Lenovo Upgrades ThinkPad T400s & X200 Tablet With Multi-Touchscreens [Improved Windows 7 Interface, SimpleTap App to Touch Control Routine Activities, Same Boring Corporate Look]

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Touchscreens are in, there’s no doubt about it. They are finding their way on to just about every piece of electronic equipment imaginable and consumers are eating them up at a record pace. While it’s true that the coolest consumer gadgets are sporting the latest and greatest when it comes to touch screens, most notably the multi-touch interface like that found on the iPod and others, it’s the enterprise users that have typically been left out in the cold. Having been saddled with my share of stripped down business laptops, I know what it’s like to miss out on the fun and, apparently, so does Lenovo. They’ve finally decided to let their hair down a bit and upgrade both the ThinkPad T400s and X200 Tablets with some touchscreen fun.

Lenovo announced today that it would launch two new business laptops with multi-touch displays, the ThinkPad T400s laptop and the ThinkPad X200 Tablet PC. Citing both increased consumer acceptance of the technology and the upcoming Windows 7 inclusion of touch technology, Lenovo has made the leap into multitouch with no signs of looking back. Both new PC screens will now recognize at least two-finger interaction and will also feature a new application called SimpleTap. SimpleTap basically gives users a menu interface of big buttons that they can touch to control routine system functions like volume, wi-fi activation, and system sleep.

The new version of the ThinkPad T400s is not much more than a retrofit of the previous model with a few extra bells and whistles thrown in to handle the touchscreen. The new touchscreen version, which Lenovo is calling the Enhanced T400s, still sports a 14.1-in monitor and the slim line design that remains the most portable of the Lenovo laptops at around four pounds and less than an inch thick. The base model is powered by the Intel Core2 Duo processor SP9400 (2.40GHz, 6MB L2, 1066MHz FSB) and comes pre-installed with Windows XP Professional. It gets a kick from an additional 1 GB PC3-8500 DDR3 SDRAM 1067MHz SODIMM Memory (up from 2GB in the non-enhanced version) and a bigger 250GB HDD (up from 120GB). The T400s also features louder speakers, dual-channel digital microphones and an integrated 2MP webcam.

The new ThinkPad X200 Tablet is also an upgrade. Built on the X200 Tablet platform, the new enhanced multitouch version features a 12.1-in display and Intel Core 2 Duo SU9400 (1.4GHz, 3MB L2, 800MHz) power plant. Rather than the stodgy Windows XP Professional, the X200 comes pre-installed with Windows Vista Home Premium. There really aren’t that many other points of differentiation between the non-touch version and the multitouch version of the X200 other than price and the screen. They both have the same 1GB of PC3-8500 DDR3 SDRAM and relatively undersized 160GB HDDs.

Both multitouch enhanced versions of the ThinkPad T400s and ThinkPad X200 Tablet are available for sale now for starting prices of $1,729 and $1,654 respectively. You can get more complete specifications and purchase your own by going to shop.lenovo.com.