I love my x220 came with an i7 upgraded the RAM to 16GB, slapped in a 256GB SSD. The last modification I have to complete is the Full HD screen conversion, I am really excited about this. I have a few of the extended and regular batteries. I tend to just use the extended battery. I daily carry my x220 and I am not sure what I'll replace it with. I also have a mid 2014 MacBook air but the specs are mediocre. The only real benefit the air has is it's slimmer and lighter.

The x220 is too heavy for daily carry in my opinion, plus the screen can be pretty bad if you don't get the IPS one.

I'd have trouble recommending it to anyone these days unless they were looking for something really cheap.

I wouldn't really describe it as heavy, but that's right about the screen

Interesting. Do you know if T450 Lenovo supports the hack I use with https://github.com/avibrazil/RDM? I use my 13" macbook pro with a 2560x1600 resolution because I enjoy the larger screen space. IMO this the killer feature.

this looks like my dream machine. Two questions: how is the fan noise, and where did you find 1tb ssd drives so cheap?

I'm also running a t450, albeit w/ only 16gb ram and a 500gb ssd. Fan noise is not bad, certainly not loud enough to be distracting. I purchased mine refurb through Amazon for the 6 month warranty, but didn't need to use it. Wifi works great under Debian, but I could not get the Bluetooth card to work reliably. I replaced it with a card designed for the t430, but it wasn't all that easy. I would advise just using a USB Bluetooth adapter.

The only other complaint I have is that palm rejection for the track pad is poor, I eventually disabled the track pad entirely. I prefer the track point anyway, but I know a lot of people hate using them. Keyboard is excellent, IMO better than a MacBook. I would be curious, perhaps the OP used 2 500gb SSDs, you can get drive caddys to replace the DVD drive (I kept it, as I still need to read disks relatively often).

On my T430:

    synclient TouchpadOff=1

There's supposed to be a better alternative to the Synaptics stuff, now, so I read a few months ago, but I forgot to note it and haven't actively searched it out, yet.

So they often come with 1SSD drive, then eBay the other drives or in my case, student discount Western digital is 30% off + other promo.

No fan noise

Good specs, but that sounds really heavy.

Weighs less than my Mac for work - it's 14" vs the 15" Mac