The "Holy Grail"

You guys that read this halfway regularly know that I love technology, but especially computers and cameras. So, I get pretty excited about lots of stuff: iPods, the Android phones, iPads, most anything Sony, pretty much any "small" computer (as long as its not a Netbook). However, every once in a while, something comes along that hits you right square between the eyes!

I remember when the MacBook Air came out, I thought that the concept was as close to perfectly executed as I'd seen in some time. The form-factor was virtually ideal. I've always loved the 13.3" screen size and that footprint married to something that thin was just mouth-watering. However, there were the few little things that bothered me about it: the ONE USB port, and something that sized that didn't have an optical drive was just going to be a deal-breaker! Yes, I understand how thin and cool it was, but I already have something almost as thin, just as light and DIDN'T have an optical drive in my ThinkPad X41.

Then within a month of the "Air's" introduction, Lenovo came out with the ThinkPad X300. THIS WAS IT! Almost as thin as the "Air", on-board optical drive (DVD Multi-Drive), LED backlit screen with the higher 1440 x 900 resolution and a 64Gb SSD! Holy Cow it was just impossibly perfect....with the exception of the out-of-this-world price of $3000+!!! So it might was well have been made of Unobtainium.
Fast-forward 2 years and lets look at how something like this fits into the Frugal Propellerhead's budget. I've been working on 2 different laptop computers; one a ThinkPad T43p mobile workstation which I bought for $250, but was worth about $100 more, the other a ThinkPad X41 complete with UltraBase and 32Gb SSD worth about $350 or so. That comes out to about $700 and amazingly, I came across an X300 on eBay that sold for about $655 3 weeks ago. Right around this same time, I friend called up looking for a machine spec'd like my T43p at the $300 price-point.

The rest is obvious and with a little bit of luck added (that machine that "sold" for $655 didn't go through and I got it for $667 the following week). Sold the T43p for $325 and now I just have to sell the X41 and I will have flipped my 2 older machines into one that still has a year of warranty left to go. If you've never seen and/or held one of these things, you owe it to yourself to go down to Micro Center and just pick it up (the current X301 that is). There's just no way that:

1. It's that thin!
2. It's that light with a 13.3" widescreen on it!
3. Anything that thin and light can feel that solid, open or closed!

As they say in Batman- POW!!!