I arrived home today from our St. Louis trip to find a nice surprise - an evaluation Lenovo X300 Ultra-Portable Notebook.

Being the true geek that I am, I stopped dead in my tracks to take pictures, comparing it to the Lenovo X61 Tablet PC. You can expect a lot more over the coming weeks on the X300. We've got it for several months.

My first impressions:

• Very light and thin. Feels almost 25% lighter than the X61. It is much thinner, especially along the front.
• It doesn't have the same "sexiness" as the MacBook Air, but the extra USB ports, integrated WWAN, integrated CD drive, and user replaceable battery make up for it. I played with a MacBook Air this week at an Apple store and would have bought one had I had the money. Honestly, I'd likely go for the X300 instead due to extra flexibility - but, that MacBook felt sooooo nice to hold.
• It boots up really fast. Sorry, no times yet.
• No slot for dock on the bottom
• 1440 x 900 resolution is really nice and bright
• Lenovo has done a fantastic job with the X300. Feels good.
• When can we expect something similar for the X61? I'd love to see something just like this with Tablet PC functionality

More later. Enjoy the pictures below ( after the read more link ), which are of the X300 and the X61. Click them to view higher res shots.

Side view, cd drive	Back: power, vga, ethernet, wireless switch, USB
Back right	Back left
Right side, cd rom	Left side: 2 USB ports, SSD drive slot, earphone, microphone
close up of front left	Bottom of X300 battery
Bottom of x300, battery	Touch pad, finger print reader
left side of X300, speaker	Right side of X300, speaker
Keyboard	Fuller shot of keyboard
Volume and illuminating Thinkvantage light	cd drive ejected
Webcam	thinness compared between X300 (foreground) and X61 ( background )
side view - X300 on top, X61 on bottom	Front view - X300 on top, x61 on bottom
side view - X300 on top, X61 on bottom	Back view - X300 on top , X61 on bottom
Keyboards compared: X61 on top, X300 on bottom. Notice the size difference in the Enter key and Shift key.	Keyboards compared: X61 on top, X300 on bottom - notice difference in Shift keys
Wrist pads compared: X61 foreground, X300 background	Screen thickness between X300 ( foreground ) and X61 ( background). The back of the screens are flush for this shot.