The ThinkPad Takes On The MacBook Air 433
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.'"
Mossberg has seen it... (Score:4, Interesting)
Too bad these SSHD aren't really worth it (Score:3, Interesting)
But There's No Illusion of Thin (Score:5, Interesting)
Apple really pulled off a magic trick with the Air. Marketing genius.
Re:The thinkpad pretty much spanks the Air (Score:5, Interesting)
I have Macs at home, but you have to recognize that the Air may be pretty, but it's sorely lacking in features that many people consider necessary these days.
Toshiba makes better laptops than the Air... (Score:1, Interesting)
How come Toshiba can do this and Apple can't?
Apple has a core group of customers who will buy anything from Apple, even if there are better products available.
Re:I disagree, the Thinkpad is beautiful. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:The thinkpad pretty much spanks the Air (Score:4, Interesting)
Case design: which case is more robust? Is Apple's metal case better suited for a thin notebook or is Lenovo's ThinkPad design better suited for fitting in your briefcase? Oh, and what about the power brick? Those few minutes untangling a power cord when setting up for a long meeting can be important. Design means not only looks, but also workflow and durability of the components.
Apropos meetings: which of the two is easier to use to make a presentation with a strange beamer? How about logging into a free WiFi hotspot? Sharing files?
Workflow: which job type would benefit from which computer? Although reporters and writers seem to be the target of both computers, what about sales reps? Developers and support techs who go to their clients? If your company uses Lotus Domino servers, will the MacBook Air make your IT staff nervous?
Now, I really don't know the answers, but these questions are what I feel makes the decision important. I own both a PowerBook and a ThinkPad, and though the ThinkPad is newer and has a better screen, etc., I still prefer to work with the PowerBook. It simply fits my workflow better.
Re:The thinkpad pretty much spanks the Air (Score:5, Interesting)
My current notebook is an old Thinkpad T23 that only has a trackpoint and no touchpad. Although I really like OS X (own both a Mac Pro and Mac Mini) and really want a mobility for some of the apps I use on it, this seemingly small issue is enough to make me unsure about whether my next notebook will be a MacBook or a Thinkpad. It's a big issue to me, an analogy would be the touch screen keyboard on the iPhone being a reason people don't want it over a phone with a real QWERTY keyboard.
A used Thinkpad X-series is likely to be next laptop purchase (I bought the T23 used). And I would be running Linux on it of course, which I enjoy more than OS X anyway, but the few video and audio apps I use on OS X make a Mac possibly more useful to me. So I haven't really made a decision.
not surprising (Score:3, Interesting)
Last summer I priced an HP laptop and Apple laptop. I needed a very light, yet powerful, machine, so I went with a 15" pro machine on both sides. Depending on what considered equivalent, the HP machine was 500-1000 more. It is anecdotal, but still a data point. The point is that Apple has gotten very efficient, and regular PC OEMs have a very hard time competing with them on the price/quality ratio. About the only thing apple does not have is the competitive $500 headless laptop. The Mac Mini is a joke, and the iMacs are over priced if one does not really need a fancy monitor.
Re:ThinkPads have always been expsensive (Score:3, Interesting)
http://lenovoblogs.com/insidethebox/?p=93 [lenovoblogs.com]
Re:ThinkPads have always been expsensive (Score:3, Interesting)
I've only had toshibas, one felt from my hands while I was writing on the hard drive, bounce on the floor and kept working for 2 more years with no problem (of course 3 years for a computer that was totally abused, I think is great). My current laptop is a Toshiba, and I'll keep buying them.
The reason why I buy them? Different than Apple's they.. really.. just work. Recently, to take their prices down, they fill them with tons of bloatware, which is a bit annoying, but the price difference you find between those and Apple/Lenovos/Sony is huge, and Toshiba built their computers, mostly, with their own toshiba parts. I love it! And CNET still have the best ultra portable to be a Toshiba!
We'll see if they can keep it up with the Apple aggressive marketing strategy.
elegant and clean, but less enjoyable, design flaw (Score:3, Interesting)
I have had the 600e, the x23, and now the x61s.
The xseries, is thin already, not a problem.
my experience with x61s.
What I am more concerned about is the following:
1. heat = its warmer than the previous models.
better cpu's, at the cost of heat.
you can feel it frying your hand.
and then you turn on the wifi.. oh boy.
2. noisy = the fans are louder than previous models
3. material = the previous chassis was graphite,
much more pleasent. now its plastic.
4. buttons = 2 ekstra 'paging' buttons are implemented
on both sides of the up arrow, and its easy to hit wrong.
annoying.
I think the design has degraded.
maybe they wanted to save on material.
and the designers took the wrong road.
I don't know, I would buy the mac book
immideately if it had the trackpoint.
but I would also buy another thinkpad,
if they took a little more care about
their loyal thinkpad customers.
hopefully someone listens.
Re:ThinkPads have always been expsensive (Score:3, Interesting)
For what it's worth Lenovo 3000s are fairly impressive for consumer notebooks. I wouldn't buy one, but they're solid and well-constructed. I'd put them ahead of any current Dell Vostro/Inspiron model or non-pro Macbook.
