Lenovo's ThinkPad X300 vs Apple mac book AIR

The new ultrathin laptop from Lenovo could become the first major competitor to Apple's MacBook Air.

In a sneak preview by The Wall Street Journal's Walter Mossberg, the ThinkPad X300 has a 13-inch-wide screen, a full keyboard, and a 64GB solid-state drive (SSD). Apple has touted a 13.3-inch-wide screen and a full keyboard as among the highlights of the Air.

Built-In DVD, Removable Battery: But the Air, launched last month during Steve Jobs' keynote address at MacWorld, has been criticized as skimpy on some features.

For instance, the Air lacks a built-in DVD drive, and instead offers wireless access to an external drive. Its battery cannot be removed by the user, and the machine offers only one USB port.

The X300, on the other hand, has a built-in DVD drive, a removable battery, three USB ports, and an Ethernet networking jack. It can also be customized with a cell-phone modem or GPS. And it has an advantage among new Windows computers -- it can be ordered with either Windows XP or Vista.

Heaver than traditional notebooks: Unlike the Air, Mossberg noted, the X300 is "a bit heavier than the three-pound weight that traditionally denotes a subnotebook." It is 3.12 pounds with the standard battery and DVD drive, but he added that it "still feels very light to carry around."

While Mossberg and others are comparing the X300 to the Air, IDC's Doug Bell said it isn't a direct competitor because Lenovo is geared toward the enterprise market and Apple, while making some inroads into businesses, is still primarily consumer-oriented.

The X300 has features important to the road warrior, Bell noted. The most important, he said, is the removable battery, but he also cited the built-in DVD drive and extra USB ports. The option of choosing XP is also appealing to business users not prepared to move to Vista, he said.

But Bell noted that the price, expected to be $2,500-2,800, "is a drawback." That is higher than average for this kind of device, he said, and was likely driven by the more expensive SSD instead of a less-pricey hard drive. The X300 reportedly will only be available with the 64GB SSD. The entry-level Air, by contrast, is offered with a 80-GB hard drive for about $1,800, and with a 64-GB solid-state drive and slightly faster processor, it's $3000. The Air also offers a trackpad with the multi-touch interface made famous by Apple's iPhone.

Bell also pointed out that buyers have options among other ultra-portables, although the X300 and Air are distinguished by their thinness, weight, screen size and full keyboard. But he was confident that, in the not-too-distant future, "you'll be seeing this form factor from all the major vendors."