I met with some people with Lenovo yesterday – they’re on campus to talk about some models that are currently shipping or planned for the future… of course, they had a bunch of existing models from the T and X series, along with an X300 in tow.

Oh. My. God.

I’m so glad that I left my credit card back at the office…

I have to say that I was just as impressed with the X300 as I was with the MacBook Air. Some people have already told me that since moving to an Air that everything else feels like a brick – perception is funny like that. I picked up the X300 – if felt… good. Solid. As light as the X61’s we have in the office… lighter than the X6 docking station. Thicker than the Air? Yes, but my eyes instantly went to the DVD drive and removable batter. For a Geek, those are things I care about – consumers may not.

The SSD hardware? It was nice. I’ll openly admit it: it felt very weird and yet empowering to not hear a hard drive clicking around in there. Enough to justify the price difference? I don’t know… for some reason, I’m a little leery on any new technology that relates to persistent storage… maybe gen 2.

Ports? It has them. Two USB on the side, one in the back. Also on the back were the LAN port and WiFi switch. First thought when I saw the WiFi switch back there: “Really? It must be a prototype. Wait, really, it’s not?” I love the fact that it’s back there. Let’s face it: the WiFi switch is for piece of mind, to prove to airline personnel that you turned WiFi off, right? To put it in front of the machine invites accidental switching… never would have stopped to think about it before but now I love the idea.

Screen? Very good. Excellent resolution.

Battery life? No frame of reference – didn’t have it for a full power cycle.

Keyboard/mouse: just as good as my T61p, T60p, and T41. I even did what they did with the ThinkVantage and power button (they glow) and they fact that they put the speakers down front, in the wrist rest.

Why don’t I have one? PCMCIA/ExpressCard/SmartCardReader. For corporate reasons, I need a machine that uses a smartcard reader. For that, it has to be a built in feature. There’s nothing more annoying than having to carry an extra wire for a notebook, for a feature that’s been available to me for years… in some of the T series, you can get a reader in place of a slot – I’m totally fine with that in this scenario. The only two things that I’ve used either PCMCIA or ExpressCard for in the last 6-8 years is for either a smartcard reader or an E-SATA card. And the latter is something I can definitely live without going forward… the card reader though – that’s a big hole.

Of course if the price drops below $2K soon, then I could forgive them that too *g*