Lenovo unveiled its new leather-bound ThinkPad laptop to honor the 15th anniversary of the original ThinkPad line.  It will retail for US$5,000 and each one will be individually numbered, with only a total of 5,000 being offered for sale.

The price includes 36 months of services that are labeled "executive class;" these include a dedicated service representative for the life of the laptop, as well as a one-on-one setup call with the purchaser.  Lenovo is also promising 24x7x365 service call representatives, with calls being answered by the fourth ring.  We have to ask: isn’t this what customer support is supposed to cover, anyway?

Lenovo claims the leather binding makes the laptop appear to be a large book or sophisticated portfolio. Laptop heat is reportedly vented out the sides of the laptop without harming the leather. It has a 12.1 inch display and a battery life of almost 7 hours, supports Wi-Fi and Bluetooth and has a 2.2GHz Intel Centrino Pro Core 2 Duo L7500 processor and 20GB of RAM.  It also includes a 160GB hard drive.

The original ThinkPad was manufactured by IBM in 1992.  The IBM personal computing division is now owned by Lenovo, a Beijing-based company.

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