Lenovo Announces ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch
Windows 8-powered notebook now available starting from $1,399.

As PC vendors continue to escalate shipments for touch-enabled Windows 8 notebooks and ultrabooks, Lenovo has announced that it's added a touch-screen ThinkPad X1 Carbon model to its lineup. Now available with prices starting at $1,399, the 14-inch ThinkPad now measures in at 20.8mm thick (around 0.8 inches) and weighs 3.4 pounds, which is slightly thicker and heavier than the non-touch model.
The technical specifications and screen resolution stay the same, though. The new model retains the 1,600x900 resolution display and Intel Core i5 and Core i7 processors. The chassis, meanwhile, is made from lightweight carbon fiber, allowing Lenovo to keep the weight of its laptop below 3.5 pounds.
Lenovo, which appears to be one of the few thriving in an ailing market, had previously stressed that the PC industry underestimates demand for touch-enabled notebooks and ultrabooks. Although Windows 8 sales have decreased by 21 percent since the operating system's launch on October 26, the demand for touch PCs powered by the recently released platform is strong.
There is something called Ultrabase series 3, but I kinda agree with you.
personally I take the opposite view, why would any device (especially a highly portable one) waste space on a DVD drive nowadays, I don't even put them in my desktop machines anymore. The rare times they are needed you can dust off an external USB one, it is getting close to the stage where DVD drives are the new floppy drives.
Any movie I want to watch is in one digital form or another and if I come across something I want in digital format that I dont have then I will rip it myself.
Any ultrabook with a dvd/blue-ray drive is automatically out of consideration in my book.
Say what you will but compare a MacBook Pro's QC to that of the Dell XPS 15 and you'd see. Dell is sending a 3rd unit to in an attempt to to get one that doesn't have dead pixels or "dust" behind the screen or stuck keys. A MacBook Pro might be more expensive but I've had several and have never had those type of issues. ...now I have a much better idea of what you're paying for. ...anyways.