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I actually switched from 2010 Air to X220 after the 2011 Airs came out. Needed a Windows machine and did not like where Lion was going - with 2011 MBA I would

I actually switched from 2010 Air to X220 after the 2011 Airs came out. Needed a Windows machine and did not like where Lion was going - with 2011 MBA I would have no choice but to run Lion and Windows with half baked support (AHCI, other minor annoyances) The X220 fits the bill - 1) Display is good - it's IPS panel with good viewing angles and great brightness (Make sure you opt for Premium HD display) 2) Battery life is great - 6-7 hrs for regular use is no big deal at all with the normal battery. Go with 9 cell for little extra thickness and you are talking 9 hrs. 3) It is fast even with the 7200RPM HDD - resume from sleep is fastest I've seen for a Windows laptop with regular HDD and pre desktop fingerprint authentication saves you more time. 4) Legendary Thinkpad keyboard - love it! 5) Fast regular voltage i5/i7 CPUs - not undervolted ones. 6) Does not get noisy or hot even under full load - the i7 models throttle a bit more but are still great. 7) Can have 8GB RAM - big deal for me as I run VMs. Not an option with the Air. The only issue really is the tiny trackpad. It gets the job done but is nowhere near the nice big glassy one on the Air. If you were into Linux X220 runs Ubuntu 11.04 great out of box - added benefit.

