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Lenovo Slims Down With Latest ThinkPad

Gary Krakow

At least that's the direction laptops are taking.

Last month, Steve Jobs announced Apple's (AAPL) MacBook Air -- a super-thin sliver of a notebook computer. It comes with either a regular, 80GB hard drive ($1,800) or what's being called a solid-state drive (64GB of storage with no moving parts) for $3,100. Yes, the solid-state drives are bleeding-edge technology -- and sport a super-premium price tag.)

Apple isn't the only company using these newfangled drives in newly designed computers. Lenovo has announced its version of the technology, the ThinkPad X300 notebook.

Outwardly, the difference is easy to discern. The Air is white and the ThinkPad is black. Both use a 13.3-inch, widescreen, backlit display. Both weigh about three pounds, give or take a few ounces, and both are approximately the same size -- although the Mac is a tiny, little millimeter or two thinner.

	X300

But the internal differences are somewhat more elusive -- until you do some digging. Obviously, Apple's computer runs on the Mac OS X v10.5 (Leopard) while the Lenovo runs your choice of either Windows XP or Vista.

As I mentioned above, Apple's notebook comes with either a lower-cost, old-fashioned hard drive or the new solid-state model. The ThinkPad comes only with the solid-state "disk" drive. Since there are no moving parts, solid-state drives should, theoretically, allow computers to boot much more quickly than in the past.

More about speed in a minute.

The other big difference is that the MacBook Air is a sealed system. There is no optical drive (CD or DVD) built inside. Plus, the computer has to be returned to Apple if and when the battery needs replacing.

The ThinkPad, on the other hand, is much more configurable. The battery is removable, and there is actually an expansion port on the right, under the keyboard, that allows you to slide in the optical drive of your choice -- or, more important, a second battery. That means is that if you don't need CDs or DVDs at the moment, you can squeeze up to 10 hours of battery life out of a fully charged X300 if you need to -- a big difference for the ultimate road warrior.

The X300 I've been testing came with a 1.2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo CPU, 2 GB of memory, the standard, three-cell lithium-polymer battery, a DVD burner in the expansion bay, the 64 GB solid-state drive and Windows XP Professional (Service Pack 2) loaded inside. According to Lenovo, that configuration weighs 3.13 pounds and retails for $2,935.

The X300 is noticeably lighter to carry around than the MacBook I've been schlepping to work. I'm actually getting a brand-new Mac computer for my office, so I don't feel bad about leaving the MacBook at home for now.

Lenovo claims the X300 is the "greenest" X-series ThinkPad ever, due to the solid-state drive, super low-voltage processor and LED backlit screen. It proudly sports an Energy Star 4.0 sticker.

Setting up and using the X300 was, and is, a breeze. Once I got past startup messages like "protect the valuable information," I added some of my favorite programs and was off and running.

Booting Windows XP on the ThinkPad takes slightly less than 30 seconds from a dead stop. If you've ever waited for a modern-day Windows computer to boot, you know that this is a very, very cool feature. As for overall speed, I think that the X300 is fast and capable. Web browsing, word processing and streaming audio and video usually don't overtax computers.

On the other hand, if you're expecting every page, document and file to open and execute in a millisecond, this computer ain't for you. From what I can tell, the solid-state drive is great for booting (and durability on paper) but not a quantum leap forward in overall system speed.

Which brings us back to the price. $3K is a lot of money for a laptop. Then again, three pounds is very light for a laptop. New, super-lightweight, high-technology computers always cost more.

That's a fact of life.

Both the MacBook Air and ThinkPad X300 are the first of a new breed of ultra-portable computers. They won't be the last. Toshiba is offering the Portege R500 ultraportable notebook with a 12-inch screen and a solid-state drive. And, as the prices of the solid-state drives go down, so will the prices of the computers.

As for choice, The Apple is slightly (make that very slightly) smaller and lighter and can be purchased with a cheaper, standard hard drive, while the ThinkPad is much more configurable, and actually better suited to the ultimate road warrior.

Both are costly, but highly recommended.