There is a lot of interest towards well-made 14 inch laptops with enough ports and great build quality in this community.

These criteria seem to exclude Acer at whole, but as an owner of Acer TravelMate P645 for already 2 years and loving every moment of it, I decided to submit this here in case somebody looks for a much cheaper alternative to Thinkpads. The new P658 to the best of my knowledge is the only ultrabook to sport VGA, HDMI, Ethernet connection and USB type C in a slick aluminum-magnesium body.

This post is not endorsed by Acer in any way. I just like the laptop very much and at a price of around 1000 Euros in Europe it makes it really competitively priced.

I don't believe this can be considered a Thinkpad alternative, it doesn't even have a Trackpoint alternative/pointernub.