While there’s little denying the aesthetic and technical appeal of Apple’s popular MacBook computer range, that doesn’t mean that manufacturers, such as China-based Lenovo, aren’t going to offer up tempting alternatives.
Lenovo offers up a challenger against Apple\'s MacBook Air ultrathin notebook. Credit: Lenovo.
In this case, the Apple product facing stiff competition is the ultra light and thin MacBook Air, while Lenovo’s challenger arrives in the form of the new ThinkPad X300 ultra-portable notebook.
And, in terms of physical weight and certain core specifications, the basic ThinkPad X300 model manages to surpass Apple’s undeniably sexy notebook in a like-for-like comparison run by tech site PC World.
Specifically, the ThinkPad weighs in at 2.93 pounds, while the MacBook Air is a rounded 3 pounds. Lenovo’s hardware also offers up three USB drives and an ultra-thin DVD burner, while the MacBook Air has only one USB drive and is without an optical drive.
The diminutive MacBook Air wins out in thickness sizing however, as the ThinkPad arrives as 1.85cm at its thinnest point and 2.34cm at its thickest. Comparatively, Apple’s notebook is an outrageously slender 0.4cm at its thinnest point and 1.93cm at its thickest.
Other features of note that help the ThinkPad X300 shine include a 64GB SSD, a 13.3-inch LED-backlit display screen and the improved efficiency of a lithium-polymer battery, which can provide usage benefits of up to 25 percent less power consumption than previous editions in the ThinkPad range.
The (still) sleek ThinkPad X300 comes with Intel Corp.’s low voltage 1.2GHz Core 2 Duo SL7100 LV processor (65nm), which has been specially shrunk by Intel to make it 60 percent smaller than conventional processors in the chipmaker’s Merom line. The low-voltage chip leaves the ThinkPad X300 requiring just 12 watts of power, while the MacBook Air needs 20 watts operating through 1.6GHz and 1.8GHz.
The ThinkPad X300 also supports up to 4GB of RAM and sports an integrated graphics solution, an onboard digital camera, touchpad and trackpoint scrolling, wired and wireless networking, and either Windows XP Pro or Windows Vista operating systems. The upcoming introduction of Intel Centrino technology should also usher in the arrival of WiMax.
Of course, such specs, style and functionality doesn’t come cheap, and prices for the ThinkPad X300 open at a piggybank-crippling $2,799 USD. How much do you want one? More than the MacBook Air? Really?
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