Lenovo unveils X300 ultra portable laptop

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Lenovo, the PC maker that acquired the desktop and laptop PC division of IBM in 2005, has announced its latest ultra lightweight Thinkpad, the X300.

The company launched the new computer in Paris today, amid claims that the X300 will offer a battery life of up to 10 hours, by using a combination of an optional 6-cell battery, and a 3-cell battery that can fit in the removable optical drive bay.

The X300 has a starting weight of only 1.33Kg, yet contains a full 13.3in WXGA+ (1,440 x 900) resolution display and an optical drive. This puts it in direct competition with the much hyped Apple MacBook Air, which eschews both to obtain its 1.36Kg load.

David McQuarrie, executive director for Lenovo's European laptop business, was quick to highlight the perceived benefits over the MacBook Air.

"We are targeting a different segment. It's thin, it's light, it's stylish, yet it has great battery life, giving you all day power. This is a unique and important distinction. If you have as your objective maximising the uptime of your team then this is an important step forward."

The X300 is also rated Gold by the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT), the first Lenovo machine to do so.

"If you go back a year ago, there was zero talk about this kind of thing. We are demonstrating leadership in this regard," added McQuarrie.

The X300 employs an LED backlight for its screen, and at launch is only available with an 64GB solid state disk (SSD) hard drive. McQuarrie says that this is a deliberate move to drive forward the adoption of SSDs in the market. "We are at the tipping point where they will enter the mass market. The have quality, speed, and energy benefits, and the cost will only drop. You need to force adoption, by getting sufficient volume into the market."

The processor is low voltage 1.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo SL7100, which is slower that the 1.6GHz processor inside the MacBook Air. Answering criticism of this choice, McQuarrie revealed: "Beyond 1.2 gives us power, heat, energy consumption issues that we just don't want. It's enough for the target market."

The X300 will retail for £1,700 exc VAT.

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