Tech-Player: Windows10

Lenovo updates ThinkPad laptops with Windows 10 Signature Edition, Intel Optane storage tech

The company's flagship notebooks will also feature Intel's latest Kaby Lake processors, support for Microsoft's Precision TouchPad drivers, and even a silver color option.

Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga 370

Lenovo has jumped the gun on CES by releasing info on its latest ThinkPad updates a few days before the annual electronics trade show. While the PC manufacturer isn't adding anything as radical as the Yoga Book's Create Pad hybrid input device, its flagship laptops will receive some of the latest computing technology as well as some other improvements.

Select ThinkPads will be the first computers to include Intel's Optane storage technology, which is reportedly several times faster than current SSD tech. The bad news? These laptops will only have 16GB versions of the Optane drives, so they will be used in tandem with traditional hard drives. They will also appear later in 2017 than new non-Optane ThinkPads as the drives are finalized.

Lenovo is further leaning on Intel for its processors, shipping new ThinkPads with the latest Core processors. the seventh-generation "Kaby Lake" CPUs. It's also continuing the trend of PC makers jumping on the USB-C bandwagon as well as supporting Thunderbolt 3 connectivity. The brand-new ThinkPad T470 and T570 will be equipped with Windows Hello cameras that can perform facial recognition to supplement their fingerprint readers. (See a rundown of all the new models at our sister site CNET.)

The ThinkPad's touchpad gets an update via software thanks to new support for Microsoft's Precision TouchPad drivers, which should provide finer control over inputting touchpad gestures. Microsoft will also be supplying Windows 10 Signature Edition for 2017 ThinkPads; given Lenovo's recent woes with installing flawed bloatware on its systems, this "clean" version of Windows 10 should give potential buyers a little more peace of mind.

The most noticeable change to the new ThinkPads will appear on the surface. In addition to its iconic black chassis, select Lenovo business laptops will finally be available in a silver finish. A nod to younger buyers who might not like the staid black ThinkPads of yore (and their overworked parents)?

Windows 10 tip: How to Keep your laptop from waking up in your travel bag

If you own a laptop, you might have experienced "hot bag" syndrome. You put the sleeping laptop into your travel bag and then hours later, discover that it woke up at some point and has been madly using up your battery (and heating up your bag) as it tries to do whatever task it woke up for.

On a PC running Windows 10, one simple solution is to change the behavior of the system so that closing the lid causes the system to hibernate instead of sleeping, saving the system's state to a hibernation file. A hibernating system won't wake up until you tell it to, which means you can count on your bag staying cool and your battery fully charged.

The trade-off, of course, is that getting back to work takes a bit longer as the system loads the contents of the hibernation file instead of resuming from sleep. But on a modern laptop with an SSD, that difference is typically only 10 seconds or so.

To make the change, open the Control Panel (or use the search box on the taskbar) and search for Power Options. That opens the dialog box shown in the upper right of this article. From the list of links on the left, click Choose what closing the lid does.

The options available under the Power Button And Lid Settings section might look a little different depending on how your PC maker implemented this feature, but every modern laptop has the option to define settings for When I close the lid.

Change the behavior under On Battery to Hibernate and then save your changes. The next time you close the PC's lid (or, in the case of a Surface Pro, fold the Type Cover up over the screen), your PC will be guaranteed to keep its cool.