Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 8 | Best Business Laptop | Lenovo US

Business is the practice of making one's living or making money by producing or buying and selling products (such as goods and services). It is also "any activity or enterprise entered into for profit."

A business entity is not necessarily separate from the owner and the creditors can hold the owner liable for debts the business has acquired. The taxation system for businesses is different from that of the corporates. A business structure does not allow for corporate tax rates. The proprietor is personally taxed on all income from the business.

A distinction is made in law and public offices between the term business and a company such as a corporation or cooperative. Colloquially, the terms are used interchangeably.

Corporations are distinct from with sole proprietors and partnerships. They are separate legal entities and provide limited liability for their owners and members. They are subject to corporate tax rates. They are also more complicated and expensive to set up, but offer more protection and benefits for the owners and members.

Carbon (from Latin carbo 'coal') is a chemical element; it has symbol C and atomic number 6. It is nonmetallic and tetravalent—meaning that its atoms are able to form up to four covalent bonds due to its valence shell exhibiting 4 electrons. It belongs to group 14 of the periodic table. Carbon makes up about 0.025 percent of Earth's crust. Three isotopes occur naturally, ¹²C and ¹³C being stable, while ¹⁴C is a radionuclide, decaying with a half-life of 5,700 years. Carbon is one of the few elements known since antiquity.

Carbon is the 15th most abundant element in the Earth's crust, and the fourth most abundant element in the universe by mass after hydrogen, helium, and oxygen. Carbon's abundance, its unique diversity of organic compounds, and its unusual ability to form polymers at the temperatures commonly encountered on Earth, enables this element to serve as a common element of all known life. It is the second most abundant element in the human body by mass (about 18.5%) after oxygen.

The atoms of carbon can bond together in diverse ways, resulting in various allotropes of carbon. Well-known allotropes include graphite, diamond, amorphous carbon, and fullerenes. The physical properties of carbon vary widely with the allotropic form. For example, graphite is opaque and black, while diamond is highly transparent. Graphite is soft enough to form a streak on paper (hence its name, from the Greek verb "γράφειν" which means "to write"), while diamond is the hardest naturally occurring material known. Graphite is a good electrical conductor while diamond has a low electrical conductivity. Under normal conditions, diamond, carbon nanotubes, and graphene have the highest thermal conductivities of all known materials. All carbon allotropes are solids under normal conditions, with graphite being the most thermodynamically stable form at standard temperature and pressure. They are chemically resistant and require high temperature to react even with oxygen.

The most common oxidation state of carbon in inorganic compounds is +4, while +2 is found in carbon monoxide and transition metal carbonyl complexes. The largest sources of inorganic carbon are limestones, dolomites and carbon dioxide, but significant quantities occur in organic deposits of coal, peat, oil, and methane clathrates. Carbon forms a vast number of compounds, with about two hundred million having been described and indexed; and yet that number is but a fraction of the number of theoretically possible compounds under standard conditions.

Gen is most commonly seen as a contraction (such as Gen.) and it may refer to:

• Book of Genesis
• General officer
• Generation#Western world as in GenX, GenZ, etc.
• Genitive case

Gen may also refer to:

• Gen (film), 2006 Turkish horror film directed by Togan Gökbakar
• Gen (Street Fighter), a video game character from the Street Fighter series
• Gen Fu, a video game character from the Dead or Alive series
• Gen language, a language of Togo
• Gen-san, a character in the anime series Sky Girls
• Gen Asagiri (あさぎり ゲン (浅霧 幻)), a character in the anime and manga series Dr. Stone
• Gen Tomii (富井 彦, born 1973), Japanese Nordic combined skier
• Gen Hoshino (星野 源, born 1981), Japanese singer-songwriter, musician, actor, and writer
• Gen Kitchen, British politician
• Gen Shoji (昌子 源, born 1992), Japanese footballer
• Gen Urobuchi (虚淵 玄, born 1972), Japanese novelist, visual novel writer and anime screenwriter
• Gen Fukunaga (福永 元, born 1962), Japanese engineer and businessman
• Gen Nakatani (中谷 元, born 1957), Japanese politician
• Gen Horiuchi (堀内 元), Japanese ballet dancer and choreographer
• Gen Digital, a computer security software company in United States

GEN may refer to:

