X201s on sale, X201/X201s details

[dfumento]

$1360 for an X201s. This unit has basically everything including a 3 year warranty (recommended warranty). It does not include accident protection which for 3 years is another $170 or so.
http://www.jr.com/lenovo/pe/LEN_514328U/

other places may have the discount as well.

The units, like netbooks, do not come with built-in optical drives but you can purchase a portable USB optical drive for around $60-100 (see newegg.com).

Intel X25-M 160 GB SSD Drives go for about $300 ish on ebay.com (new). 80 GB drives for maybe $200.
Newer Intel SSD drives are expected by the end of the year which may increase capacity to 360 GB and will probably lower the prices a fair amount.

4 GB SODIMM RAMs are around $100 so if you want 6 or 8 GB not so expensive now.

I'd expect to see the newer version of this laptops in Jan or early next year with the Sandy Bridge chipset.

Sandy Bridge will have a much faster graphics which will be "servicable" for games. Not really meant for games but will be much better than current GPU. The GPU will be on the 32 nm process as the CPU is today (today's GPU is on a 45 nm process). You can google for benchmark comparisions.

If you're eyes can deal with the higher screen resolution of the X201s I would go with that unit over the X201. It is also a bit lighter and the batteries will last a bit longer and is still quite fast.

[codek]

great deal but price has gone back up, why was it so low?

[ZaZ]

The prices float a bit. It's the same for the X201i, which seems to go between $750 and $850. I think there was some X201s for $1200 a few weeks back.

[Jason404]

I thought I read someone here say that the X201s was discontinued as there was a supply shortage of the high WSXGA+ panels.

I think I am going to wait for the Sandy Bridge machines.

What I wanted to ask is, what exactly is the X201i? I have seen this model name around, but I do not know how it differs from the X201/201s.

[penartur]

I thought I read someone here say that the X201s was discontinued as there was a supply shortage of the high WSXGA+ panels.

Not WSXGA+ but WXGA+. If only there were 12.1" thinkpads with WSXGA+ (1680*1050)...

What I wanted to ask is, what exactly is the X201i? I have seen this model name around, but I do not know how it differs from the X201/201s.

AFAIK, ABCi is just ABC with the cheaper CPU. E.g. old R500 with Celeron could be called R500i; and the difference between X201 and X201i is that the former is equipped with i5/i7 and the latter is equipped with i3. I'm not sure whether there are some other differences between X201i and X200, but i doubt there are some (the chassis is the same, and HDD/memory are confugurable and user-replaceable).

[Jason404]

Thanks. I thought it was something like that. I think the related pages at ThinkWiki.org must be wrong, as they show a lot of overlap, including model numbers.

http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:X201i

http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:X201