The Lenovo ThinkPad is a clunky-looking piece of machinery that is often left trailing in the shadows of sleek Macbooks, colorful Vaios, HP laptops with piano finishes, and other brands that have put all efforts into make their products beautiful.  Consumers can’t help but judge based on aesthetics — especially when you can’t tell how efficient a computer will be until you take it home and run the million applications that you “need” to have open at any point in time.  (That is of course unless you’re one of those savvy shoppers who combs the internet for every customer review you can find.)

But Lenovo is trying to step up its game and make the old school ThinkPad cool again.  To promote their new RapidBoot technology they tossed one of their ThinkPads out of a plane at 12,500 feet.  The question: could the computer boot up fast enough to launch a parachute and save itself from death and destruction?

Here is the video:

And apparently that video is real!  Here is the making of it:

What a fun way to promote a laptop.  This video is definitely an attention-grabber that will probably increase brand awareness, though I’m not sure how effective it will be at increasing sales.

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I have a couple of really good reasons why I haven’t updated in so long. They are the following:

a) I finished the first year of my MFA in creative writing!

Suffice it to say the end of the spring semester was hectic and a little bit exhausting, but only in the most wonderful of ways. It’s a little hard to believe that I’m now a second year, halfway through the best thing I’ve done in my life so far.

b) A week after my last class of the year, the boyfriend and I flew out to Shanghai, China.

We had multiple purposes: research, vacation, change of pace, but the most important one was for me to renew my inspiration, and I got exactly what I needed. At the end of the spring semester I was so sick of my novel-length project and ready to shut it away in a drawer for a long while.

After being back in China for a bit — hearing the Shanghainese dialect everywhere, watching skyscrapers and night lights fly past my cab window, smelling the salty temple incense, seeing old friends, remembering the spices of the street kebabs, bargaining at the markets — I feel re-energized and ready to pound out some new chapters.

Here are a handful photos out of the 4400-something I took in the past two weeks.

Emily Pan Photography

Emily Pan Photography

Emily Pan Photography

Emily Pan Photography

Emily Pan Photography

Emily Pan Photography

You can check out more photos here.

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