At least year’s CES Lenovo showed off the intriguing looking IdeaPad U1 tablet computer – well, hybrid computer really. The idea was that you had a choice of using it as a conventional style of notebook computer, or lift out the screen and use it as a pure tablet-style computer, a la the Apple iPad.
But then, in late May last year, Lenovo announced that the IdeaPad U1 had been shelved. Apparently, it wasn’t a core shelving, because the U1 is back in play. In an event this morning at the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Lenovo announced that the U1 will ship somewhere around June/July this year, and that for the US market the price will be around the $1,000 mark.
The big change in the interim is that Lenovo have had a change of mind about the operating system makeup of the Lenovo IdeaPad U1. Last year’s thought was to run Windows 7 in the U1’s notebook mode, and Linux Skylight when the screen was separated and the U1 turned into a tablet computer. In this year’s version, Linux is out of the picture, instead the U1 will run Android in tablet computer mode.