Thinkpads Forum

Greetings, I am new to Thinkpad land...thinking about selling my 11" MBAir and buying the x230. I've configured a model on the Lenovo website (see below) for $860 (new year's sale) and have a few questions. In the configuring process both the mSATA drive and 6 cell battery were "automatically" included...there was no option to not include them. This is not a deal breaker for me but I might prefer a 4 cell battery b/c I won't need extraordinarly long battery life and I'd like the laptop to be as light as possible. As for the mSATA drive, I thought I'd add that later if I needed a snappier machine. I plan to dual boot Linux Mint (which will be my primary OS) with Windows 7 and I've never done that with a two drive set up.

Any thoughts/input would be greatly appreciated. Coming from the world of Apple it seems there are so many options for sellers and configuration options...very refreshing but also a bit overwhelming. I don't know if buying a configured model straight from Lenovo is the best option for me. Really the only "must haves" are the IPS display + 500GB hard drive.

• Intel Core i5-3210M Processor (3M Cache, up to 3.10 GHz)
• Windows 7 Home Premium (64 bit)
• Windows 7 Home Premium 64 - English
• 12.5" Premium HD (1366x768) LED Backlit Display, 2x2 Antenna, Mini SSD Capable
• Intel HD 4000 Graphics in Intel Core i5-3210M Processor
• 4 GB DDR3 - 1600MHz (1 DIMM)
• Keyboard Backlit - US English
• UltraNav without FingerPrint Reader
• 720p HD Camera
• 500GB Hard Disk Drive, 7200rpm
• 16GB mSATA Solid State Cache Drive
• 6 Cell ThinkPad Battery X44+
• 65W AC Adapter - US (2pin)
• Bluetooth 4.0 with Antenna
• Intel Centrino Wireless-N 2200 (2x2 BGN)
• Publication - US English

Where are your seeing the 16GB cache drive? I'm going through the configurator right now and don't see it. As far as I know, Lenovo doesn't offer any mSATA drives on the X230, but perhaps they changed it. Maybe if you call sales they can get you the four-cell if that's what you want. Usually you get the best prices buying directly from Lenovo if you have the time to play the coupon game. Other than that, the X230 is the best ultraportable in my opinion.

I just looked at the configurator again and at first didn't see the cache drive as an option either. Turns out you have to select the "Mini SSD Capable" display for the cache drive to become an option. Once it is an "option" it won't let you unselect it.