Throwing another idea at the wall to see if it sticks, Lenovo introduced the ThinkPad X1 Hybrid at the CES Unveiled press pre-CES event here in Las Vegas on January 8. The follow-on to Lenovo's ultra-thin ThinkPad X1, the Hybrid is designed to maximize battery life by switching personalities—from full-featured Windows mode to a power-sipping "Instant Media Mode" running on a separate processor. In other words, it's part PC, and part something else.

In normal mode, the 13-inch Hybrid, which measures less than 0.6 inches thick, will run Windows 7, configured with one of the upcoming Intel "Ivy Bridge" i3, i5 and i7 Core mobile processors. But when the user wants to economize, the computer can put Windows into "sleep" mode, and launch Lenovo's IMM environment, based on a "custom Linux operating system"—a highly-modified version of the Android OS—and a Qualcomm 8060 ARM-based system-on-a-chip—essentially the guts of a Samsung Galaxy S. It's like someone at Lenovo decided to channel Xzibit in full "Pimp My Ride" mode: "Yo, dawg, we heard you like smartphones and computers..."

After putting Windows into a coma and turning on the Hybrid's second brain, the user can still access e-mail through a generic POP/IMAP client, listen to music and watch videos through a media player app, look at digital photos, and browse the web. In this mode, with the optional "slice" battery, Lenovo claims the system can get 10 hours of life untethered from an electrical outlet. Data on the main hard drive can't be accessed from IMM, so you'd have to move your music and videos to the 16GB flash memory associated with IMM from Windows before you put the main operating system to sleep.

It's all very clever—perhaps too clever by half. Because it uses a custom Android install, there's no app store to go to to add to IMM's functionality, and Lenovo doesn't currently have plans for an app store of its own. The idea would have more merit if the goal was to move from the pseudo-Android environment to Windows 8 for ARM at some point, but the Qualcomm 8060 isn't optimized for that, and it's doubtful that Windows 8 will ever run on the ARM half of this system.

When it becomes available in June, the ThinkPad will cost about $1,600—nearly twice the street price of Lenovo's upcoming ultrabook. That's a pretty hefty price tag for the luxury of a few more hours of web browsing--especially when you could pick up an actual full-featured tablet to sync up with for the difference. But for those few brave road warriors who want to squeeze out a few more hours of untethered web browsing and email-bashing, it might have a perverse appeal.