Lenovo’s new X100E ultrathin laptop just leaked out, and it’s looking pretty sweet: 11.6-inch screen, redesigned chiclet keyboard, a supposed starting price of less than $500, and colors. Colors, you guys. On a ThinkPad.

The X100E looks to be a substantial physical redesign from Lenovo, who typically falls so thoroughly on the function side of the form vs. function debate that they may not even be aware there is another side. The new chiclet (or “island”) keyboard looks great, much less busy than previous ThinkPad layouts, and the overall design seems to have calmed down significantly. Hell, it’ll even be available in colors. Colors! From Lenovo! (Looks like red, white and black are the extent of the palette, but still).

It should be packing a low-power AMD Athon “Neo” processor, 4GB of memory, up to 500GB of hard drive storage, and boast a 5.1-hour battery life while weighing less than 3 pounds. But the most enticing part has to be the price: Previous ThinkPads have been extremely pricey, often even more than equivalent Macs, yet the X100E is rumored to come in at $500 to start. No info quite yet on a release date, but we’ll keep you updated. [Ubergizmo]