Laptop maker Lenovo announced their new IdeaPad U350 today. The IdeaPad features a 1.4GHz Core 2 Solo SU3500 processor. Compared to other portables on the market this model may seem like nothing special. What makes it so special is that it is the company’s first Plaid-Book. For the last year netbooks have been all the rage in the computer industry. What sets the Plaid-Book apart from a notebook or netbook is a mixture of its distinctive plaid body and that it can only be used to view plaidweek.com.
Lenovo’s VP of Product Development Igo Yatzu put out the following statement today. “We are proud to announce the new IdeaPad U350. This is our first step towards Plaid friendly products. I will admit we were a bit late jumping on the netbook bandwagon which is why we wanted to be the first to put out a Plaid-Book. A lot of research went into this product; we wanted to do this right. I had our whole R&D team spent 18 months in kilts to get a better sense of plaid. Finding a kilt is not easy in Beijing. Beijing may be home to 13,000,000 but only few Scots. Luckily we found Wen MacZheng a Chinese native who has fully embraced Scottish culture. MacZheng is the sole participant in China’s Highland Games, he is hoping to finally take first place in 2011. Wen MacZheng served as our plaid guru for this product.
The first thing you notice is the plaid exterior finish. I feel it is a bold and modern interpretation of the Macdonald clan pattern. Designing this pattern was not cheap, in fact 90% of our R&D budget went towards it. This set the tone for the project. Netbooks are all about surfing the web and getting things done. This can be distracting to a user and take away from the plaid exterior. It is for that reason we decided the Plaid-Book could only be used to view plaidweek.com. I feel we have a real hit on our hands especially when combined with the popularity of Plaid Week.”
The first Plaid-Book is expected to hit store shelves next month.
