David Flynn26 February 2008, 2:58 AM
Lenovo's super-svelte ThinkPad isn't as slim or light as the positively anorexic MacBook Air, but it could be a superior ultra-portable - especially if you turn it into a 'Hackintosh' system running OS X!
It's hard not to be drawn in by the MacBook Air, but imagine making it a better notebook. What if you wanted to create not the world's thinnest notebook, but the world's best super-thin notebook? (There's a crucial difference, and that difference was essentially dictated by Steve Jobs' ego).
Imagine listing the Air's most common critiques and then fixing them all - ticking them off, one by one. We reckon you'd end up with something pretty damned close to Lenovo's Thinkpad X300, which will be launched to the Australian IT media tomorrow evening at the NSW Art Gallery.
 Kodachi: Honourable Japanese short sword for slicing dishonourable enemies into wafer-thin sashimi |
(The connection? It's not so much that the X300 is indeed a work of art, at least from an engineering perspective, but that the gallery's Asian Art exhibit includes one of the short Japanese swords known as the Kodachi, which happens to be the code-name for the X300).
As previously reported, the 13.3in ThinkPad X300 will see Lenovo raise the ante in the ultra-thin laptop stakes. Lenovo is unlikely to offer a head-to-head with the MacBook Air, but then there are those cheeky shots of the X300 sitting atop an inter-office envelope, just like another ultra-thin notebook that was recently launched...
The X300 can't match the bulimic bantamweight form of the MacBook Air, but then something's got to give a little if you want a DVD drive, Ethernet port, expandable RAM, a use-replaceable battery (especially if you can get a swappable second battery to boost the time between refills to eight hours), optional mobile broadband via HSDPA, and more than one solitary USB port.
But could you add all those features without seriously bulking up the box? Yes, and the X300 is proof.
Some might draw a closer comparison to the MacBook Pro, although this is also a case of swings and roundabouts. The MacBook Pro is the more muscle-bound of the pair, with full-throttle Core 2 Duo processors from 2.2GHz to 2.6GHz rather than the X300's 1.2GHz low voltage Core 2 Duo ‘mini-Merom' (officially it's the Intel SL7100 LV), which is a 60% shrink of Intel's off-the-shelf Merom mobile processor. And the MacBook Pro will almost certainly sprint further ahead within the next few weeks, based on a rumoured impending upgrade to the fresh-baked 45nm ‘Penryn' notebook superslab.
That said, the ThinkPad X300 certainly wins out in size - its profile tapers from 2.35cm to 1.86cm from wedge-to-edge against the MacBook Pro's 2.6cm, and at 1.4kg the X300 is almost 1kg lighter than Apple's sleek silver beast. Add the solid state drive (albeit only 64GB) and options for HSDPA and second battery, and things are looking sweet for Lenovo.
But perhaps the most significant factor in the X300's favour is its footprint. Apple has steadfastly refused to produce a sub-15.4in version of the MacBook Pro, perhaps feeling that this would eat into the sales of its popular 13.3in MacBook. Having learned its lesson from the hydra-like product lines of the mid-90s, which returning messiah Steve Jobs pared back to a simpler set, Apple is today incredibly savvy at differentiation: separating and scaling its products so that there are natural landing points for almost any customer, coupled with enticing one-step-up paths that substantially boost feature set, ticket price and profit margin.
 Black beauty: The black finish and classic 'Bento box' styling of the Thinkpad isn't to everyone's taste, but it looks far better than most laptops from the world of Windows |
Anyway, no matter which Mac you set as Apple's benchmark, there's an awful lot to like about the ThinkPad X300. But of course, one feature would send Apple fans shrieking and running like vampires from a crucifix-carrying garlic salesman at high noon. That 'feature' is the bundled OS.
No matter than you can nominate XP or Vista - for many folk, and not just the die-hard Macolytes, this is still a second-rate choice compared to Mac OS X.
This writer is one who'd happily embrace an X300 running Mac OS X. I've owned several ThinkPads and delighted in them every time. Yet I've had few fond glances back at the world of Windows since switching to the Mac (specifically, a MacBook) as my full-time working and writing machine. So what if they could be combined?
What if the X300 could be transformed, indeed transfigured, from a Windows notebook to a ‘Hackintosh' - a standard PC running Apple's shiny OS?
It's certainly do-able, thanks to ongoing work on what's called the OSx86 project. This can employ a standard OS X install DVD and an install patch, or a pre-patched installer image containing a modified version of the OS.
The current OS X 10.5 Leopard has already succumbed to Team Hackintosh, although installation isn't always easy. Happily there are several online tutorials, active discussion forums and wikis to ease your path to creating the Air's heir apparent.
 Hackintosh: OS X meets Dell (or any other off-the-shelf PC system you care to name) |
The legality of the hybrid Hackintosh is a curious thing. Apple hasn't set their lawyers onto anyone (at least, not that we've heard of). Indeed, the licence for OS X itself is a bit vague and open to interpretation, specifically the note that "this license allows you to install and use one copy of the Apple Software on a single Apple-labelled computer at a time".
Not a computer made by Apple, but an ‘Apple-labelled' computer - a computer bearing a label that says ‘Apple'. This could arguably be considered to include an Apple sticker or even a Dymo label bearing the word ‘Apple'!