I think X200s is about to be released...

Been to Lenovo's website and they removed the X61s.

http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/...-category-id=135A781CA29B4ECB9ADAD8E72CF6FD61

That's it, no more reason to delay the X200s. My guess is $1300 USD.

 

no reason? lol besides the fact that it's just plain out not ready yet?
I think your guess is best as anyone else...

just don't get people too excited..

 

I'm just trying to give people some hope.

It's been crazy here with good people going with the heavy X200 (with its non LED screen), just because they couldn't wait anymore.

And it doesn't have to be plain out ready. They can give a pre-order price. By not giving a pre-order price they are losing customers, unless they wanted to get rid of the old X61s stocks first.

 

My guess is September 16th release. That's when the current sale on the X200 ends and that is also when Dell has indicated they will release the E4200 (direct competitor to the X200s).

 

Yep, early next week seems logical.

Btw I don't think the X200s and the E4200 are really targeted to the same customers. The E4200 is expected at ~$2500.

 

I can't wait to compare the X200s and the E4300! (probably a better comparison than with the E4200)

 

As far as I'm concerned, the X200s and E4200 are direct competitors. My reasoning is because they both have low voltage processors and are the same screen size & weight. These 2 aspects (processing power, screen size, dimensions) are really the defining characteristics of a notebook IMO. In addition, remember the e4200 is Dell's latitude line which is targeted towards business. I believe that Dell would have a hard time selling a $2500 enterprise notebook.

If the E4200 is actually sold for $2500 then I assume it will be a total disaster since the X200s is nearly identical (or better in some respects) and will likely be half that amount. The price of the E4200 *disregarding the SSD* should come in at around $1000 - $1200. However, since it is an SSD only notebook, the price will go up at least several hundred dollars from there. The question is what SSD will Dell include? Will it be one of the budget drives (OCZ 64GB, +$250), the Samsung 64GB (+$900), or the now shipping Intel 80GB (+$600). Based on these assumptions, the E4200 will be priced at anywhere from $1250 to $2100. If Dell is smart, they will use the new Intel SSD and price the notebook at $1600 - $1800. If they do, it will compete extremely well against the X200s. If they use a different SSD, well, I for one will buy the X200s. Since Dell's specs right now list the E4200 as available with either a 64GB or 128GB SSD, I guess we can assume that they are not using the Intel SSD and the notebook will be priced accordingly (+$900 for the 64GB SSD).

I don't consider the X200s and E4300 as similar notebooks since the E4300 is significantly larger, heavier (almost a full pound heavier than the X200s), and has a regular voltage processor. The E4300 is destined to be the workhorse 13" notebook on the market I think.

 

Where did you see that the E4200 would be released September 16?

 

Even if the E4200 comes out at $1800, it still ain't worth the extra $500 over the X200s. Yes you are getting an SSD, but on the other hand you are getting a smaller hd, and fatality rates of spinning drives have been blown out of proportions (I never met anyone who had his hard drive damaged, and I know relatively many people with laptops).

Dell has done such a huge mistake obligating a SSD for the E4200, who on earth make the decisions there, a lenovo executive ?

 

Btw, the X200s can already be bought now from Hong Kong:

http://cgi.ebay.com.hk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=260277347028

The seller ships to the US. Not sure why the high price though...

 

I wish they had an X200 with a LED display. I can't think of any reason, except cost and the fact that not many would buy the X200s, for not putting a LED display in the X200.

 

I'm guessing that seller doesn't have the notebook in hand. It is probably a pre-order auction.

 

I wonder if the LED backlight will become an option on the regular X200 in coming months...I think it is a definite possibility. It depends on what the competition offers I guess.

 

And where on the website did they remove the X61s?
I can see it everywhere...

 

Lol ****it.. it's back..

 

Unlucky you guy, here we can order X200,X200s,X200t already. Good price. From 1300usd , depends on configurations.

 

By the way, X200 doesn't have Led backlight.

 

Where are you located that you can already order the X200s and X200t?

 

No !!! , why did they bring it back ?. Die already, DIE !!!!!!!!!

 

Right at the moment, the X61s has gone again and left the X200, X300 and X301 alone...

