This week, a few hours after Lenovo announced the X240, I bought an X230. Normally, the X230 model I bought comes with a Core i5-3320M CPU, 4GB RAM, 500GB HDD. My model was a special set including a second 4GB RAM stick and a 128 GB mSATA Plextor SSD. It came without Windows; and the ThinkVantage button is black instead of blue and has no label.
I put a fresh installation of unstable on it and tweaked it to save more power when on battery (enabled RC6++, and enabled autosuspend and other powertop suggestions with a script in /etc/pm/power.d); and configured hdparm.conf to put my hard disk into standby after 5 seconds (it’s only used for big data anyway, so most of the time it is unused). It now consumes 5W in idle with minimum brightness, and 8-10W with brightness 13 of 15. Consumption when surfing is 10 - 15 watts. Booting from grub to gdm is fast, I did not measure it, but it probably took about 5 seconds.
The IPS screen looks really good. Much much much better than the screen in my 2010 Edge 15 (I reviewed that one in 2010). It seems a bit more glossy than that one, but still matte. Keyboard is good as well. The touch pad is crap however. All hardware seems to work.
Comparison to the X240 for others who think about buying one of them: The X240 is lighter and thinner (it’s an Ultrabook) and has an optional FullHD 12.5 inch screen. It also offers a much larger touchpad and palm rest. But compared to the X230, the X240 lacks many things: No dedicated buttons for the trackpoint (you need to use the click-pad), it’s limited at 8GB RAM, uses a slower low-voltage Haswell CPU, and it uses the new M.2 connector (probably supporting only the shortest cards) instead of mini-PCIe, so it’s not really possible to add an additional SSD currently; as M.2 SSDs do not seem to be available yet. I also do not know whether the X240 offers ThinkLight or LEDs for hard drive activity and similar.
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