With Lenovo’s recent announcement that they will be launching their own UMPC, running either Linux or Windows, a potential opportunity for Linux’s UMPC success to vastly expand has just appeared.

When I read about Lenovo’s announcement, I basically ignored it. By this point, I am quite used to seeing some new UMPC announced or launched every other day. As far as I can tell, this UMPC does not even have some “cool” new feature. The only thing that makes this UMPC interesting to me is that Lenovo makes it. Why is that so important? The ThinkPad reputation.

Unlike most large computer companies, Lenovo is, in my opinion, know and respected almost entirely for their ThinkPad line (which they bought from IBM), which consists of all very business-oriented machines.

This is all a long way of saying that Lenovo has a good reputation with businesses, for the most part, and that, unlike their competitors, their home computers are far less well-known than their business computers. All of this puts them in a good position to push inexpensive UMPCs to large businesses, an important market for Linux. With Lenovo’s current position, they might be able to sell huge numbers of UMPCs and, hopefully, promote Linux in the enterprise while they are at it.

All of this comes with one major “but.” That is that the Linux version of Lenovo’s new UMPC is only available in “certain overseas markets.” As for how that affects the situation, we will, unfortunately, have to wait for more details.

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