[edit: and back again ]

Seems like they're tinkering!

 

quoting myself here: looks like my guess of an e4200 starting at $1600 - $1800 is about right! The prices are up on the german Dell site:

http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/products/category.aspx/latit?c=de&cs=debsdt1&l=de&s=bsd

E4300: 949€ = $1353 USD
E4200: 1199€ = $1710 USD

Keep in mind that these are *German* prices which have historically been 25% higher than US prices. I would love for my pricing guess to be wrong and in fact have a starting price of $1300 - $1500 for the E4200! In that case, the decision between the X200s and E4200 is much more difficult.

 

The basic model of the E4300 seems to be selling for dirt cheap... I'm having second doubts whether I should reconsider it... (instead of the X200s/E4200).

I've said it once and I'll say it again: Dell are so stupid to obligate a SSD with the E4200. With a spinning drive they could have sold the E4200 for ~$1000 USD, it would have been an insane hit (The X200s would have been left in the cold with zero buyers).

 

Btw, if you compare the German Dell site with the US Dell site, you can see that in order to turn a German price to a US price, you need to add ~100-200 to the german price, and this is the price in US dollars.

According to this, the basic version of the E4200 will cost in the US, no more than $1500 USD.

The competition will be between the X200s for $1300 USD, and the E4200 for $1500 USD. For the extra $200 you get a smaller (but) SSD drive, and what seems to be a slicker design...

 

Well the E4300 seems to be a really nice notebook but in terms of weight it noticeably heavier than the X200 and significantly heavier than the X200s. If size/weight is your #1 priority, the choice is still between the X200s and E4200 IMO.

I don't know about Dell being so stupid here - if in fact the base model comes in at $1500 with a 64GB SSD, it will be just slightly more than the X200s. Unless Lenovo drops their SSD pricing so that the X200s and E4200 are a comparable price when configured with an SSD, I think many will be inclined to go with the Dell. Keep in mind that the E4200 has an ESTA port on board which makes fast external drive transfers very easy.

It wasn't long ago that people were willing to drop $200 - $400 on memory to give their notebook a significant performance boost. SSDs are an even more significant development IMO and the price/performance ratio is adequate at the present time.

 

Indeed true. Still, given the option, I believe many more people would have prefered to go with a spinning drive and a $1000 price tag. Don't forget that by using a spinning drive you can get 3X the space already in the basic model.

Are you sure about that ?, I know that there are some very fast SSDs around, but I think the one you get with the basic E4200 model isn't one of them, It might even be worse than a recent 5400rpm drive.

 

You might be right - we don't know which SSD is included in the E4200 yet. But I have a hard time believing that Dell would put a low-quality, slow SSD in a notebook which is otherwise their top offering. Still, from what I have read, even the bottom of the barrel SSDs outperform the best 7200rpm HDDs in at least some respects.

If I were to guess, I would think that Dell is using the Samsung branded 64GB SSD which, along with the new Intel offering, is supposed to be the best on the market.

 

Yes, the Samsung 64GB SSD is indeed very good, as can be seen in this huge shootout between SSDs and spinning drives:

http://techreport.com/articles.x/15079/1

Only question is whether that's the drive on the E4200... This shootout is from 2 months ago, and they list the Samsung as $750 USD. Hard to believe Dell used it if the E4200's price is "only" ~$1500...

 

If the E4200 indeed cost $1500 and includes the fast Samsung SSD, and the X200s cost $1300, I think I will go with the E4200 (assuming first reviews aren't going to find faults with the keyboard or overheating issues).

 

My feelings as well

 

Btw, I'm pretty sure (though will be happy to be wrong) that the basic E4200 is going to sell with the SU9300 CPU (which is 1.2Ghz), and not the SU9400 CPU (which is 1.4Ghz).

In the E4200 brochure, Dell writes " up to SU9400 CPU", which must mean that the basic model is less than the SU9400, which only leaves one model, the SU9300. I'm pretty sure that the german price is for the SU9300, and not 9400. Let's hope that if I'm right, at least the upgrade to the SU9400 isn't going to cost too much... (since 1.4Ghz seems pretty slow to begin with, and I definitely won't want to go any slower).