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).

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.

  > 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

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!

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.

I think you would be hard pressed to find someone who honestly believes a Thinkpad to be more elegant than a Macbook Air.

A response of, "Disregard that the design sucks cocks,"

Excuse me?

The x220 certainly ain't ugly - it is thin, lightweight and durable. Many prefer the Thinkpad design. So even if for you personally elegance may be the first/only priority without override - many people are not that obsessive when it comes to choosing a work laptop.

So the X220 is certainly a choice when you are thinking Macbook Air. The screen size falls nicely between the too small 11" and a bit too big 13.3", the CPUs are same gen, SSD is configurable etc.

Okay, I'm genuinely curious here. What's with all the strange, reactionary posts in this thread, and mis-categorization of people? When did I say anything about elegance being my first priority? I was quite clear in my statement, yet you've skewed it in a bizarre manner.

many people are not that obsessive when it comes to choosing a work laptop

Obsessive? How about appreciative? In fact, how about any word which isn't loaded? Again, there is some strange, defensive stuff going on here.

  > > A response of, "Disregard that the design sucks cocks,"
  >
  > Excuse me?

http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/disregard-that-i-suck-cocks#.T...

My point was that the responder at the top of the thread was saying (in so many words):

  ignore all of that so-called 'content' in the parent
  post, my (subjective) ideas about the design should
  trump all of that

As for your summary, I find it to be amazingly slanted toward a particular view. The X220 is truly nothing at all like the Macbook Air. I used a consumer grade Toshiba, so I have no horse in this race, but I can plainly see (from specs as well as design) that the X220 is in a significantly different category from the Air.

The elegance of the design alone is not enough to place it in a different category. If the argument had been that it can't be classified in the same category as the MacBook Air (with a list of reasons other than "I think that it looks ugly"), then this thread would look a lot different.

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.]

The chunky black plastic is just as much a part of the Thinkpad brand as the unibody is for the Macbooks.

I suppose if style is the main consideration when purchasing a computer, Apple is hard to beat.

People complaining about the design are often failing to correctly identify the intended user.

Don't get all the fuss over the apple look. To me the thinkpad looks very sharp and functional.

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.

Except you can't, because you're worried about crushing it, due to a relatively frail case, or you're worried about scratching it because it looks pretty.

This is why I ditched an MBA and carry around a netbook.

I have another client where the sales people have windows laptops, but they're not allowed to bring them to client meetings, instead they have to bring their iPads.

Sometimes form _is_ more important than function.

Agreed, I have zero problems with this statement when qualified.

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.

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

You've two thumbs for a reason, I never had much issue using my thumbs on the trackpad.

And the new Lenovo trackpads are also multitouch, not as good as Apple's tough.