ThinkPad X301 On Sale for Only $800

Update – 2/2/2010: Microsoft has discontinued the sale and raised the price all the way to $1,599.

Though it came out in the fall of 2008, Lenovo’s ThinkPad X301 remains the rolls royce of ultraportables. At 3.3-pounds and less than an inch thick, the 13.3-inch notebook is one of the lightest business systems on the market. Having reviewed the ThinkPad X301, we can also say that it’s one of the most comfortable notebooks we’ve ever used, with a super-responsive keyboard and a rubberized palm rest that feels soft, yet durable under our wrists. The 1440 x 900 resolution backlit display provides more screen real estate than most 15-inch notebooks, making this an ideal notebook for doing serious work, right from  your lap. It even stays nice and cool after hours of work.

Even though this is a rather mature notebook model, Lenovo continues to charge a starting price of $1,889 for the X301 on its own site, and that base unit comes with a lame 3-cell battery and without an optical drive. As of today, with the coupon code  MSStore-PC-50%, you can buy the ThinkPad X301 for only $800 ($1109 – $309) at the Microsoft Store. That’s an amazing deal on an amazing notebook.

The configuration at the Microsoft Store features a high-capacity 6-cell battery, a DVD burner, 2GB of RAM, a 1.4-GHz Core 2 Duo SU9400 CPU, and Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit. The only real downside is that it comes with a 120GB 5,400-rpm hard drive, instead of an SSD, which is normally standard on this system. Considering how much you are saving, however,  you can buy your own 1.8-inch SSD and put it in. Newegg currently has an 80GB Intel X18-M SSD with upgrade kit for just TK.

Click here to go to the Microsoft Store and get the ThinkPad X301 for $800 (using coupon code MSStore-PC-50%).