ThinkPad Mr. Coffee Edition
As 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.
Lenovo Meet the Modder Dean Liou
Lenovo Meet the modder- Chris Blarsky Dairy 2
Lenovo Meet the modder- Chris Blarsky Dairy 1
Lenovo H320 desktop
April 1st, 2008 12:27 am
Happy April 1!
April 1st, 2008 12:49 am
For shame! What am I going to do with my tea?!
April 1st, 2008 2:28 am
For shame, widescreen*. =P
All jokes aside, are the ‘Silent Owl’ fan blades common to all Thinkpads? I recall reading the post regarding the inspiration and design, and could only assume it was propagated across the more recent Thinkpad designs.
* I can’t pick on it for being glossy. I actually don’t have a problem with widescreen displays, except that the industry trend was toward lower resolution widescreens. As for now, I still prefer 4:3, but I feel it is inevitable before they can’t be found anymore.
April 1st, 2008 3:06 am
T61? Shouldn’t this be a C-series? Also, what about the espresso machine docking bay? If the system hangs, does it spit out coffee until we yank the battery?
April 1st, 2008 3:40 am
Nearly had me with that one Matt, I was genuinely trying to work out how it would be possible. That is until I realised the date.
April 1st, 2008 4:35 am
This is great! Can’t believe no one thought about this before! But I do expect additional Ultrabay devices for hot chocolate or maybe ice cold soda. This can also help keeping your Thinkpad cool during the summer! This proves again that Lenovo is always one step ahead of the competition
April 1st, 2008 8:03 am
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.
Happy 1st
Seraphyn
April 1st, 2008 10:05 am
i can’t find where to order this machine on lenovo.com. can anyone help?
hah!
enjoy the day.
April 1st, 2008 2:26 pm
And for those whose coffee always got too hot, place additionally in some of those new nano-fans, which do generate wind to cool the coffee on demand…
–> http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_i.....mp;org=NSF
–> http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_i.....mp;org=NSF
…though those fans here might also be taken seriously for some future device.
April 1st, 2008 2:47 pm
Jonathan — The current X61 family does not have the Silent Owl blade. The X300, T family and R family have it.
To all those out there that think April Fools’ posts are lame — lighten up. It’s only one day a year. Tomorrow you can go back to your normal routine of half truths, rumor, and speculation that suffices for much of the technology news out there. At least on April 1, people put some THOUGHT into what gets posted. For all of the drivel I have to sift through on a regular basis, knowing that pretty much everything on a given date is fake is refreshing.
April 1st, 2008 4:52 pm
Hmm, nice try
April 1st, 2008 8:21 pm
[...] Lenovo reveals ThinkPad Mr. Coffee Edition. [...]
April 2nd, 2008 4:08 am
[...] … den seit gestern(!) gibt es die Mr. Coffee Edition. [...]
April 2nd, 2008 9:41 am
I love April’s Fool!
Good one guys!
April 2nd, 2008 10:15 am
[...] introduced a new Mr.Coffee edition laptop that runs [...]
April 2nd, 2008 5:49 pm
Hmm, anyone know what the part number is for that 9.5mm Ultrabay Slim Blu-Ray Drive? I am thinking an unannounced product I am desperately waiting for may have slipped into the Fools post.
April 2nd, 2008 7:53 pm
hmmm – the correct part number is 73P2698. enjoy!
April 4th, 2008 4:18 am
And for your desktop computers, consider this combination cigarette lighter and cup holder:
http://thermaltakeusa.com/prod...../a2021.asp
April 5th, 2008 12:36 am
[...] Inside the Box » Blog Archive » ThinkPad Mr. Coffee Edition missed this one of april 1st, quite good though (tags: funny) [...]
April 5th, 2008 4:31 pm
easily the greatest post I’ve seen on lenovoblogs.com
April 8th, 2008 6:55 pm
Too bad not real looks good
April 14th, 2008 4:14 pm
Someone already put a version of this Mr. Coffee Edition on youtube!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBGIQ7ZuuiU
April 15th, 2008 11:23 am
Good to see that Mr Kohut still has a sense of humour!
May 7th, 2008 10:50 pm
Why are there only widescreen models available?
What happened to the 4:3 T61?
I’m currently using a T60p – and I’m not looking forward to “upgrading” to a widescreen machine.
What happened to the FlexView? What happened to the 256MB video memory on a 14.1″ 4:3 machine?
May 9th, 2008 6:47 am
For Lenovo’s British consumers, how about a T4-2 edition?
August 9th, 2008 7:05 am
[...] die fluten wenigstens nicht komplett, sondern sind ganz gut gekapselt – auch wenn keine Mr. Coffee Edition ist. Innen ist trocken. Ich habe dann jetzt mal allet auffe Fensterbank ausgebreitet und lass die [...]
September 13th, 2008 8:06 pm
So, presumably these devices conform to the HTCPCP (Hypertext Coffee Pot Control Protocol), RFC 2324?