deleted 15y ago
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sgt 15y ago
I did a search for X220 and found this: http://www.laptopmag.com/review/laptops/lenovo-thinkpad-x220.aspx http://www.laptopmag.com/review/laptops/lenovo-thinkpad-x220... Are you serious? This doesn't look like anything that may compete with Macbook Air in my book. Not to seem too negative, but the overall design is reminiscent of old laptops from the year 2001. (Typical for PC laptop designers).
- blinkingled 15y ago
  Of course in the form/looks department nothing beats the Air so far. But for me if I can get function with form I will go with it. Sacrificing function for form is not a luxury I can afford at the moment :) But the point is - Thinkpads are well built, the x220 is thin if not as thin, and it offers lot of functionality over the Air and even if it doesn't look as flashy it doesn't look that bad - people are used to seeing Thinkpads :) [ I noticed you deleted the running OS X part - if anyone else was wondering - x220 can make a great hackintosh if you swapped the WiFi card - it has an empty mSATA connection if I remember correctly. Apart from that the hardware should be OS X friendly.]
- daniel_solano 15y ago
  Well, it's typical Thinkpad design, and Lenovo doesn't compete based on looks. I suppose if style is the main consideration when purchasing a computer, Apple is hard to beat.
  - bsphil 15y ago
    I'd have a hard time believing that style would be the main consideration if it's going to be a work laptop. Though I suppose to be fair, the OP never specified.
    - glimcat 15y ago
      Style is actually a primary consideration in the design of the Thinkpad line. It's not enough to be reliable, it also has to look reliable. People complaining about the design are often failing to correctly identify the intended user.
- jarek 15y ago
  Do you buy your laptops primarily to look at them, or to use them?
  - zachrose 15y ago
    False dichotomy.
    - jarek 15y ago
      I wasn't trying to imply this is a strictly either-or choice. That's why I said primarily.
      - Terretta 15y ago
        Carrying it about is a primary use. Arguably the primary use.
        jarek 15y ago
        Well, that will depend on the user. In my case, I carry my laptop for probably an hour at most (round trip) and then set it down and use it for 2-3 hours at least.
  - hvass 15y ago
    Do you buy your car to look at it or drive it? Etc, etc, etc...
    - piramida 15y ago
      but if your car looks like a toilet with wheels it is no fun to drive. everything matters, function, form, feeling.
      - jarek 15y ago
        A lot of people hated the most toilet-like car I can think of, the 1998 Fiat Multipla. It still sold a whole lot, and I personally liked it. Making design pronouncements is a tricky business.
- mikeknoop 15y ago
  I actually prefer the Thinkpad design.
  - serge2k 15y ago
    Well the aluminum looks nice, I too prefer the thinkpad design. Don't get all the fuss over the apple look. To me the thinkpad looks very sharp and functional.
- dwc 15y ago
  I'm responding here, because all the responses to this so far qualify and I don't want to single one out. I'd like to address them all. I'd like to point out that chunky and heavy v. thin and light is not all about looking cool. A better comparison would be Thinkpad v. MBP. But since this is about alternatives to the Air, let's assume that thin & light are worth giving up some raw horsepower and perhaps some functionality. If the form factor of the old Kaypro / Compaq luggables were around today you could pack a desktop machine's worth of power into it. If someone looking for a notebook computer was pointed toward one of those and remarked something like the above, I think we'd all agree with them.
- angrycoder 15y ago
  > but the overall design is reminiscent of old laptops from the year 2001 The chunky black plastic is just as much a part of the Thinkpad brand as the unibody is for the Macbooks.
  - andrewcooke 15y ago
    if it's anything like earlier x series, it's actually a cast metal base.
    - jarek 15y ago
      And the lid plastic is slightly rubberized.
- pyre 15y ago
  > This doesn't look like anything that may compete > with Macbook Air in my book > design is reminiscent of old laptops from the year > 2001 1. The age of the design shouldn't necessarily say anything about how good it is. Would you claim that we should just get rid of art museums because everything in them is just 'too old?' 2. The ThinkPad was praised for it's industrial design back in it's day. 3. There are many people that prefer the ThinkPad design over the MBA unibody. 4. If the X220 surpasses the MBA in all aspected except looks, then does it really not compete in your book? Is the design of the laptop so important that you would be willing to pay more for less functionality just for your laptop to look nicer? 5. I don't quite understand how you can reply to someone saying that they went with a X220 due to features that it had that the MBA didn't (and which were important to the poster), with a "it's not even competitive because the design is not pleasing to my eyes." It comes off like this: poster1: I bought a NASCAR because I need to go fast for work. poster2: How could you even claim that a NASCAR is a replacement for a sedan?! The external looks are horrible!
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - georgieporgie 15y ago
    The original question posed was, "any good Macbook Air alternatives?" To me, that implies lightweight, compact, and, yes, elegant. The Thinkpad doesn't appear to be any of those.
    - pyre 15y ago
      Elegant is subjective. It's better to talk about things like specs, issues, OS support, etc, and let people decide on the aesthetics themselves. Arguing over which design is more pleasing on the eye (or elegant) adds nothing to the discussion. The original post suggesting the X220 listed a bunch of specs that it had (and that the poster needed) that the MacBook Air didn't. A response of, "Disregard that the design sucks cocks," adds nothing to the discussion even if that it your personal opinion. If someone thinks that the external looks of the laptop are important, they are not going to just blindly make the purchase based a comment on HN without personally checking it out. The more important discussions are things like: * X is billed as (or looks to be in the surface) a replacement for Y, but once you get it out of the showroom you'll notice issues A, B and C. * X looks really cheap on the surface, but in my experience it's extremely durable. * X looks really good, but doesn't run Operating System Y. * X looks like it runs Operating System Y, until you need to use feature/hardware component Z.
- jdietrich 15y ago
  It's pig ugly, but it's not a bad design, just philosophically different to how Apple work. Apple take their platonic ideal of design - a perfectly smooth pebble of metal and glass - and try and compromise it as little as possible in the process of making it a computer. They're amazingly good at that process, but inevitably face compromises. Lenovo (and IBM before them) build purely for performance and let form follow function. If a bulge in the chassis means a better machine, they put the bulge in the chassis. For example, you'll notice a VGA port on the side. Apple would consider it an unacceptably bulky legacy port. Lenovo fit it because their target market values being able to hook up to a projector without a fragile and easy to lose adapter. There are hundreds of really clever bits of design on a Lenovo, but they're all about Getting Stuff Done. I've alternated between Mac laptops and Thinkpads for as long as I can remember, probably over a decade. They're both the best in their field by a very long way, but they're competing in very different markets based on very different design philosophies.
bergie 15y ago
Not sure of the 2011 MBA, but Linux runs just fine on my 2010 Air. Feels a lot more responsive than OS X, but with somewhat worse battery life.
- blinkingled 15y ago
  I run Linux for kernel development - having to load binary drivers is a strict no-no. So 2010 Air with its nVidia chip wasn't really a choice and when I tried nouveau wasn't really stable (still isn't - RE is hard). With 4GB RAM limit on the Air I couldn't run Linux in the VM comfortably. For the 2011 Air - RAM is still an issue and WiFi card is another one - Broadcom is still working on getting a beta quality OSS driver out. Compared to that x220 on Linux is very well supported.
Argorak 15y ago
The VM/RAM-Problem: We use VMs heavily and have one employee that is really happy with a MacBook AIR with 4GB RAM. On the other hand, we heavily restrict our VMs, so its more usual than not that each only has 512 MB RAM.
sorenbs 15y ago
What do you think about the low resolution of the screen? for that reason alone i am considering the vaio z instead.
- blinkingled 15y ago
  For my eyesight I find 1366x768 more comfortable for a 12.5" screen. But otherwise 1440x900 or above would be better for screen real estate.
deleted 15y ago
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eschulte 15y ago
+1 for x220 8) The nipple mouse in the middle of the keyboard means you never have to take your hands away from home row.
- sjs 15y ago
  Indeed. So awful you will never want to use it and will just use the keyboard instead ;-)
  - smithian 15y ago
    Some people love it. Like me. The pointer never feels quite so much like an extension of my brain with anything other than the nipplemouse.
- mitchty 15y ago
  I've never noticed this to be an issue with mac laptops. You've two thumbs for a reason, I never had much issue using my thumbs on the trackpad.
- fgumo 15y ago
  So true! I've just bought a Thinkpad T420 and the nipple was key in the decission. Once you get used it can't be beaten and not having it is terrible. And the new Lenovo trackpads are also multitouch, not as good as Apple's tough.

