The X300 Could Usher in a New Generation of ThinkPads
Posted by
Zonk
on Sun Mar 02, 2008 05:25 PM
from the now-i-want-one dept.
from the now-i-want-one dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The ThinkPad has long been a favorite of IT departments everywhere and is the preferred notebook for legions of no-nonsense users. As times have progressed the ThinkPad has improved but the X300 marks the most significant change in its design since the butterfly keyboard. While we've already discussed a few leaked specs, official news of big changes like LED-backlighting (the first on a ThinkPad) and a widescreen display accompany a number of important but smaller design tweaks. Current thinking is that these changes indicate that the X300 is the first step in a series of larger changes to the ThinkPad. The notebook has already received a number of favorable reviews, but the other changes - the ones that will ultimately trickle down to the rest of the ThinkPad line - are perhaps more interesting than this specific $2500+ notebook."
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Hardware: Thinkpad X300 Specs Leaked 372 comments
Kyokushi writes "Gizmodo reports that some specifications of a new ultralight Lenovo X300 have been leaked. 'It appears that Lenovo have themselves a new ultralight X300 series Thinkpad — and outside of the price and release date, we have all of the specs that you need to know. At a glance, some of the major features include: a 13.3-inch LED backlit 1440X900 screen, an ultralight 2.5 pound form factor, and Intel Merom Santa Rosa Dual Core CPU (2.0 Ghz / 880 Mhz ), a 64 GB SSD, up to 4GB of DDR2 PC2-5300 memory, and 4 hours of battery life.' If this is true, then Lenovo looks to have some heavy competition for the Macbook Air." Update: 01/20 22:55 GMT by S : Corrected Gizmondo->Gizmodo.
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The ThinkPad Takes On The MacBook Air 433 comments
An anonymous reader writes "Walt Mossberg has an early look at the ThinkPad X300, Lenovo's answer to the MacBook Air. He says the ThinkPad is almost as skinny and light as the Air, but has many of the ports and features lacking on Apple's machine. The biggest downside: it costs much more and will be limited to a paltry 64 gigabytes of storage. 'Unlike the Apple, which can be ordered with a higher-capacity, lower-priced hard disk, the new ThinkPad will only be available with the expensive, limited capacity solid-state drive. So it will start at between $2,500 and $2,800-up to $1,000 more than the Apple's base price.'"
Firehose:The X300 Ushers in a New Generation of ThinkPads by Anonymous Coward
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Hardware: HTC Shift ThinkPad X300 MacBook Air Perfect Notebook? 108 comments
Tom's Hardware has an interesting look at the HTC Shift, the newest contender in the ultralight portable arena, with a strong compare and contrast to the other two heavyweights, the ThinkPad X300 and the Macbook Air. "As some of you know, I actually like the Macbook Air but found the Lenovo ThinkPad X300 to be a vastly more useful product in the class. I'm one of the few folks that have been using an early version of the HTC Shift , a smaller screened ultra light tablet with a keyboard and a touch screen which is superior to both offerings in some ways and just released on Amazon.com for $1500 (someone screwed up, this wasn't supposed to happen until next week). This got me thinking: The perfect next generation ultra-sexy notebook should be a blend of all three products."
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I will wait for the second generation. (Score:4, Insightful)
They need to have somthing better then integrated (Score:2, Insightful)
Put in a ati hyper memory or nvidia Turbo Cache card in or use the 780G amd chip set Integrated graphics with Side-port memory as local frame buffer.
128mb
Re:They need to have somthing better then integrat (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:They need to have somthing better then integrat (Score:5, Funny)
I dont know why they dont advertise it as a feature.
Re:They need to have somthing better then integrat (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Not only is integrated graphics good enough now, it also saves a whole heck of a lot of power. My Thinkpad T60 with discrete graphics gets an hour less runtime on battery than an identical T60 with integrated graphics. In a portable design with a SSD dri
Why would I need to? (Score:5, Insightful)
The X300 [lenovo.com] comes with XP.
Re:They need to have somthing better then integrat (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
They don't want you to use Vista, anyway (Score:3, Informative)
significant change; right..... (Score:5, Informative)
Advert? (Score:4, Insightful)
Sounds like advertising to me.
I do like thinkpads myself, but the only thing revolutionary about the X300 to me is it's exorbitant price.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Advert? (Score:5, Interesting)
My GOD what a terrible video review! (Score:4, Insightful)
Urgh, stick to text.
Why is this here? (Score:3, Insightful)
Anonymous Coward (Score:3, Insightful)
Go Go Slashvertisements!
Focus on business faltering (Score:5, Interesting)
Shopping for a new notebook (ThinkPad or MacBook) (Score:4, Insightful)
I really like the durability of my ThinkPad but this experience has left a pretty bad taste in my mouth. My 9 year old Gateway Solo 2500 still runs fine except that I've had to replace the hard drive a couple times.
As a student and employee at a higher-education institution, however, the 34% discounts available to me on ThinkPads still makes them pretty attractive. Couple that with opting for SuSE Linux and I've got a pretty well-priced notebook.
I am not ruling out a MacBook, however. Now that they come with Intel processors, I can pretty much have my pick of OSes other than OS X installed.
Could be better (Score:3, Insightful)
- No line-in for audio. This is a big problem for doing audio recordings
- No enough ports (only 3 USB, no firewire)
- Widescreen. Ugh. Repeat after me, laptops are for documents, not for movies. "Widescreen" just means "missing the top and bottom of the display" - it should be renamed "shortscreen".
- Lid catches: IBM used to have two, carefully balanced; Lenovo reduced this to one as a deliberate measure, but it is now harder to open with a single hand.
- side-mounted ports for ethernet - so the cable gets in the way on the desk.
- Windows keys (used to be absent) - making the Ctrl and Alt keys too small.
Thinkpads are generally quite Linux friendly (see thinkwiki.org), but still, can't we have the nice Intel i810 cards on the high-end models, instead of crippling them with useless ATI cards?
The older models (eg 560, 770) were very well engineered, and seemed to have been designed with a little more "love". The T60 is not a bad machine, but it doesn't inspire affection and delight in the same way.
my thinkpad (Score:4, Insightful)
Really, if you want that kind of hardware, get a desktop. As far as real laptops for mobile users go, thinkpad is the reigning king.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Ruining a legend? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:LED Backlight (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Just think - they're getting 4 hours out of (IIRC) a 4-cell. Half the size of your battery. Then it doesn't look so bad.