Lenovo Pocket Yoga Flirts with Netbook Enthusiasts
Proving once again that technology journalism has more than a little similarity to online dating, a bunch of tech sites ran stories Monday hyping a new entry into the sub-subnotebook field: The Pocket Yoga by Lenovo.
The stories began appearing after a series of high-quality photographs showed up on Lenovo’s Flickr feed, depicting a sleek, leather-wrapped, ultrathin PC that opened up to a very wide (but not very tall) screen and a matching keyboard with edge-to-edge keys. Another picture showed the screen folded all the way back so that it could be used as a small tablet PC roughly the size of a reporter’s notebook.
To secure the case while traveling, Lenovo designed a small leather belt to hold the screen shut. When the computer is in use, the belt folds up and becomes a travel-size mouse.
The tech site Engadget’s response to the photos was pretty typical: “Tantalizing, yes? That’s it for details, but be sure to hit up that gallery for those red-hot pics.”
Elegant Vaporware
But as is all-too-often true online, it turned out that the photos have no basis in reality. According to Johnson Li, director of Lenovo’s Beijing Innovation Center, the photos depict a concept the company considered a couple of years ago but decided not to bring to market.
“Last week some buzz was created by a photograph that someone snuck out of our Beijing design studio,” Li said in a blog post. “The picture was of a pocket-sized PC we developed about two years ago, well before the current netbook craze and the introduction of a similar form factor by one of our competitors.”
Li added that the concept of the Pocket Yoga was based on a larger folding notebook called the Yoga, which in turn was inspired by the athletic interest of a Lenovo designer from New Zealand.
“Pocket Yoga…
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