Lenovo personalizes Think brand, rolls out desktops

Further breaking away from IBM's shadow, Lenovo on Tuesday entered the business workstation market with two new ThinkStation PCs, which retain the original "Think" moniker originally established by IBM.

Based on Intel's upcoming Penryn processor, the ThinkStation D10 workstation will come with two quad-core Intel Xeon processors. The single-socket ThinkStation S10 workstation will come with an Intel Core 2 processor and a graphics card from Nvidia.

The systems are targeted at companies seeking to perform graphics and computing-intensive jobs, including computer-aided design and digital content creation, Lenovo said in a news release.

Both workstations come with Intel processors manufactured using the 45-nanometer process, which will help consumers save energy.

The systems will include dual Gigabit Ethernet and multiple slots, bays and USB ports for expandability, Lenovo said. The systems will become available starting in January, Lenovo said. The ThinkStation D10 and S10 workstations will be priced starting at $1,739 and $1,199, respectively.

The introduction of ThinkStation is a step to personalize valuable assets Lenovo acquired from IBM, said Charles King, president and principal analyst of Pund-IT. IBM's original "Think" brand, which had a big presence in the business segment, gave Lenovo a line of popular and reliable business-class desktops and notebooks, King said.

"[Lenovo] is taking the assets and making them their own," King said.

The workstations also fall under a general market shift from Unix systems to x86 workstations, King said. Highly technical workstations are available from big vendors, but more businesses are adopting Intel-based and AMD's Opteron platforms because of performance and aggressive pricing, King said.