Macbook Air vs. Just leaked Thinkpad x300

[Tosser]

I just switched back to a Mac laptop because of the Air.

Odd, because you strike me a through-and-through Mac user:

If battery life is the main concern... then maybe. Otherwise the MBA will be a way less frustrating experience.

The reason I quote that is that there could be other reasons for choosing the X300 over the Airbook, why don't you mention them? I don't get that. To me, that makes your statement about being a PC consultant rather suspicious. Unless, of course, "consultant" simply means "sales man" – quite a difference.

Anyway, let's see if we can find other "main concerns":

Matte screen: A definate plus for a pro – especially if working with pictures (I'm not, I just do audio). I will not buy a computer with a glossy screen – especially not a laptop.

Better keyboard: If I were to write a lot, I might choose the one with the best keyboard, no? That, to me, is the Thinkpad.

Or how about WWAN/Wimax? You see, as there are no expansion ports on the MBA, one might quickly run out of options for this sort of thing on the MBA. Some people (at least around here) actually use those things to get work done.

Or, how about someone using an app that needs a dongle (some of us do) or otherwise need more than one USB port. With the Airbook, you're pretty lost. Perhaps that could very well be yet another "main concern".

Another "main concern" [sigh! It seems endless], could be someone who actully needs to burn or run a cd from time to time, but are not willing to take the weight penalty and clutter offered with the "solution" from Apple (i.e. external).

I think, that with all those "main concerns", one could easily turn your pseudo argument around and say "If your main concern is watching movies (which looks best on a glossy screen, I admit), or your main concern is having a backlit keyboard and having a place to plug your iPod into", then the MBA is the computer for you.

Having owned about 8 ultraportable (3 lb or less) Windows based laptops (all without integrated optical) I can honestly say this MBA is the nicest, best built, easiest to use laptop.

Sorry, but if my experiences with apple's hardware in the last four years or so is anything to go by, the build quality leaves much to be desired. Yes, they look nice and they run my favourite OS, but that's about it. But then again, they're silver. Boy, am I tired of anodised aluminium …

Lenovo is not bad, but that ULV processor will make it slow!

Propably. But to many people it will be much more useful than the MBA: the MBA may have a quicker processor (as far as we know), but it packs nothing. Most people can get their work done on a little slower computer, but many won't be able to get started, if they can't plug in, or otherwise are inhibited.

 

[ctt1wbw]

Wimax is a gimmic. If you get a certain one running under a certain brand, then that company rapes you with the rates, or goes under... what then?

 

[Roba]

Actually after reading more things on the X300 online i don't think that Lenovo will be using the ULV processors in the x300 notebook it appears that it will be using the LV voltage processors.

The 4GB of ram and the 5400 rpm HD will help to improve the speed of this laptop.
A 1.2ghz LV processor will be fine for the majority of users. The MBA uses a L voltage processor. The LV processors and the ULV voltage processors draw less power and therefore should extend battery life.

The TZ is an ultraportable laptop designed with battery life in mind.

The ULV 1.2 CPU is an absolute deal breaker. For those that had never used the Sony TZ with the 1.2, let me tell you it is very slow. There is a massive difference between the ULV and LV chips wen it comes to performance.

If battery life is the main concern... then maybe. Otherwise the MBA will be a way less frustrating experience.

On the question of whether people care about their OS, my experience as a computer consultant this past year has proven that people DO care.

I hear from users both business and personal... Will it have Vista? I hear Vista is really bad and slow with lot of problems. Lets just stick with XP. Also, I would guess that I now have about 20 percent more Mac OSX using customers just in this past year then in the last 10 years.

I just switched back to a Mac laptop because of the Air. Having owned about 8 ultraportable (3 lb or less) Windows based laptops (all without integrated optical) I can honestly say this MBA is the nicest, best built, easiest to use laptop.

Lenovo is not bad, but that ULV processor will make it slow!

Kind of disjointed statements, but I am giving my thoughts on a lot of points made in the last 7 pages.

 

[Tosser]

Wimax is a gimmic. If you get a certain one running under a certain brand, then that company rapes you with the rates, or goes under... what then?

Hmm, that depends where in the world you are. But are you saying it's a bad idea to give the consumer the choice whether he consider a given rate "rape"?

