[userbinator]

I think it's more about Lenovo trying to appear "new" and "stylish", going after the Macbook designs. Cost reduction could also be a part of it. Every other laptop on the market now looks like a Macbook clone.

What they're forgetting is that many of the people who buy Thinkpads actually like the old-school, "serious business" look-and-feel that originated with IBM. They could continue making a model that is almost exactly identical to the X60/X61 (an "X62"?) but with a faster CPU, more RAM, and higher-res display, and I'd bet they'd still have many customers.