Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal (you know he’s got to drop that when he’s waiting for a table at restaurants) has done a review of Lenovo’s X300 framed as a comparison to Apple’s MacBook Air. Mossberg has Air on his brain, like he should (and no, that’s not a crack about his hair).
You may not know this, but as far as Windows computers go, I’ve always been a fan of the Thinkpad series. Blasphemous and traitorous. I guess I’ll have to look over my shoulder now that I’ve admitted this publicly. This new machine looks great in theory, but Walt comes to the same conclusion that any rational Mac fan would.
The X300, which is slightly beefier, has a full assortment of ports and (gasp) an optical drive built in. It also has the SSD (solid state drive) standard with no regular drive option available. As such, the base price for the X300 is quite a bit more. It also has WiMax, wireless USB, and GPS out of box. I’ll admit, those are a couple of cool perks. But when it comes down to it, the big question is of OS compatibility: the X300 supports Windows; the MacBook Air supports Mac OS X and Windows.
As Walt puts it, “f you’re happy with Windows, can afford the price tag, and value the many ports and connectivity options Lenovo has packed in, the thin and rugged X300 is a great choice.” The rest of us that want OS flexibility and that normal drive option, we’ll be rocking that MacBook Air.
I'll have to agree with you on this one, Derik. I'm also a fan of Thinkpads (though most definitely not on the same level as my MacBook).
I've always said that if I had to buy a windows laptop (back before bootcamp - not that I have windows installed on my Mac even though I could these days), it would be a ThinkPad. They're not pretty, but they have a certain honest rugged functional appeal to them. They don't pretend to be pretty, like, say, a Vaio.
The X300 is an interesting laptop because it shows that the Air need not have been compromised so much. The unit is thicker but only slightly heavier (0.17lb, I believe) so it's unlikely that anyone would notice the difference but it does have a proper selection of ports and a user replaceable battery. I honestly don't think the optical drive is important (but a nice option while those things continue to live) but the X300 shows that we could have "had our cake and eaten it".
What the... Oh, the *other* Walt.
We all know that the Chinese are shameless counterfeiters, but Lenovo has really got some balls using the exact same office-envelope concept for their publicity photos. I mean, all they did was flip the notebook image and use a different color envelope. Wow.
Nothing makes these PC OEMs look more pathetic than when they blatantly copy Apple's ideas verbatim.
I agree Kelmon. The lack of ports makes the Air a non starter for me. I wouldn't even consider it under any circumstances. I was soooooo disappointed when I saw that $1800 piece of useless beauty.
Multiple USB ports is not a plus for this form. Considering that attached USB devices have cords, stick out and/or need to be mounted/unmounted within the OS, having all USB ports active would interfere with the mobility. For example, in a setup that has a USB stick, an external hard drive, and an iPod, with the X300 I would have to wake up the laptop, attach all three devices, wait for the OS to mount/recognize, and then get to work. Once I'm done, and if I have to move all of a sudden, then I would have to unmount each in turn, then put the OS to sleep. This is not much different workflow than a 'full-sized' laptop. From my own experience, in a 'get-up-and-go' scenario such as hopping class-to-class, I barely use one USB port, if at all. The Air is right on the money.