I use to be a big-time Thinkpad fan and bought several models over the years. I loved the keyboard and trackpoint (eraser head). I'm a very fast touch-typist and the trackpoint was a must-have for me. At one point I became intrigued by the idea of getting a Macbook (so that I could delve into iOS programming), but the lack of the trackpoint held me back. I've found that people who aren't touch-typists and who have never used/appreciated a trackpoint just won't understand how great they are. I had tried using the touchpads on my Thinkpads a few times, just to see why people liked them, but I always hated it.
At one point, I was due for an upgrade at work, and went with a Dell that had a trackpoint (or some knock-off of the concept). It was horrible. Horrible keyboard, horrible "trackpoint" feel. And too big and heavy. I quickly swapped with someone else at work to go back to a Thinkpad.
Another year or so later I was due for an upgrade again (my laptop got broken), and several other people at work had already switched over to using Macbooks, so I decided to give it a shot and got a Macbook Air 13".
Well, I have to say that the Mac's touchpad was like a night-and-day difference between the old Thinkpad touchpads I had tried. First, it was much, much larger. Then there were the gestures. My Air has Parallels installed but I really only use it for doing some VPN/Remote Desktop needs where a couple of our clients don't support the VPN from the Mac-side.
I still miss the ability of keeping my hands on the keyboard and still moving the mouse around with the trackpoint, but I've mostly adjusted, and there are several other things that the touchpad allows me to easily do that couldn't be done with a trackpoint.
Anyways, sorry for the long diatribe, but I just wanted to highlight one really tempting feature of that Thinkpad that only some of us will appreciate. I see now, too, that these Thinkpads have much larger touchpads than the older Thinkpads had, so it may be the best of both worlds there.
That Thinkpad's larger, higher-resolution screen is also tempting. The glossy vs matte screen isn't a big deal for me, but I know that I prefer my Air's bright glossy screen to the never-bright-enough Thinkpad screens I've had in the past (it sounds like that's a non-issue with this Thinkpad).
One advantage to the Air, though, is that you have the option (for extra $$$) to buy/install Parallels and Windows, and be able to jump across as needed. With this Thinkpad, maybe you can turn it into a Hackintosh (?) but when I looked into that idea a long while back, it seemed like it required a lot of time and hacking to get right, and even then there would be certain hardware features that likely didn't have support. Plus, it's unsupported by Apple, and you probably couldn't stay as current with Mac OS software updates. If you have a need/desire to use Mac OS (e.g., iOS software development), that right there would be the biggest deal-killer with the Thinkpad.
Someone earlier mentioned heat being a possible issue (someone else later said that their Thinkpad Carbon didn't have any such issue). In any case, that would be something else I'd worry about. I seem to have a knack for hitting my 4GB RAM limit on my Air, and then the heat kicks up and fan gets going. It seems like I shouldn't be running into major memory issues, so maybe it's just because I hardly ever shut my Air down, and instead always just close the lid and let it go into sleep mode, so it probably just needs a more frequent reboot to clear RAM up? In any case, if I could have 8GB on my Air, I'd be happier. I literally use my Air as a "lap" top most of the time, so having a cool-running laptop is a must for me.
officially supported it) but using bootcamp winXP runs fine (although a little hotter than OSX)...so I wouldn't figure that win7 would have much trouble running off bootcamp either.
