New stuff from Lenovo… never owned one, but from what I understand their stuff is really good.

 

Lenovo Offers Portfolio of PCs Meeting Energy Star 5.0 Specification

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Lenovo announced today that more than 25 of its Think-branded business and Idea-branded consumer PCs meet the new ENERGY STAR Version 5.0 Specification for Computers, which goes into effect on July 1, 2009. Lenovo PCs including the ThinkPad X301, T400s, W700ds and the IdeaPad U330 and Y430 laptops and select ThinkCentre M58, M58p and M58e Eco desktops have been 5.0 certified and available to purchase for up to six months.

ENERGY STAR, a joint program of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy, provides a system to rate the energy efficiency of various products. Lenovo’s fleet of ENERGY STAR 5.0 certified PCs adhere to various standards including power management and on-mode power consumption requirements. For example, a ThinkCentre M58 small form factor desktop and a ThinkVision L1940p Wide monitor together provide an extraordinarily energy efficient combination for use in large organizations or in a home-based business, using only 377 kilowatts per year¹, compared to a baseline PC and CRT monitor at 635 KWH. By comparison, a refrigerator consumes an estimated 529 KWH.

ThinkPad laptops have continued to raise the industry bar in innovative environmental design with technologies such as solid-state drives, LED backlit displays and low-power processors that help decrease the PCs’ energy consumption. Also, Lenovo’s Power Manager feature helps users monitor their energy usage and conserve battery life.

A full lineup of Lenovo ThinkVision monitors from 17 to 24-inches meet the Energy Star 5.0 criteria, nine months before the separate specification for monitors takes effect in October. Lenovo’s ThinkVision monitors use a special reflective polarizer technology to help reuse much of the light that would be lost in a standard LCD monitor, thus achieving adequate brightness while using less energy.

“Green design factors into each step in engineering our PCs, starting with recycled materials to delivering higher levels of energy efficiency to giving customers options for recycling at the end of life,” said Fran O’Sullivan, senior vice president, Think Product Group, Lenovo. “Improving the energy efficiency of Lenovo PCs helps customers not only reduce their carbon footprint but also save money throughout the life of their PC.”

Green Design – From Beginning to End

Lenovo is committed to providing customers greener options throughout the lifecycle of their PCs, starting with using recycled content. Lenovo leads the PC industry in offering the most PC products using post-consumer recycled materials.² In 2008, Lenovo used more than 2.2 million pounds of post-consumer recycled plastics in its PCs. This contributes to more than 60 Lenovo products being rated Gold by the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool.

Lenovo offers bulk packaging at no cost for customers with large-scale rollouts of laptop or desktop PCs such as universities and large enterprises. Bulk packaging can save up to more than four pounds of materials per PC, so a deployment of 5,000 ThinkCentre desktops, for example, could save nearly 22,000 pounds in materials, a significant waste reduction. To supplement this effort, Lenovo is also using up to 100 percent recycled cushioning materials in select ThinkPad laptop, ThinkCentre desktop and ThinkVision monitor packaging. In addition, Lenovo is transitioning the IdeaPad S10e netbook packaging to a smaller, reduced-dye box to help minimize waste.

In addition, Lenovo is making it easy for customers to recycle their unwanted, end-of-life PCs. The Lenovo Eco Take Back Program allows consumers to recycle any Lenovo or IBM product for free and receive money back on any brand of PC that has residual value. For business customers, Lenovo offers Asset Recovery Services to provide computer take-back, data destruction, refurbishment and recycling. A video on Lenovo’s program can be viewed here.

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Lenovo

Lenovo (HKSE:992) (ADR:LNVGY) is dedicated to building exceptionally engineered personal computers. Lenovo’s business model is built on innovation, operational efficiency and customer satisfaction as well as a focus on investment in emerging markets. Formed by Lenovo Group’s acquisition of the former IBM Personal Computing Division, the company develops, manufactures and markets reliable, high-quality, secure and easy-to-use technology products and services worldwide. Lenovo has major research centers in Yamato, Japan; Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, China; and Raleigh, North Carolina. For more information see www.lenovo.com.

¹ PC energy usage estimated using the Typical Energy Consumption calculation methodology from Energy Star 5.0, and Lenovo measured energy values for Energy Star 5.0 defined energy usage states.

²Compared against EPEAT data on Dell, HP, Acer, Panasonic and Toshiba available on www.epeat.net as of June 29, 2009.