APPLE GAMBLED WITH THE MACBOOK AIR by making it so thin that it can not contain an optical drive. It assumed there would be no need for one. WiFi will take care of data transfer.
Major miscalculation! Consumers are not ready to live without an optical player and burner, even if they barely use them.
Lenovo understood that very clearly when it designed the ThinkPad X300. It will feature an ultrathin DVD burner and three USB drives. MacBook Air has only one.
The ThinkPad X300 is heavier than the MacBook Air by only 59 g with the optical drive. This is really negligible. The X300 weighs actually 1.32 kg (2.93 lb) without the burner, whereas MacBook Air weighs 1.36 kg (3 lb).
As for the thickness the MacBook Air is 4 mm thinner than the ThinkPad X300. There is no doubt that MacBook Air impresses by its slimness.
Both laptops have a 13.3-inch LED-backlit display and use lithium-polymer battery.
The ThinkPad X300 is powered by Intel’s Core 2 Duo SL7100 LV low-voltage chip, operating at 1.2GHz, whereas MacBook Air Core 2 Duo processor runs at 1.6 or 1.8 GHz. The X300 chip consumes 12 W compared to 20W for Mac. This means that the Lenovo will produce less heat and has a longer battery life (about 10 hrs).
Another positive point for the Lenovo X300 is that it can support up to 4 GB SDRAM compared to 2 GB for Mac Air.
With a price of $2,799 the ThinkPad X300 is way more expensive than the MacBook Air, which starts at $1,799. Price wise the ThinkPad X300 has boxed itself out of the ring.
Apple’s challenge is to produce a second version of MacBook Air with an optical drive, e.g a BluRay burner, without increasing its thickness and increasing its hard drive capacity to 250 GB. Then the MacBook Air might appeal to a lot more consumers.
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