I bought a Lenovo X60S in the spring of 2006, and am still very pleased with it. The machine has a mobile 1.66 processor, 2gb ram, 100gb hard drive, bluetooth, 802.11BG, WWAN Verizon Wireless imbedded card, SD card slot, 1 pc card slot, 2 port replicaters, and an extra battery. Unit cost me about $2900 or so.

Prior to this machine I had Dell's and had lackluster experience with the contracted support. Also as an old roommate from Dell's home town said, they don't invent anything they just copy things, etc.

There are two key ways I know of to get Lenovo discounts. The street nondiscounted prices are very high:
1. Buy the machine under a government discount. You can access the government discount pages off the Lenovo site. They also offer the discount for state governments which might be easier to use. Typically the discount is also available to state government employees buying own system. Usually each state has a sales rep. The procedure for getting the discount might be the same as how you get a government rate at a hotel. E.g. don't ask don't tell, and just call up like you want the government rate, etc.;
2. Lenovo and IBM employees receive discount levels similar to that given to the government. These employees are able to buy a certain number of machines for "friends." When I was doing my research I think there is some forum on the internet where you can get matched with an employee. I'm sure also on Flyertalk there are Lenovo or IBM employees. From the way it sounded, they really don't frown on employees getting systems for friends.

I am not aware of any new system discount that is better than the employee or government discounts.

If I had to do it all over I would still buy the X60S, but I too am curious if a new machine is around the corner.

Lenovo adds a number of free software programs like Think Vantage Access Connections which is good for network connections. For example, the program can sense the MAC address of the ethernet port you connect up at, and then load the applicable profile (home, office) etc. They also have a fingerprint reader on X60S. And Rescue & Recovery a backup program.

Again I find the quality and extras with Lenovo far superior to Dell, and it is IBM that does the support not some random contractor. You can buy a warranty upgrade that will cover drops or accidental damage which I have on my system as well.

Good luck!