You could say the same thing with basically anything new. And with that argument, howcome it's okay to pay a 1000 US$ for a horrendously slow SSD in the Airbook, or pay through your nose for an iPhone (both up front and for the expensive 2.5G rates)?
Boy, has apple found their sweet spot when it comes to their utmost loyal customers: You can peddle them anything, even high rates, as long as they believe that modern technology and consumer's choice is bad. And a lot – weirdly enough – does. It's the new lowest common denominator: Buy a crippled product at high rates. We guarantee it cannot do what other products can do. It's a sale!! I never thought the distortion field was that strong.

On the other hand, people still believe that Apple's hardware is "excellent quality".

 

[BongoBanger]

Zero. This is a different stat.

Super. You'll note that I mention it's a moot point because it still only means 5 million people upgraded their OS from a yearly sales population of over 270 million. That would be, what, about 2%. Hell, let's add in the Vista upgrades (say 10 million?) and that brings it up to 6% of the market sales for a year.

Whee!

Again, what part of 'most' are you having difficulty with?

Nope. 2.1M new units sold over same period. This makes it the majority, and means there is a large segment that care about the OS.

No, it may make it the majority of Mac Users - most of whom probably do care about their OS - whereas most Windows user - who largely don't and who make up the majority of the purchases - didn't.

So, as far as PC users - which includes Macs and Windows units - go most really don't care about their OS. Perhaps I should have explicitly mentioned that I was talking about the global PC population but, you know, I thought that might have been obvious.

Guess I overestimated you.

Thanks for making my point.

LOL!

Your point was "people don't give a toss about OS."

Oh dear, no. What I said was:

"most people don't give a toss about what OS they use"

Care to have a stab at what the key word in that sentence is? Or would you rather keep painting yourself into a corner?

But you are correct, that people do upgrade their OS for new features. Whether it is in the same family of OS was not your nor my point.

You're right. My point is that the vast majority of people stick with the original OS they get on the unit they buy.

I'll ignore the rest since you so nicely made my point right here. Thanks for saving me the time to read of the rest.

I would have settled for you actually reading my first post properly as it would have saved you from trying to look like a smart arse when you replied - something you failed miserably at.

Thank you for giving me permission. You are one class act.

Only in comparison, sport.

 

[BWhaler]

The actual specs are comical:

800 Mhz single core processes. 800 mhz???
3.13 - 3.51 pounds
1gig memory standard
1 hour less battery life than MBA.
larger cubic space
No DVI out
Runs Windows (the real killer)

(And ugly as sin to boot...)

I'm saying it's better or worse--depends on your needs--but it is funny how the real deal is nowhere near the hype.

 

[Roba]

I thought the weight was 2.93lbs without optical drive and the standard battery it weighs 3.13lbs with optical drive and standard battery. The MBA weighs 3.7lbs with optical drive.

It will also be using a core 2 duo procesor a LV one and not a core solo processor.

The standard battery is a 3 or a 4 cell battery for the x300. The standard battery for the MBA is a 6 cell battery that is rated at around 5800mah. If you want to do a like for like comparsion you will need to compare the MBA battery life with a 6 cell extended battery that is also aviable for this model. If you do this the battery life given is actually better than that given for the MBA. In fact Lenovo state up to 6 hours 50 minutes battery life for this model with the extended battery.

I am not to sure about the ram but the ram is user upgradeable and ram is not so expensive to buy anymore.
http://usera.imagecave.com/picturesmac/2x300.jpg

The actual specs are comical:

800 Mhz single core processes. 800 mhz???
3.13 - 3.51 pounds
1gig memory standard
1 hour less battery life than MBA.
larger cubic space
No DVI out
Runs Windows (the real killer)

(And ugly as sin to boot...)

I'm saying it's better or worse--depends on your needs--but it is funny how the real deal is nowhere near the hype.

 

[ruutiveijari]

3.13 - 3.51 pounds
1 hour less battery life than MBA.

Actually it has THREE choices when it comes to battery life.

At 3.13 lbs (3 cell battery) it's 4.3 hrs
At 3.32 lbs (6 cell battery) it's 6.5 hrs
At 3.51 lbs (6 + 3 cell battery) it's 10 hours

http://www.engadget.com/photos/secrets-of-the-thinkpad-x300-what-walt-didnt-tell-you/

 

[ctt1wbw]

Hmm, that depends where in the world you are. But are you saying it's a bad idea to give the consumer the choice whether he consider a given rate "rape"?

