Hey all,
It's too early to tell what battery life is like as I haven't run it down, but I'll keep an eye on it and let you know. I do have a baseline, as I was getting probably 3.5 hours out of it before. This may be wishful thinking on my part, but with normal use I'm hoping for about 5.5 to 6. It looks like it could give me that, but it's all just speculation at this point. Again, I'll let you know.
The touch screen was unaffected; in fact, everything worked fine in the fresh install even before I reinstalled the ThinkPad drivers. The only thing I have to find is a driver for the TrackPoint - it still works quite well, but the scroll button in the middle doesn't behave consistently. Windows thinks it's a standard PS2 mouse at the moment.
There is less heat from the right side of the unit, though the fan does still come on once in a while to cool the graphics processor. Other than that, it's so quiet it's kind of creepy. I keep forgetting I've got a full-on computer here.
jcmdelmar - I can't find my stupid pen, so I can't give an answer on how the screen works with it. I should just break down and buy a new one, but the one I have is really good, so I'd rather find it, haha! The touchscreen itself is very responsive, though - it took me all of about 8 seconds to start using it instead of the keyboard and TrackPoint wherever possible. In fact, I've gotten into the habit of trying to drag windows using the screen on my Alienware now - you should see the looks my coworkers give me!
As to the hinge, I've owned other swivel-hinge laptops before and this is definitely the most solid. That's not to say I entirely trust it, but it should last for quite a while. The screen does give a little when you're poking at it in laptop mode, but not enough to affect usability - it's no worse than the HP Envy and other touch screen laptops I tried.
It's a very good unit, when all is said and done. My iPad has seen very little use of late, despite its smaller size and larger variety of Angry Birds.
Anyway, gotta work! I'll keep checking back and try to answer any questions. For those of you thinking of doing the SSD upgrade, it's definitely doable and with little difficulty, particularly if you're doing a clean Windows install.
Cheers,
Nik