Having sold my thinkpads I needed to get a new laptop/notebook. The field was narrowed to the newer thinkpads and HP’s elitebook 2540p.
After some research and trawling on ebay I picked up a 2540p with the low voltage core i7 cpu for less than half price but with 30 months warranty remaining. Sadly the seller had wiped the drive and done a fresh install of windows 7 wiping out the recovery partition, thankfully they are shipping an image of the original recovery partition of windows 7 pro 32bit.
While waiting their reply I had called HP support to ask about sourcing recovery disks (expecting to pay for the priviledge), I was surprised to hear they would be shipped FOC and even better I was given the choice of 32 or 64 bit, 64bit is on the way.
After another visit to Ebay a 4gb sodimm was procurred for less than £20. I may have to wait a few days but I will have a nice factory fresh install of windows 7 pro 64bit and 6gb of ram.
On to the laptop itself.

Only slight larger than the X60 its depth does allow a dvd writer to be squeezed in. The Mg chassis and Al cladding is very nice and business like with no bling, the screen is matt and while not as nice as the X60 at 1200×800 it has slightly more real estate and allows camera and light to be added.

The keyboard is ‘chiclet’ style and again while not in the thinkpad league is also spill resistant and has a ‘nipple’ pointer and trackpad, both with their own buttons. Personally I would be able to type as fast on either, I have also read that proper typists can achieve the same speed on the elitebook as on the thinkpad.

I think more updates will be required as I get used to it but for now it seems like a lot of laptop for the money (after removing what I sold the two thinkpads for it costs me £360).
feel free to click on any of the above images to see the full gallery.