Unboxing the Lenovo Yoga

Hey Dave Johnson, editor of eHow Tech here and I am looking for some gifts for folks who might want to spend a little more money. Nothing in my mind beats a laptop because the age of the desktop is dead; sure some people buy desktops for very specific needs but for everyone I know now uses a laptop instead. One of the coolest laptops I’ve seen and certainly the most interesting laptop I’ve seen in the last six months is Lenovo’s Yoga. It has a very interesting name because of the way this thing works and I’ll show you that in a moment. We got in a Yoga and a Yoga case. Let’s open this up and see what it’s like. Now this is a thirteen inch ultra-book that costs about $900. That might sound like a lot of money but first of all I’m a sucker for elegant packaging and ah that’s worth $900 all by itself right? So we pull off the cover of this, here we go, I’m gonna put that aside and see what else is in here; we’ve got a power cord, and last but not least in here we’ve got the various quickstart guides and warranty information and that sort of thing. So we don’t really need any of that anymore so let’s actually look at the Yoga itself. Alright, so this is my Yoga, to open it up, it looks like a fairly standard laptop, let’s turn it on. And you see there’s a big button here and it’s really just an attractive nuisance – that is the Windows button that takes you to the start screen – it doesn’t turn it on. The power button is hiding right here, so we press that and we wait for it to power on. So alright I’ve logged in and we’re looking at Windows 8 in laptop mode, let’s dig in and see what we have in here. It’s a fairly typical laptop, this is the start button that takes me to the start screen, and I have a very nice keyboard that’s very easy to use and a touch pad. But in addition to all of that, it is Windows 8 and it is touch screen as well. But here’s where it comes in really handy, it takes its name from all the different orientations that you can use the Yoga in. My standard laptop configuration, I can also flip it around and use it like a tablet like an ipad or you know a kindle fire or any kind of device, so I have that mode. I also have a presentation mode where I can set it like this and still use it in the same way I was using it before, or my favorite mode, Lonovo calls this tent mode. And so I can use it here, and I also have a slot in case that Lonovo sells. And so now I can use this as a carrying case, stick it in there and I can carry it around, or if I want to use this as a slate, when I turn it that way it’s perfectly fine, the keyboard is disabled in this mode so I can use it just fine, but if I don’t like the feel of it I can take the case and insert it there and now I’ve got this really nice surface for the back of my hand for holding it up. Now there’s no doubt that Windows 8 is something of a contentious operating system – some people love it some people hate it – for my money I’m a fan. I think if I was interested in getting into Windows 8, the Yoga is a superb device for doing it, all the different configurations it works in, it’s great as a tablet, great as a laptop, and a really good example of what Windows 8 can be.