ThinkPad X230 $594 and T430s $615 using B&N Discount again

hey guys, this deal is back in which the X230 is back down to $594 and the T430s down to $615 using the B&N discount and a 15% off coupon THINK801, here's a screenshot for evidence and then necessary link



B&N Lenovo site: http://shoplenovo.i2.com/SEUILibrar...home=barnesnoblegold&affinity=barnesnoblegold

Great deal!

 

It's a crazy price for X230, it may be sold out today.

 

Thanks for the notice Andrew; my brother ordered this today!

 

The 5200M upgrade is no longer $50. It's back to $330. Ouch.

 

Sold out? There is no stock. They are built to order.

 

Argh. I couldn't take it. Got an X230 tablet for just over $1k. No webcam, got the 3x3 and 6300 wireless. I never use the damn webcam but use wireless 24x7 so having solid connectivity (in hotels a lot) made sense.

Now to return my Zenbook Prime (I will miss it, actually). With Win8 having heavy touch functions, it makes sense to get a tablet, IMO.

 

Just an fyi, any models with the HD+ screen are showing up with a 4 week shipping delay for me.

 

You shouldn't have bought the X230 tablet.

I'm planning to get rid of my X230 tablet once the reviews for the Fujitsu Lifebook T902 come out.

 

Huh? I've owned Fujitsu's in the past and they are neat, but I prefer Lenovos. Plus I'm not interested in paying $1,899 before a single upgrade for the T902.

The X230 tablet is a 2nd "travel" computer for me. I have a T520 for my main machine and already travel with a T400. The X230 is more or less a toy for Win8.

There is always something better on the horizon. For the price-point and today availability today, the X230 tablet is just fine.

 

The T901 is under 1300 right now from Newegg.

Have you used the T901 before?

 

Not that exact model, no. I've had three Fujitsu tablets before and they were meh. Good build quality (Made in Japan) but the sound was laughable and the keyboard was never as good as Lenovo. And no trackpoint is an instant deal-breaker.

I suppose this is quickly turning into a "Fujitsu is better" discussion, so as someone who trusts and likes the Lenovo brand, I'll show myself out of this thread.

The X230 tablet, at under $1,000 with many options, is in my opinion well worth it.

 

How long have you used the X230 tablet?

You should have noticed a big difference in digitizer performance if you are used to the accuracy and precision of the T5010.

Edit: if you never used a X220 or X230 tablet , you are in for a bad surprise.
The digitizer performance on the X220 and X230 tablet is much worse than the older models ( X61 and the others).


In this case I think you can only say it's truly worth it once you own it and compare it to other tablets.

The touchpad on the T5010 is actually better than the one on the X230t.

 

I've owned both a T5010 and X220 tablet, so yeah.

 

The T430s is $150 cheaper than when I ordered it. I never thought Lenovo would ever price their stuff this low.

 

It's all about market share dominance at this point. And I think it's working. Lenovo is no longer associated with corporations and government users. They are quickly building a strong consumer base with this aggressive pricing.

 

A friend of mine said her brother, a graduate student, bought a X230T and loves it. I will not be surprised if there are variations between different builds and some units work worse than others. My X220 is very cool while I have read many complaints from someone that their units are very hot.

 

More importantly, they're also building a strong consumer base by maintaining product quality whilst competing with similarly-priced vendors. I'd wager that a $600 ThinkPad is a hell of a lot better in terms of build quality, design, and durability than what most consumers are used to seeing at that price point.

I do wonder whether they're going to price themselves down into a range where they have trouble producing durable ThinkPads, but so far they seem to have avoided that very well. In fact, one of the best ThinkPads that I've used has been my T420 which I rate right alongside the 600X (a laptop which cost an order of magnitude more).

I think that part of the way that Lenovo's been able to cut prices is by doing a lot of small tweaks that IBM never seemed to do. The best example of this is the increasing amount of FRU sharing between systems. In IBM's days pretty much every ThinkPad had its own keyboard. Even towards the end, you only really saw overlap between similar T-series. Now? The X230, W530, T530, and T430 all share a keyboard design, and the keycaps are (AFAIK) common to nearly every keyboard used in a current Lenovo product. IBM also seemed to have a habit of making tons of custom, small-run orders of things (it's part of their DNA, I suppose... their other product lines have exhibited this too.) Lenovo doesn't seem to want to do that. Lenovo's also made assembly of the ThinkPads a *lot* simpler -- something that I would speculate translates to dramatically reduced assembly costs (seriously: a full tear down and re-assembly of a 600X takes a ridiculous amount of time compared to doing the same for a T420).

Of course there's also the matter of the commoditization of the notebook market as a whole; tech is just plain getting cheaper to make.

So yeah, they are getting serious consumer traction with this pricing, and for a good reason.