The new Apple Macbook Pro released today reminded me I want a new Thinkpad. Unfortunately, Lenovo seems determined to convince me I’d rather have a Mac. I currently own and use two Thinkpads, a big T60 and a tiny X200s. I’d consider replacing either one or getting something in between. My first concern is that the Thinkpad’s legendary reliability is slowly becoming the stuff of legend not reality. And there’s nothing either with a nice 1400x1050 screen or as lightweight. But I’ll probably get by, even with the new keyboard.

The real complaint is not with engineering, but that Lenovo corporate is a disaster. The website marketing, the tech spec PDFs, and the online store never match up. I keep checking the online store (for years now, my Thinkpad fetish goes way back) waiting for the perfect variant I want to show up and the entire model is discontinued before that ever happens. They’ve probably lost two sales to me by advertising something and never offering it. I wait and I wait and then I realize I can live a few more months without. Case in point, both the new and old T4/5xx models supposedly have a 24hr slice battery, but I have yet to discover a way to get it into my shopping cart during a trial checkout.

They are also sadly determined to mistime the market. My X200s is almost identical spec wise to the 2010 Macbook Air (the first model I’d consider ready for serious use), but the X200s was available a few months earlier. Then Lenovo killed it and introduced some more underpowered netbooks. Just as Apple was leading the charge away from netbooks towards high powered ultralights, Lenovo was already ahead of the curve and decided to reverse course. I’m not concerned about buying into another dead end model since I don’t want the whole lineup of accessories, but it does discourage me from purchasing. If I could buy either model I have with no changes other than a faster processor, it’d be a done deal. But every model currently for sale is in some way a downgrade, so I evaluate the compromise and wait for a better offer.

X1 Carbon

Maybe the X1 Carbon is the laptop I want? I think so. But where is it? Apple is super secret, then lets a couple rumors leak out shortly before launch, and then boom, there’s a new Macbook for sale. Lenovo has been out marketing this thing since the middle of May, and still the closest I can get to buying it is “Coming Summer 2012”.