Intel® Core™

Apply may have beaten Lenovo to market with MacBook Air by a month, but the ThinkPad X300 will be more than a worthy contestant in the ultraslim notebook wars.

Building the Perfect Laptop
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_08/b4072042350389.htm

It was the first time Hortensius and Cohen had seen the final prototype. Hortensius lifted the machine. "I love this," he said. Early on, he had told the engineers in Yamato he wanted it made lighter, and they had found ways. Kodachi was originally specified at 3.4 pounds. It came in at 3.1. The version without a DVD drive weighed just 2.9 pounds. "This tells people we can do better," Hortensius said later. "It tells me we haven't reached the end of innovation in notebooks."

The Apple Air scare came a few days later. The Lenovo people had heard rumors that Apple had an ultraslim notebook in the works, but they weren't sure whether the speculation was true. By then, Kodachi was in "launch phase," on a relentless march to completion. The main supplier of the solid-state drive had not been able to fix its problems in time, so Lenovo had switched at the last minute to the backup supplier, which came through in the pinch. On Jan. 25, manufacturing started in Shenzhen. Lenovo plans on officially unveiling the X300 on Feb. 26.