Never underestimate my dad. He has no problems driving from south Denver 'burbs to LA in one day!

If you find a good third-party PDF editing tool, I'd be very glad to hear a review on it.

I'd especially love one that does a decent job of background removal on scans of old documents, as Adobe's version of that feature is kind of a joke.

Yep. My two main pet peeves when receiving pdfs are:

1. A new document is sent to me scanned rather than as a Word-generated file. Trying to search for words or phrases relies on Acrobat's OCR being able to ignore all the noise on each page.

2. No bookmarks. IT'S NOT THAT FREAKING HARD TO BOOKMARK A PDF!! (At least with Acrobat Pro.)

Maybe Nitro Pro? I've used Primo PDF (its smaller counterpart) for years and it does a great job on PDF creation; this article seems to think that Nitro does OCR faster and better than Acrobat...

http://www.pcworld.com/article/20969...f-editing.html

Honestly, at this point I personally would be looking at one of the two new microsoft offerings.. either the surface pro 4, or the surface book.. both look like very nice offerings in the windows space..as long as overall supreme power isn't the objective.

T450s, X250 or the X1 carbon?

Needs:

1) Small/compact
2) 8GB of RAM
3) Ability to change out the HDD
4) Moderate computing needs.

Dislike dongles for RJ45 and VGI (which is why this decision is tough)

I'd wait for the next T-series models to come out, if the replacement isn't urgent. Really curious what Lenovo is going to do with them. Although the new Skylake models will all lack VGA and require an adapter (not just a dongle, but a full exterior DAC.)

That said, all 3 meet your needs, but:
X250 - much smaller, personally I can't live with a 12" screen as my primary machine. If you can live with the smaller screen, maybe the best option?

X1 Carbon - dongles, and SSD mini-card only (and not sure how easy it is to access and swap.) Really nice design, and absolutely tiny for the screen size. Just enough pricier that if it were my own money (or maybe even my own budget out of my employer's money), I'd look at cheaper options (especially with a lower-end 8gb config) but if it's a standard machine at your employer I doubt they're tracking the difference.

T450s - real ports, still reasonably thin/light, not a tiny screen. Probably the best compromise given your comments

Is swapping the HDD include SSD mini cards? Not sure how accessible the HDD or SSD is on any of these; Lenovo used to make these things really easy to access, but the last machines I played with in that sense were the T430s/W530 generation.

If it's your own money, or your employer also gets Dell, have a look at the Latitude E7450. It's just a hair chunkier than the T450s, but it's got a somewhat more standard keyboard and it is an absolute joy to open up and work inside, and still has a full set of ports.

Damn. The X1 Carbon uses mSATA? What's the smallest Lenovo device that has its primary HDD as a SSD?

Thanks for your help.

I was a dedicated PC user for many years and finally made the switch to Apple. I have been very pleased with my decision. The integration of My iPad iPhone and Macbook is great.

I think on the current one it's m.2, not even the older full-size mSATA. When the Caron 4 comes out soon, it may be be PCIe only, no SATA (some of the new Dells are, for example.)

The X250 is the smallest that takes a 2.5" drive (although it may require a 5mm one, which are a pain.) The T450s takes a 7mm 2.5" drive, which is still a low-profile form factor, but it's a pretty common one unlike 5mm.

The 12" Thinkpad Yoga is around the same size as the X250 but tops out at 4gb memory .... It takes a 2.5" drive, but probably 5mm.

The Thinkpad 11e takes a real drive, but it's not really any less bulky than the X250; it's only real merit is being a good bit cheaper than other Thinkpad models, and it's slow as f___.

If you're willing to look at non-Thinkpad Lenovo models, the one other model worth looking at is the U31. Light, 13" screen, takes a hard drive (no idea how many mm thick.)

What's your use case with swapping the drives?

Well i've invested in some pretty large SSD's (512gb and higher) and I don't want to buy new drives. Seems like i'm screwed otherwise.

The fact that the new t450s can't take a drive in the ultrabay is a disappointment. My rig currently has two drives in it. Almost all engineers here use the T430s so going to the t450s is a let down.

Not quite sure what to do other than to buy new drives.

SSD in an external USB3 case is surprisingly usable, although it does depend for what -- not so much for say, running VMs out of. They do make a 2TB SSD that's almost affordable (about $800 last I checked) and quite zippy...

I have no idea if the T440p still has an ultrabay. If it does, the T460p (if such a machine materializes, which I expect it will, in January) might keep one.

There are also workstation-class machines; take a look at the W550s -- not sure if that has dual HDD bays, but it may... and definitely the P50 has been advertised for that, although it's one big mother of a machine.

Yeah I think I'm done carrying heavier machines. I looked into the guts of the X1 carbon 3rd gen, I mean, it's not that bad. M2 is a new thing for me, so I googled it, it's not that expensive for 500gb. It means my 2.5" ones are useless though, oh well.

I looked at the Zenbook, and these ultrabooks are hard to open. I have to stick with Lenovo. The T450 apparently has a 2.5" SSD and 2 M2? or mSata ports as well.

I hate having to choose between usability and ease to fix. Just jack up the price and i'll pay for it but as it stands now. It sucks. I might wait for February for the 4th gen X1 carbon.

Have a few of these at work and LOVE them: Samsung ATIV Book 9 Pro

1. Lightweight
2. Lots of ports
3. FAST boot time (unbelievably fast!)
4. Terrific keyboard

Bad:

1. Dongle for Ethernet port is a pain

From review: Samsung ATIV Book 9 Plus
With the ATIV Book 9 Plus, Samsung can still lay claim to one of the best Ultrabooks on the market. As ever, it offers an attractive design and fast performance, but battery life is improved, and the 3,200 x 1,800 display is best in class.

Looks like the 15.6" Core i7 is going for $1600.00 http://www.samsung.com/us/computer/pcs/NP940Z5L-X01US
Looks like the 13.3" Core i7 is going for $1400.00 http://www.samsung.com/us/computer/pcs/NP940X3L-K01US