Yet another question about configuring the x230

Think I'll do it tonight or tomorrow, while the new year special is on. (Unless someone has inside info, about a better deal after that!)

When one comes to the page to configure the laptop, one sees four choices, the first two just saying Thinkpad X230 laptop (both for the same price), the next one costing more called " ThinkPad X230 Laptop with Faster Processing". Then one that costs still more called: "ThinkPad X230 Laptop with Professional Operating System".

There is a chart specifying what is included in each of those pre-configured models. I guess that choice of four models is for people who want to choose a pre-configured model, rather than configuring it themselves.

However, for those of us who do want to configure it themselves, it appears to me that one could start with either of those four base configurations, and change it from there, and come to the same custom configured model either way, regardless of which pre-configured model one starts with. For instance, one could start with the cheapest pre-config, and choose dthe fastest Core 7 processor, the 500GB HDD, and Windows Pro 8 64, and get the highest level of everything. Is that correct?

If so, is there any advantage or disadvantage regarding which of the four pre-config models one starts with? Might the final price of one's custom configured model vary, with the exact same specs, depending on which pre-config model one started with?

Anyone know?

Thanks in advance.

 

You get different options sometimes. One of them is win7, the other win8, another win8 pro, etc.

Find one closest to what you want and try from there. You won't get hosed on prices, but you will be able to get it cheaper or more expensive depending on the tier you start with (on some ThinkPads, you can't remove the backlit keyboard as an option if it starts with it, etc).

 

Of course the final price varies. That's the indication.

Try them all and see for yourself. It takes only 10 minutes or so. You don't need to put any configuration to the cart and make any payment.

By the time you finished composing the lengthy post above, you could have determined which one from the possible configurations.

 

I actually tried that. Logged in via the barnes and Noble discount thing, I opened four tabs in Firefox next to one another, each starting with a different pre-config option, and tried to get to the same user configuration in each one, and see if there is any price difference.

I ran into tons of problems, with those tabs freezing up, getting those messages that I was logged out of the BN discount thing, and had to log in and start all over again, etc. (All in all, I found the Lenovo configuration, certainly through the BN thing, extremely buggy.

I did learn a little by it though. One cannot always get to the exact same configuration through any start up config. On one for example, I could not remove the "media base", which added quite a bit to the price. On another one the only OS choices were Win7, no Win8.

But on most of them one can arrive to the same final configuration, and I think if the configuration ends up exactly the same, so does the price.