• GEN Corporation, of Japan
• GEN, Global Enterprise Network, a UK Internet Service Provider
• GEN Energija, a state-owned power company in Slovenia
• GEN, a website published by Medium
• Global Ecovillage Network
• Global Editors Network
• Gewestelijk ExpresNet, Dutch name for the Brussels Regional Express Network, a commuter rail service

A laptop computer or notebook computer, also known as a laptop or notebook, is a small, portable personal computer (PC). Laptops typically have a clamshell form factor with a flat-panel screen on the inside of the upper lid and an alphanumeric keyboard and pointing device on the inside of the lower lid. Most of the computer's internal hardware is fitted inside the lower lid enclosure under the keyboard, although many modern laptops have a built-in webcam at the top of the screen, and some even feature a touchscreen display. In most cases, unlike tablet computers which run on mobile operating systems, laptops tend to run on desktop operating systems, which were originally developed for desktop computers.

The word laptop, modeled after the term desktop (as in desktop computer), refers to the fact that the computer can be practically placed on the user's lap; while the word notebook refers to most laptops sharing a form factor with paper notebooks. As of 2024, in American English, the terms laptop and notebook are used interchangeably; in other dialects of English, one or the other may be preferred. The term notebook originally referred to a type of portable computer that was smaller and lighter than mainstream laptops of the time, but has since come to mean the same thing and no longer refers to any specific size.

Laptops are used in a variety of settings, such as at work (especially on business trips), in education, for playing games, web browsing, for personal multimedia, and for general home computer use. They can run on both AC power and rechargable battery packs and can be folded shut for convenient storage and transportation, making them suitable for mobile use. Laptops combine many of the input/output components and capabilities of a desktop computer into a single unit, including a display screen (usually 11–17 in or 280–430 mm in diagonal size), small speakers, a keyboard, and a pointing device (namely compact ones such as touchpads or pointing sticks). Hardware specifications may vary significantly between different types, models, and price points.

Design elements, form factors, and construction can also vary significantly between models depending on the intended use. Examples of specialized models of laptops include 2-in-1 laptops, with keyboards that either be detached or pivoted out of view from the display (often marketed having a "laptop mode"); rugged laptops, for use in construction or military applications; and low-production-cost laptops such as those from the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) organization, which incorporate features like solar charging and semi-flexible components not found on most laptop computers. Portable computers, which later developed into modern laptops, were originally considered to be a small niche market, mostly for specialized field applications, such as in the military, for accountants, or travelling sales representatives. As portable computers evolved into modern laptops, they became widely used for a variety of purposes.

Lenovo Group Limited, trading as Lenovo ( lə-NOH-voh, Chinese: 联想; pinyin: Liánxiǎng), is a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in designing, manufacturing, and marketing consumer electronics, personal computers, software, servers, converged and hyperconverged infrastructure solutions, and related services. Its global headquarters are in Beijing, and Morrisville, North Carolina, United States; it has research centers at these locations, elsewhere in China, in Stuttgart, Germany, and in Yamato, 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 acquired IBM's PC business including 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.

Products manufactured by the company include desktop computers, laptops, tablet computers, smartphones, workstations, servers, supercomputers, data storage devices, IT management software, and smart televisions. Its best-known brands include its ThinkPad business line of notebooks, the IdeaPad, Yoga, LOQ, and Legion consumer lines of notebooks, and the IdeaCentre, LOQ, Legion, and ThinkCentre lines of desktops. Lenovo is also part of a joint venture with NEC, named Lenovo NEC Holdings, that produces personal computers for the Japanese market. The company also operates Motorola Mobility which produces smartphones.

ThinkPad is a line of business-oriented laptop and tablet computers produced since 1992. The early models were designed, developed and marketed by International Business Machines (IBM) until it sold its PC business to Lenovo in 2005; since 2007, all new ThinkPad models have been branded Lenovo instead and the Chinese manufacturer has continued to develop and sell ThinkPads to the present day.

The ThinkPad line was first developed at the IBM Yamato Facility in Japan; they have a distinct black, boxy design, which originated in 1990 and is still used in some models. Most models also feature a red-colored trackpoint on the keyboard, which has become an iconic and distinctive design characteristic associated with the ThinkPad line. It has seen significant success in the business market while certain models target students and the education market. ThinkPad laptops have been used in outer space and for many years were the only laptops certified for use on the International Space Station (ISS). ThinkPads have also for several years been one of the preferred laptops used by the United Nations.