ThinkPad X300 - Drive of Excellence
I never thought I would be able to accept ThinkPad's design ever again after Lenovo spoilt it in the previous series of ThinkPad notebooks. But they proved me wrong. The X300, due to be released in about 4 weeks time here is the latest generation of the X-series the ultra-thin ThinkPads.
Known as the "MacBook Air Killer" the design of this notebook is exquisite. At just 1.905CM thick and 1.33kg heavy, it is thinner than 2 of my E61i stacked together and possibly lighter than my portable hard disks. With a Solid State Drive (SSD) having a 64GB capacity, it may seem to be too little for many, but for the executives who are the main target of this piece of art, it is more than enough. For those who do not know what a SSD is, it is a drive without any moving parts unlike traditional hard disks which spins for the drive to read data and has a possibility of being scratched if it spins while the notebook is being moved. Therefore it is quieter, more durable as it would not be scratched, and consumes less power.
To me, some of the most important things about the X300 are the return of the colored stripes on the UltrNav keys as well as the black power button, black volume control and blue ThinkVantage keys. Gone were the Grey buttons which looked so cheap. As a sweet extra, they all have LED lights underneath which lights up nicely(they can be turned off if you don't like them). They must have listened to customer feedbacks to achieve this. The addition of an ultra-thin removable(I believe so) DVD-RW drive is also well thought out as previous X-series has to be docked to use such features.
The X300 retains the key features which makes ThinkPad an excellent choice for executives. For example, the ThinkLight, the RGB port, Ethernet port, and 3 USB ports. It practically has everything I have on my laptop minus those which I and many hardly use with addition of those we need more (the USB port). I trust they did not remove the essential built in microphone. Essential for those who travels frequently and requires the necessary communication devices on top of E-mails.
The only dislike I have about the X300 is the processor it uses. The Intel Centrino vPro system which runs on a 1.2ghz Core 2 Duo processor is far too slow if there were more things to load. If it could just be 1.6ghz and above it would have been far better. Otherwise, this notebook is a great achievement for Lenovo. Too bad, my Dad just got his X61, and it would be long before he changed a new one, so I can't lay my hands on one to try for now. However, Congrats to the team which brought it to life.
P.S. You can find a review of the X300 in Inside the Box, and a comparison chart with the MacBook Air in the BusinessWeek article.