That’s the question Lenovo poses in its “Boot or Bust” ads that promote its new RapidBoot for Windows 7 campaign. The premise is simple; toss a computer out of an airplane, boot it and have it auto-run a program that deploys the chute. If it boots fast enough, it lives. If it doesn’t, well…it doesn’t.
Lenovo shot a really cool video to illustrate the point. When you watch your first thought might be that this looks like a bunch of cinemagic. But it’s not, and to prove it Lenovo posted a second video that’s all about how they made the first. If you have an extra few minutes it’s worth a watch.
It seems crazy, right? But I can tell you from personal experience from the brand-new Lenovo ThinkPad T420s, it’s legit. The T420s I have is part of Lenovo’s new RapidBoot for Windows 7lineup of PCs, which means that it’s been specially optimized to boot in as little as 10 seconds. While that number is a bit arbitrary (sometimes it boots in 9 seconds, other times 12 to 15), the bottom line is that this thing boots fast. Crazy fast. There are only a handful of other PCs – most recently, the Samsung 9 Series – that can even touch RapidBook PCs in terms of boot time.
But the T420s has features that other fast-booting PCs don’t, and that’s largely due to the fact that’s part of the venerable, battle-tested ThinkPad lineup. Like all ThinkPads, it’s “business rugged”, meaning you get an extremely durable, rigid chassis, a flow-through keyboard that’s spill resistant, and a host of protection features like Lenovo’s “Active Hard Drive Protection’ that keeps your PC safe in case of a fall. And with a second-gen Core i7 processor, 8GB of RAM and switchable NVIDIA graphics under the hood in a thin, sub 4lb package, it’s one of the fastest, most powerful portable PCs on the market today. All of that combined with the virtually unbeatable ThinkPad keyboard & UltraNav pointer, and the super-readable 1600 x 900 matte display, means the T420s will likely take its place as my day-to-day enterprise-grade PC.
You can learn more about Lenovo Enhanced Experience 2.0 and the Lenovo RapidBoot for Windows 7 campaign at Lenovo.com/RapidBoot.