deleted 15y ago

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sgt 15y ago

I did a search for X220 and found this: http://www.laptopmag.com/review/laptops/lenovo-thinkpad-x220.aspx http://www.laptopmag.com/review/laptops/lenovo-thinkpad-x220... Are you serious? This doesn't look like anything that may compete with Macbook Air in my book. Not to seem too negative, but the overall design is reminiscent of old laptops from the year 2001. (Typical for PC laptop designers).

blinkingled 15y ago
Of course in the form/looks department nothing beats the Air so far. But for me if I can get function with form I will go with it. Sacrificing function for form is not a luxury I can afford at the moment :) But the point is - Thinkpads are well built, the x220 is thin if not as thin, and it offers lot of functionality over the Air and even if it doesn't look as flashy it doesn't look that bad - people are used to seeing Thinkpads :) [ I noticed you deleted the running OS X part - if anyone else was wondering - x220 can make a great hackintosh if you swapped the WiFi card - it has an empty mSATA connection if I remember correctly. Apart from that the hardware should be OS X friendly.]
daniel_solano 15y ago
Well, it's typical Thinkpad design, and Lenovo doesn't compete based on looks. I suppose if style is the main consideration when purchasing a computer, Apple is hard to beat.
- bsphil 15y ago
  I'd have a hard time believing that style would be the main consideration if it's going to be a work laptop. Though I suppose to be fair, the OP never specified.
  - glimcat 15y ago
    Style is actually a primary consideration in the design of the Thinkpad line. It's not enough to be reliable, it also has to look reliable. People complaining about the design are often failing to correctly identify the intended user.
jarek 15y ago
Do you buy your laptops primarily to look at them, or to use them?
- zachrose 15y ago
  False dichotomy.
  - jarek 15y ago
    I wasn't trying to imply this is a strictly either-or choice. That's why I said primarily.
    - Terretta 15y ago
      Carrying it about is a primary use. Arguably the primary use.
      - jarek 15y ago
        Well, that will depend on the user. In my case, I carry my laptop for probably an hour at most (round trip) and then set it down and use it for 2-3 hours at least.
- hvass 15y ago
  Do you buy your car to look at it or drive it? Etc, etc, etc...
  - piramida 15y ago
    but if your car looks like a toilet with wheels it is no fun to drive. everything matters, function, form, feeling.
    - jarek 15y ago
      A lot of people hated the most toilet-like car I can think of, the 1998 Fiat Multipla. It still sold a whole lot, and I personally liked it. Making design pronouncements is a tricky business.
mikeknoop 15y ago
I actually prefer the Thinkpad design.
- serge2k 15y ago
  Well the aluminum looks nice, I too prefer the thinkpad design. Don't get all the fuss over the apple look. To me the thinkpad looks very sharp and functional.
dwc 15y ago
I'm responding here, because all the responses to this so far qualify and I don't want to single one out. I'd like to address them all. I'd like to point out that chunky and heavy v. thin and light is not all about looking cool. A better comparison would be Thinkpad v. MBP. But since this is about alternatives to the Air, let's assume that thin & light are worth giving up some raw horsepower and perhaps some functionality. If the form factor of the old Kaypro / Compaq luggables were around today you could pack a desktop machine's worth of power into it. If someone looking for a notebook computer was pointed toward one of those and remarked something like the above, I think we'd all agree with them.
angrycoder 15y ago
> but the overall design is reminiscent of old laptops from the year 2001 The chunky black plastic is just as much a part of the Thinkpad brand as the unibody is for the Macbooks.
- andrewcooke 15y ago
  if it's anything like earlier x series, it's actually a cast metal base.
  - jarek 15y ago
    And the lid plastic is slightly rubberized.
pyre 15y ago
> This doesn't look like anything that may compete > with Macbook Air in my book > design is reminiscent of old laptops from the year > 2001 1. The age of the design shouldn't necessarily say anything about how good it is. Would you claim that we should just get rid of art museums because everything in them is just 'too old?' 2. The ThinkPad was praised for it's industrial design back in it's day. 3. There are many people that prefer the ThinkPad design over the MBA unibody. 4. If the X220 surpasses the MBA in all aspected except looks, then does it really not compete in your book? Is the design of the laptop so important that you would be willing to pay more for less functionality just for your laptop to look nicer? 5. I don't quite understand how you can reply to someone saying that they went with a X220 due to features that it had that the MBA didn't (and which were important to the poster), with a "it's not even competitive because the design is not pleasing to my eyes." It comes off like this: poster1: I bought a NASCAR because I need to go fast for work. poster2: How could you even claim that a NASCAR is a replacement for a sedan?! The external looks are horrible!
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- georgieporgie 15y ago
  The original question posed was, "any good Macbook Air alternatives?" To me, that implies lightweight, compact, and, yes, elegant. The Thinkpad doesn't appear to be any of those.
  - pyre 15y ago
    Elegant is subjective. It's better to talk about things like specs, issues, OS support, etc, and let people decide on the aesthetics themselves. Arguing over which design is more pleasing on the eye (or elegant) adds nothing to the discussion. The original post suggesting the X220 listed a bunch of specs that it had (and that the poster needed) that the MacBook Air didn't. A response of, "Disregard that the design sucks cocks," adds nothing to the discussion even if that it your personal opinion. If someone thinks that the external looks of the laptop are important, they are not going to just blindly make the purchase based a comment on HN without personally checking it out. The more important discussions are things like: * X is billed as (or looks to be in the surface) a replacement for Y, but once you get it out of the showroom you'll notice issues A, B and C. * X looks really cheap on the surface, but in my experience it's extremely durable. * X looks really good, but doesn't run Operating System Y. * X looks like it runs Operating System Y, until you need to use feature/hardware component Z.
jdietrich 15y ago
It's pig ugly, but it's not a bad design, just philosophically different to how Apple work. Apple take their platonic ideal of design - a perfectly smooth pebble of metal and glass - and try and compromise it as little as possible in the process of making it a computer. They're amazingly good at that process, but inevitably face compromises. Lenovo (and IBM before them) build purely for performance and let form follow function. If a bulge in the chassis means a better machine, they put the bulge in the chassis. For example, you'll notice a VGA port on the side. Apple would consider it an unacceptably bulky legacy port. Lenovo fit it because their target market values being able to hook up to a projector without a fragile and easy to lose adapter. There are hundreds of really clever bits of design on a Lenovo, but they're all about Getting Stuff Done. I've alternated between Mac laptops and Thinkpads for as long as I can remember, probably over a decade. They're both the best in their field by a very long way, but they're competing in very different markets based on very different design philosophies.

