ThinkPad X300: light in weight, heavy on price due to SSD
Rumors have been swirling around the Lenovo ThinkPad X300, and today Walt Mossberg shares some details on the device. There’s no doubt that the notebook will be continuously compared to the MacBook Air based on the size, footprint and weight. It too will have a large display for a "sub-notebook": 13-inches. Along with that full-sized display will be a non-cramped keyboard in a package that weighs 3.12-pounds. After that, things get diffferent between the two devices.
The X300 will include an integrated optical drive, removable battery, three USB ports, RJ-45 jack for wired Ethernet, and options for integrated wireless broadband and a GPS radio. Walt says that unlike the MacBook Air, where the expensive SSD is optional, the X300 will only be available with an SSD drive for 64-Gigabytes of storage. Of course, that adds a hefty premium right up front, so the starting price for the X300 is expected to be over $2,500. Operating sytem preferences aside, the X300 sounds as though it could be a little more flexible for road warriors and true mobile users, but we’ll get a better idea when we see some additional specifications, such as choice of CPU and memory configurations.
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hmm.. so removable battery is a feature nowadays.
,, i thought it was standard ;)
What do you guys want to bet the reason for ssd only is vista.
Can you imagine trying to use vista; with all it’s hard drive thrashing; using a 4200 rpm hard drive.
Is the optical drive removable and replaceable with a second battery? Personally, I need extended battery life more than access to CDs or DVDs (of course, a battery is likely heavier than the optical drive occupying the same space).
Dudeman, I’ve been using Vista on a 4200 RPM drive in my UMPC since early betas in 2005. Ideal, no. Usable, yes.
Oliver, we have no additional details that we can share. It would be nice if indeed the optical drive were swappable with a secondary battery as people use batteries much more with a mobile device than they use optical drives.
so except for the SSD how is this any better than just getting a Dell 1330 for a lot less? I just picked up a 1.6ghz one with 2 gigs ram and the LED screen for less than a grand. When SSD’s are more affordable I can just pop one in.
Vista runs fine on my P1610 with a 4200RPM drive and I never suffer poor performance caused by disk thrashing. To be honest, Vista has changed a lot over the last 12 months and it’s a lot snappier than it used to be (I’m not running SP1). I think you’ll struggle to get really good performance out of any OS with a 4200RPM HDD but it’s certainly satisfactory with Vista.
Of course, it would be really sweet to have a 64Gb SSD despite what Walt Mossberg says.
“There’s no doubt that the notebook will be continuously compared to the MacBook Air based on the size, footprint and weight.” … and the marketing photo showing the unit in profile sitting on an inter-office envelope.
The intial specs look good. For me, though, a small footprint is more important than being thin.
@nomo – I don’t think that’s a marketing folder. I think Walt Mossberg took that photo for the article.
Now throw a capacitive touch screen and make it a convertible tablet and I’m in!
Very slick device.
An optical drive!
I absolutely refuse to buy a laptop with an optical drive. Why carry around all that wieght for something I never use?