".
Interesrtingly, Lenovo also claims the new T Series and W Series are the first business laptops with Nvidia's Optimus technology, which only powers up the dedicated graphics chip when needed.
The major benefit (in theory) is better battery life, and here Lenovo is pulling no punches with a claim of up to 23 hours between charges for the T420 Thinkpad. As usual, this has to be taken with a lump of salt. The 23 hour figure comes from the combination of the 9 cell internal battery and 9 cell extended battery. The press release we received doesn’t state what measurement was used to come up with that 23 hour claim.
Lenovo is also pushing the use of its Thinkpad range for making conference calls. Noise cancelling is used to better focus on the speaker's voice during calls. Another feature highlight is Instant Resume, which keeps you logged into wireless networks for 99 minutes after you put a laptop in sleep mode.
Pricing ranges quite a bit, from $1,199 for the T420s, up to an impressive $4,299 for the W520.