You could say the same thing with basically anything new. And with that argument, howcome it's okay to pay a 1000 US$ for a horrendously slow SSD in the Airbook, or pay through your nose for an iPhone (both up front and for the expensive 2.5G rates)?
Boy, has apple found their sweet spot when it comes to their utmost loyal customers: You can peddle them anything, even high rates, as long as they believe that modern technology and consumer's choice is bad. And a lot – weirdly enough – does. It's the new lowest common denominator: Buy a crippled product at high rates. We guarantee it cannot do what other products can do. It's a sale!! I never thought the distortion field was that strong.

On the other hand, people still believe that Apple's hardware is "excellent quality".

No, I'm talking cell phone carriers raping you with charges. What if the rate is one set price, then they raise it 20% and you decide to cancel? Then you're stuck.

 

[Tosser]

No, I'm talking cell phone carriers raping you with charges. What if the rate is one set price, then they raise it 20% and you decide to cancel? Then you're stuck.

I know – As I said, it depends where you are in the world. Here they cannot just raise it like that. Besides, noone is forcing you to use it. I am saying that it's good if it's there, and that it's better to let the customer choose, rather than saying what you're saying: Concluding that that hypothetical scenario you're describing is worse than saying to the customers (of the hardware manufacturer) "Sorry, you cannot have X, Y and/or Z hardware, because we thought it better to NOT give you a choice on the off-chance that some phone company where you live might rip you off."

I don't know if I'm making it clear enough, but you ARE saying - if parallelled to the iPhone - "no, people shouldn't be able to buy a 3G one, because AT&T might screw people over", or, if how about the internet? Some places, there is a de facto (and some places a real) monopoly. Should they then be denied access to that too, on the basis that someone might raise prices, forcing you to stop the subscription? It's endless. You can use your argument to halt anything and everything. How about insurance? "No, sorry, Sir. We have made a law against insurance, because the companies might raise prices so some people cannot afford them" (i.e. health care "over there"). Noone buying that Lenovo is forced onto a given carrier. It's your choice – you can choose one, or you can choose not to. It appears Jobs & Co have pruned you well.

I guess though, that you have to go to extremes to make it look like it's "looking after their (apple) customers, when _not_ offering any of those features". It's the bloody reality distortion field over again – only this time, you're really twisting it into a whole new shape.

ADD: Let me feed it to you with spoons: You're not "stuck", because you suddenly don't have a wwan subscription to some carrier. Then it's just another laptop, with the _option_ to choose a carrier of you liking. And that without having to use the only USB-port for a dongle. It's not the bloody iPhone. Noone is getting you "stuck" anywhere. Besides Apple, of course.

That ought to have cleaned it up.

 

[em500]

The actual specs are comical:
800 Mhz single core processes. 800 mhz???

That's the speed of the front side bus.

 

[em500]

Businessweek has a nice glimpse behind the scenes of the X300 development, and how nervous they were about getting upstaged by Apple .

A revealing tidbit is that internally Lenovo projects only 60,000-130,000 sales in the first year. The Air will probably do much better than that. The X300 is even more of a prestige project than the Air is. This is mainly due to their decision to go SSD-only (which is the biggest reason for the $2500+ starting price).

 

[ruutiveijari]

This is mainly due to their decision to go SSD-only (which is the biggest reason for the $2500+ starting price).

http://www.engadget.com/photos/secrets-of-the-thinkpad-x300-what-walt-didnt-tell-you/641839/

According to that link there's also going to be an option for a 120GB HDD (5400RPM).

 

[Tosser]

Businessweek has a nice glimpse behind the scenes of the X300 development, and how nervous they were about getting upstaged by Apple .

A revealing tidbit is that internally Lenovo projects only 60,000-130,000 sales in the first year. The Air will probably do much better than that. The X300 is even more of a prestige project than the Air is. This is mainly due to their decision to go SSD-only (which is the biggest reason for the $2500+ starting price).

Excellent article, that one! Very well written (as it should be, of course).

 

[BWhaler]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4A93 Safari/419.3)

still only runs windows.

Still ugly as sin.