Re:But There's No Illusion of Thin (Score:2, Interesting)
And so did several of my friends.
God love EPP deals.
Re:The thinkpad pretty much spanks the Air (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:ThinkPads have always been expsensive (Score:4, Interesting)
Seriously though, if you have ever actually handled one of these those fears disappear pretty quickly. I've configured two of them in the last week and they are surprisingly solid.
Re:ThinkPads have always been expsensive (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I disagree, the Thinkpad is beautiful. (Score:2, Interesting)
Turns out that once she'd gotten over the novelty of the machine, they soon realised she still had to use his machine for word processing - she simply couldn't put her essays etc onto a disk and take them into school with her, because of this missing floppy drive.
Re:Mossberg has seen it... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:The thinkpad pretty much spanks the Air (Score:4, Interesting)
Though you are probably correct that most people don't like trackpoints, most people don't like touchpads either (but like them more than trackpoints). Most people prefer real mice, but those are just not as practical when you are on the go. Everyone at my workplace uses a separate mouse with their MacBook Pros or other laptops. It doesn't help the MacBooks that they only have one mouse button (hence an external mouse is almost a requirement for many people).
I think a lot of people haven't given trackpoints an honest chance. My girlfriend didn't like it at all at first, but one time when we were traveling I forgot to pack a mouse and she was forced to use it and she grew to really like it. Also, not all trackpoint clones are created equal. I bought a desktop keyboard that had a trackpoint-like stick, but it completely sucked as and was unusable; I had the same problems you described. The one on my Thinkpad T23 rocks, but that doesn't mean other manufacturers make good ones.
There is an annoyance with trackpads too - the base of my thumb sometimes hits it accidentally and then the cursor suddenly jumps to some random place and I find that my last few words have been inserted in the middle of some other part of my document instead of at the end. That is annoying but only happens once every couple of days despite how much typing I do.
When I had a notebook with only a touchpad this was a constant annoyance.
I wish that IBM would offer a Thinkpad without the trackpoint; how hard can it be to have a replacement keyboard, for the majority of people who don't use trackpoints (yes the modern Thinkpads have *both* a trackpad and trackpoint, but I don't just want to be able to use a trackpad, I specifically want to *not* have a trackpoint in there, and I think many people would agree. Besides, having two pointing devices really seems like a hack doesn't it?).
I am of course the opposite, I'm glad they have Thinkpads with *only* a trackpoint. Although it might be possible to disable the touchpad and use only the trackpoint (I hope you can do this at least), I think the touchpad is a waste of space. It's nice that on their ultra-portable (X series) you can get one with a trackpoint only.
You can pull the rubber eraser off of the trackpoint. It'll still be there (in the form of the plastic that rubber goes on top of), but I think it'll be mostly out of your way and your fingers will be less likely to trip on it. I'm not sure if you can specifically disable the trackpoint so that only the touchpad is active (or vice versa), but it would me nice if you could.
Re:Too bad these SSHD aren't really worth it (Score:3, Interesting)
I'll give you one major downside... no disk platters, no data recovery. Want to undelete some files you accidentally deleted before you overwrite the data sectors? Bzzt... SSHD makes that impossible.
Sure, backups make that a lot easier, but not a lot of people do backups between the time they had the files, and when they deleted the files they wanted to keep.
Re:I disagree, the Thinkpad is beautiful. (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, according to Consumer Reports, Thinkpad machines have a higher failure rate than Macbooks. In fact, for the second half of 2006, Dell's laptops had a lower failure rate than Thinkpads (crazy how things change huh, Dell's desktops are still below average though). So if you're looking for "rugged" as a criteria the Thinkpad is not the winner. That said, Thinkpads are nice systems. As far as comparing compact super-thin systems... well I don't really care. In fact, I think the emphasis on thin is aiming at a demographic, but I really wish Apple and Lenovo would go after the opposite category too... thicker, cheaper, more fully featured laptops. I have no interest in an ultra-portable, but I'd love a dependable laptop with an extra large battery capacity and a desktop graphics card, even if it weighed twice as much and was twice the thickness.
x300 is TWICE AS THICK !!!! as a macbook AIR (Score:2, Interesting)
The two are not even in the same class of laptop!!
the thinnest edge of the X300 is about as thick as the thickest edge of the AIR
X300 is about twice as thick (18.6mm-23.4mm) as a MacBook Air (4.0mm-19.4mm)
average thickness(11.7mm vs 21mm)
if you STACKED TWO Macbook Air Laptops (19.4+4.0=23.4)
you would arrive at roughly the thickness of one X300 at (21mm average)
At the end of the day, this X300 laptop is somewhere between the Macbook Air
and the Macbook Pro for thickness (closer to the Macbook Pro,
It's really unbelievable that these two laptops even get mentioned in the same breath.
Re:Too bad these SSHD aren't really worth it (Score:3, Interesting)
Again, impossible with SSHD, because those blocks are reallocated by the physical hardware once the data is confirmed to be deleted. AFAIK, there's nothing the OS on top of that hardware can do to stop the hardware from doing what it does "electronically" by design.