The thinkpad ultraportable that was first seen on Nov. 3, 2009 was "officially" announced on Jan. 3, 2010 is just the thing I was waiting for. It has a >10" (11.6")LED screen, is light, slim, is under 500$ Although I don't own a thinkpad, I have always heard good things about it (asides of the looks, which are always debatable.)

So filled with expectation I ordered mine on Jan. 5, 2010 at 10 AM (official release day) and even got a deal on it.
After looking hard for the student discount link I found the Students & Alumni page in which I was able to find the X100e for just $404.10 (the regular education link does not offer any discounts at the moment)

Delighted that I got 50$ off thanks to my Student Discount link I caught myself looking for a 2GB ddr2 ram memory on newegg and recognizing that I got the laptop for 50$ less than expected, I went ahead and bought it along with a laptop sleeve :)

When I got the order confirmation email from Lenovo I decided to check for the shipping day of my laptop and to my surprise the Estimated Shiping Date was Jan. 13, 2010 (just 6 business days later) and in addition the free shipping that I got on the laptop was just, 2 Business Days (that meant that there was a possibility to get my laptop on Friday Jan. 15, not bad I thought.)

On the evening of Jan. 14 I decided it was time to check the Order status webpage in order to see if there was a tracking number of my package, after looking around the order status webpage seemed unchanged the "status" of my order was still "In process" but I didn't let myself worry over it since the Shipping date was still Jan. 13. On the morning of the next day I decided to check once again and to my astonishment I encountered this:
I immediately made a call to the Lenovo Customer service line, (it must be a mistake I thought, but really knowing that it was probably not)
After a moment I was talking to a Lenovo representative that after a pause announced that the Estimated Shiping Date was indeed Feb. 18 2010 or later. OR LATER? yep, that date is still "estimated" and is subject to change! I was wordless to say the least. After Inquiring the reason for the delay and hearing a "unexpected high volume orders" completely disregarding I ordered the laptop the first DAY it was possible to buy it from the lenovo webapge! (I check the day before at 11pm without success) I dropped the case. The representative told me that he would try to get my order speed up but it was subject through approval and it would take some time for that to come through. (but I don't have any hopes)

Later that day (yesterday) for pure curiosity I decided to check the "availability" of the X100e on the X100e lenovo webpage
And to think that I was starting to believe that Lenovo was any different from the other pc companies! They are advertising a 13 business days shipment. Even me, that ordered the laptop on the first day available will have to wait 33 business days for it, more than 6 weeks! and yet they continue to falsely advertise a shipment less than half the real time. To me this is a straight lie if I ordered the first day and I have to wait 33 bus. days I don't even want to imagine the wait other customers are going to be unscrupulously deceived to endure.
Personally I would not mind the wait that much but I'm a Computer Science Student and my semester starts on Jan. 25 and I need a laptop to take with me, but above all what really pisses me off is that the company has not taken any actions, I DID NOT received any email informing me of the (I'm sure) unusually long delays, and the real impact of the delay is not reflected on the webpage (to me that is just dishonest)

Anyhow, patience is all there is for now. I don't even know for how long I'll need to borrow a laptop now, hopefully I'll get my thinkpad on Febrary if I have not canceled the order by that time. (if I can't find a laptop to borrow, I'll be forced to cancel the order and buy a crappy netbook or a heavy :S 400$ laptop)

If you are going to a similar experience or have anything to say about the X100e or Lenovo
please feel free to write your comments here.
I have not found any other webpage or blog addressing this issues and I'm sure I'm not the only one going through this with the X100e.