bergie 15y ago

Not sure of the 2011 MBA, but Linux runs just fine on my 2010 Air. Feels a lot more responsive than OS X, but with somewhat worse battery life.

blinkingled 15y ago
I run Linux for kernel development - having to load binary drivers is a strict no-no. So 2010 Air with its nVidia chip wasn't really a choice and when I tried nouveau wasn't really stable (still isn't - RE is hard). With 4GB RAM limit on the Air I couldn't run Linux in the VM comfortably. For the 2011 Air - RAM is still an issue and WiFi card is another one - Broadcom is still working on getting a beta quality OSS driver out. Compared to that x220 on Linux is very well supported.

Argorak 15y ago

The VM/RAM-Problem: We use VMs heavily and have one employee that is really happy with a MacBook AIR with 4GB RAM. On the other hand, we heavily restrict our VMs, so its more usual than not that each only has 512 MB RAM.

sorenbs 15y ago

What do you think about the low resolution of the screen? for that reason alone i am considering the vaio z instead.

blinkingled 15y ago
For my eyesight I find 1366x768 more comfortable for a 12.5" screen. But otherwise 1440x900 or above would be better for screen real estate.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

eschulte 15y ago

+1 for x220 8) The nipple mouse in the middle of the keyboard means you never have to take your hands away from home row.

sjs 15y ago
Indeed. So awful you will never want to use it and will just use the keyboard instead ;-)
- smithian 15y ago
  Some people love it. Like me. The pointer never feels quite so much like an extension of my brain with anything other than the nipplemouse.
mitchty 15y ago
I've never noticed this to be an issue with mac laptops. You've two thumbs for a reason, I never had much issue using my thumbs on the trackpad.
fgumo 15y ago
So true! I've just bought a Thinkpad T420 and the nipple was key in the decission. Once you get used it can't be beaten and not having it is terrible. And the new Lenovo trackpads are also multitouch, not as good as Apple's tough.