ThinkPad Mr. Coffee Edition
Monday, March 31st, 2008As part of growing our company, Lenovo is constantly looking for other well known brands that we can associate ourselves with to improve our own brand recognition. Today we announce another product designed to further that goal, the ThinkPad Mr. Coffee Edition.
This idea came about when a Yamato engineer was here at Lenovo headquarters working late. Tired of tasting his stale coffee brewed with Mountain Dew for the extra caffeine, he wondered why he couldn’t get a great cup of coffee AND remain productive while on late night conference calls. Thus, the idea began to take shape.
The bespecled engineer knew this was going to be a hard sell within Lenovo, especially considering that his boss was a tea drinker. However, as they discussed the idea while rebuilding motorcycles on the weekends, he finally was able to get senior level approval with only a few changes to his original vision.
With this edition, Lenovo has completely rethought the desk worker’s experience. If you think about your own office, how many hours are wasted each day as your coworkers wander down to the cafe to get their cups of joe? By outfitting each worker with a ThinkPad Mr. Coffee Edition, they can remain at their desks, their productivity only limited by the size of their bladders.
When you buy this machine, we’re including a new Ultrabay device with individual hoppers for beans, cream, and sugar. Pressing Fn+F6 on your ThinkPad launches ThinkVantage Beverage Manager which allows you to customize your coffee the way you like it. Since most people have a “usual,” you can store your favorite “extra dark roast, no sugar, soy milk” as a profile in a drop down menu. (For administrators wanting centralized manageability, we have a plug-in for LANDesk and expect to get SMS and Altiris integration by the end of June.) You then simply place your cup underneath the system, and your perfect beverage emerges only minutes later.
What is interesting is that our engineers have had to undo over 5 years worth of work making our ThinkPads run cooler and quieter. We want these machines to run hot. After all, no one wants a cold cup of coffee. In the picture below you can see a thermal picture of the coffee making process. The cone of red near the palm rest is where the hot water is injected into the freshly ground beans at optimal 200 degree F (94 degrees C) temperature at 15 bar pressure.
It also turns out that Lenovo’s Silent Owl Fan blade design is a very efficient way of whipping milk into foam for a frothy cappuccino. By reducing turbulence, which can cause uneven bubble production, the Silent Owl blade ensures both speed and consistency, which are really the difference separating a good and a merely average cup of coffee.
Here’s the part where ThinkPad engineering REALLY shines. When your beverage gets cold between sips, you can reheat it! A funnel in the keyboard by the ESC key percolates liquid through the internals and uses waste system heat to re-warm beverages. Your reheated beverage then reemerges into your waiting cup from the drainage holes underneath.
Other key specifications:
- ThinkPad T61 14.1″ Widescreen
- WXGA+ display
- nVIDIA graphics only (runs hotter than Intel integrated graphics)
- Intel Core 2 T9500 Processor
- 64 GB 3rd Generation SSD drive
- 3GB RAM
- The industry’s first 9.5 mm Blu-Ray burner
- Windows XP SP3
- Commemorative certificate hand signed by our Chairman, Yanquing Yang
- US$2,499
This machine is available for order immediately through lenovo.com or through our telesales center. If you are a coffee lover or know one, you should definitely put this machine on your short list.
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