The photo above isn’t just a leather portfolio. It’s the Thinkpad Reserve Edition, reported by Crunchgear and Engadget.
For $5,000 you can be part of an exclusive club, since only 5,000 units will ever be made. You’ll also get access to the exclusive, concierge-style support service: immediate access, your own personal support consultant, next-day delivery of a replacement computer ..etc for 3 years, the expected life-time of the Thinkpad. And therein lies the rub.
If you exclusivity is so important that you spend $5K, do you really want to carry a 2-year old computer? Your Thinkpad will be obsolete in 6 months, but let’s say you don’t have to be cutting-edge… in a year it will feel so uncomfortably old… a shame to be seen with, so you might as well keep that nice leather portfolio closed at all times. 😉 Joke apart, here’s what Lenovo missed: adding the strong service part was good, so why not go all the way? Introduce Hardware as a Service: charge an annual fee, include annual computer replacement, but make the transition painless – from contacting the owner through shipping the new units to transferring user setup and data – now that’s real Concierge! Charge whatever they want: $3k -$4K – $5k annually -probably doesn’t matter… exclusivity is priceless. 
The basic Thinkpad design hasn’t changed in years. It’s an icon of laptop design so unless you really do need to be the cool guy on the block then why not go for it? But I do agree about haas. Good idea.
Dennis, I agree on the design. Old, boring – yet an icon as such, so why change it? But under the same “hood” you’re getting faster processors, more memory, disk ..etc.
And if there is one group that would easily pay for “haas”, it’ exactly the 5k they target.
Oh, and I would still trade touchpads for the Thinkpad’s pointer… except when it switches to “autopilot” mode 🙁