ThinkPad in the context of "ThinkPad Helix"

Lenovo Group Limited, trading as Lenovo (/ləˈnoʊvoʊ/ lə-NOH-voh, Chinese: 联想; pinyin: Liánxiǎng), is a Hong Kong–based Chinese multinational corporation and technology company specializing in designing, manufacturing, and marketing consumer electronics, personal computers, software, servers, converged and hyperconverged infrastructure solutions, and related services. The smartphone brand is Motorola Mobility. Its global headquarters are in Beijing, China, and its North American headquarters is in Morrisville, North Carolina, United States; it has research centers at these locations, elsewhere in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, in Stuttgart, Germany, and in Yamato, Kanagawa, Japan.

Lenovo originated as an offshoot of a state-owned research institute. Then known as Legend and distributing foreign IT products, co-founder Liu Chuanzhi incorporated Legend in Hong Kong in an attempt to raise capital and was successfully permitted to build computers in China, and were helped by the American AST Research. Legend listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 1994 and became the largest PC manufacturer in China and eventually in Asia; they were also domestic distributors for HP printers, Toshiba laptops, and others. After the company rebranded itself to Lenovo, it merged with IBM's PC business which produced its ThinkPad line in 2005, after which it rapidly expanded abroad. In 2013, Lenovo became the world's largest personal computer vendor by unit sales for the first time, a position it still holds as of 2024.

A pointing stick (or trackpoint, also referred to generically as a nub, clit mouse, or nipple mouse) is a small analog stick used as a pointing device typically mounted centrally in a computer keyboard. Like other pointing devices such as mice, touchpads or trackballs, operating system software translates manipulation of the device into movements of the pointer on the computer screen. Unlike other pointing devices, it reacts to sustained force or strain rather than to gross movement, so it is called an "isometric" pointing device. IBM introduced it commercially in 1992 on the ThinkPad 700 series under the name "TrackPoint", and patented an improved version of it in 1997 (but the patent expired in 2017). It has been used for business laptops, such as Acer's TravelMate, Dell's Latitude, HP's EliteBook and Lenovo's ThinkPad.

The pointing stick senses applied force by using two pairs of resistive strain gauges. A pointing stick can be used by pushing with the fingers in the general direction the user wants the pointer to move. The velocity of the pointer depends on the applied force so increasing pressure causes faster movement. The relation between pressure and pointer speed can be adjusted, just as mouse speed is adjusted.