Video overview of Lenovo’s X301 notebook
I just caught Warner’s InkShow that covers the Lenovo X301 "thin-and-light" notebook. I’m very impressed not just by how thin it is, but by how thin it can be and still have that optical drive that so many people need. I love the super-slim extended battery that replaces the optical drive slot for more juice as well. Warner raves about the speed and performance based on the 64 GB SSD drive, 2 GB of RAM and 1.4 GHz Core 2 Duo processor.
The only early indicator I could get from watching the video was the boot time for Windows Vista: I clocked it at 67 seconds before the desktop appeared. Again, I’m less interested in boot times for mobile devices as I use Sleep mode far more often than completely shutting down and rebooting later. Warner shows that scenario with the X301 but the device doesn’t exactly cooperate. I won’t hold it against the X301… I’ve had my share of devices getting shy when on camera too! 
Looking forward to Warner’s thoughts and experiences with the X301 in greater detail but I don’t think I’ll be springing for one. These guys start around $2,600 and go up from there.
Thanks for the shout out, Kevin. Those camera shy devices are something else aren’t they?
This is one sweet thin and light notebook. After watching Warner’s video I went to the Lenovo site for grins to build one of these puppies to check pricing. Wow! I chose the 128GB SSD option and 3 GB of memory. I threw in the optical drive that Warner showed in his video and then I stopped as the price was over $3,400! Ouch, that’s some pricey sweet tech. I noted that there are two primary battery options, 3-cell and 6-cell and that sweet second battery that Warner showed that fits in the optical drive space is a 3-cell. There is no way you can order both the optical drive and the 2nd battery that I could see.
OK, to be fair I tried building a model just like the one Warner showed. I put 2 GB of memory, 64GB SSD, optical drive and 3-cell battery. That comes to $2920, still pretty pricey. Note that also doesn’t snag you that nice drive bay battery either.