 

[Virgil-TB2]

The Thinkpad is better in nearly every way. Hopefully the second gen MacBook Air will be similar to this. Of course, it will be funny to hear Jobs try to explain why they were "wrong" about omitting the optical drive.

Well actually the ThinkPad is only *slightly* better in *most* ways. We are talking fractions of inches and ounces of weight. The ThinkPad is actually both heavier and thicker than the Air, despite what has been said above. It's also supposed to be quite a bit more expensive.

Additionally, ever since it went to Lenovo, the legendary ThinkPad quality has declined by a huge amount. Expect this thing to heat up like a Soviet rocket and have the build quality to match.

 

[Tosser]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4A93 Safari/419.3)

still only runs windows.

Well, when out in the field, and you need more than one USB port, or you need to have a functioning computer for more than 3-3,5 hours, or you need to connect to ethernet and so on, at least you can –*and all at the same time, no less.

Still ugly as sin.

Matter of taste. Black will always be the colour everything is measured against. Black will always be the classic colour. How many times have you heard "XYZ is the new black"? Well, I'll let in on a secret: It never is.

Further, to counter your taste, as that is the only thing it is: I am well and truly tired of anodised silver aluminium. It looks cheap. And with Apple's build quality it has even begun feeling cheap with things creaking, not fitting entirely, warping and what have you.
I'll prefer a Land Rover Defender over a Miyata any day I'm going "off road".

 

[Tosser]

Well actually the ThinkPad is only *slightly* better in *most* ways. We are talking fractions of inches and ounces of weight. The ThinkPad is actually both heavier and thicker than the Air, despite what has been said above.

Yes, your right. There are only those two parameters to deciding which one is the better computer.

It's also supposed to be quite a bit more expensive.

You're cheating on the scales – at best. THe fact is, the Thinkpad is cheaper if compared like for like. If you take the SSD-version of the Airbook and compare it to the SSD-Thinkpad, the Thinkpad comes out a winner. The thinkpad is cheaper.

Additionally, ever since it went to Lenovo, the legendary ThinkPad quality has declined by a huge amount.

Well, from the "insight" you have just shown you have in the rest of the post, I will take that as an opinion with no bearing on reality or experience as well.

Expect this thing to heat up like a Soviet rocket and have the build quality to match.

As I figured: No insight what so ever. Just spewing nonsense.

 

[turkeydog]

I guess everyone quoting the macbook air prices forgot to realize that the lenovo is packing a solid state drive. That brings the MBA price up to $3000, suddenly not a great bargain.... but it looks pretty, right... that's the most important part.

 

[turkeydog]

seems like tosser beat me to the punchline

 

[mhaas]

I guess everyone quoting the macbook air prices forgot to realize that the lenovo is packing a solid state drive. That brings the MBA price up to $3000, suddenly not a great bargain.... but it looks pretty, right... that's the most important part.

Its not the most important part, for most here the most important part here is the OS, yes the thinkpad is a great package, I would probably go for the Sony Vaio TZ21 - if, if it came with OS X!!!

 

[mhaas]

....Expect this thing to heat up like a Soviet rocket and have the build quality to match.

Wow, that was a nice compliment! Russian rockets are the best ones in the world, at least the most reliable, without them the ISS would have to be closed down...

 

[ctt1wbw]

Wow, that was a nice compliment! Russian rockets are the best ones in the world, at least the most reliable, without them the ISS would have to be closed down...

Sorry, the words Russian and reliable should never, ever be used in the same sentence. Take it from someone who studied the Russian military for 14 years. The only two things that the Russians have that are worth their weight in gold are the Akula II SSNs and the Su-37 Flankers. Everything else is garbage.

 

[mhaas]

You are funny

I am not saying that everything made in Russia is reliable. But the rockets that supply the spacestation are more reliable than the space shuttle, that is a statistical proven fact! If it were not for those rockets the ISS would not be supplied. How often was the space shuttle grounded for months and months, because of some leak or another in the last few years? In this time the old and trusty rockets went up as always

 

[BongoBanger]

Sorry, the words Russian and reliable should never, ever be used in the same sentence. Take it from someone who studied the Russian military for 14 years. The only two things that the Russians have that are worth their weight in gold are the Akula II SSNs and the Su-37 Flankers. Everything else is garbage.

*cough*AK-47*cough*