Light, fast laptops (money is no object)
 

I’ve split this from Ben’s new PC build thread. In this thread, you will help me to find my next laptop.

My current machine is a Sony Vaio VGN-TXN15. It’s been an utterly awesome computer. Seriously. This machine predated the Netbook flood by about two years, so it really is amazing for what it is. To this day, people still comment on it when they see it.

It’s got a killer 11” screen, which is small enough to open fully even in a coach-class airplane tray table and yet really bright and clear. With the standard battery, it weighs 2.8 lbs, and when it was fresh, that was good for about 4 hours runtime. I’ve also got the extended battery which (again, when fresh) gave me a no-shit 12 hour capacity. I like to be able to fly from SAN to LGA, with one or two connections in between, and never have to stop watching XVID-encoded movies along the way.

But it’s starting to show its age. The batteries are starting to crap out, the case has finally started to crack, and the paint is gone from about half the keys on the keyboard. The processor is an old ULV 1.2 Ghz Core Solo, and it’s now maxxed out at 1.5 GB of RAM. While the majority of what I use the machine for really is typical netbook stuff, there are a couple of applications I need for work which are very database-intensive. Normally, I run these on a quad-core i7 machine, so I need something that isn’t too slow or to limited on RAM. Atoms are out. I’m looking for, at a minimum, ULV Core2Duo, preferably i5 or better. And I want to be able to pop in at least 3 GB of RAM, even if it requires an extra-cost upgrade.

Screen size is also a huge factor. 11” class is about as big as I’m willing to go, as the aforementioned airplane tray table thing really is a valid concern for me.

Battery life- again, I’m spoiled as hell, and not wanting to give anything up.

Oh, and the keyboard. It’s fucking awesome. It even has a full-size right shift key, which is becoming a rarity. I won’t give that up. And that’s just one more thing that Sony fucked up on the new Vaio X.

And, above all, money is no object. Well, that’s not literally true. I’m not going to pay $40,000 for a laptop. But $2,000 would be no problem if that’s what it takes.

Oh, and this last one is going to sound weird, but don’t argue with me: No 64 bit operating systems. I’m serious. There’s one app in particular I need which the developer tells me is just never going to be 64 bit compatible (due to some obscure library that it is inseparable from). Whatever machine I buy I’ll be removing the HD from and replacing with an SSD anyway, so having to manually install XP32 is not a big deal, but it’d be nice if there was nothing about the machine (some obscure driver, for instance) that prevents me from doing so.

Reverant suggested the HP 2710p / 2730p machines. I must admit that I’d not previously looked at tablet convertibles. Not bad, though it’s a bit on the large and heavy side and the reviews seem to indicate merely average battery life.

The Sony Vaio X would have been awesome had they not crippled it. But they did, so fuck Sony. Fuck them right in the ear.

Right now, I’m looking at machines such as the Acer Aspire TimelineX 1830 series (i5 / i7, 4GB, nice keyboard, 9-cell battery soon to be available as an option) and the HP Pavilion dm1 which, although it’s an AMD machine, seems to be one of the less-sucky ones (an E-350).


Thoughts?

I have an HP 2710p, which is really good for what it is. 12" LED display w/touch screen (awesome), Core 2 Duo ULV 1.33GHz, 4GB RAM, 1.8" 120GB HDD (4200rpm though, you will def want to upgrade to an SSD), Webcam w/adjustable focus, night light for the keyboard, fingerprint reader, SD card reader, firewire, battery indicator on the bottom, RUGGED construction, damn good keyboard with LARGE keys, trackpoing ala IBM. No trackpad.

2730p is the update to the 2710p, has a 1.86-GHz C2D CPU and includes a trackpad for those who can't use a trackpoint. At about 3.5 pounds its not the lightest, but damn its tough.

Have you considered a ThinkPad X201? I've had an X40 for years, and recently got an X201, and it's got the typically excellent Lenovo build quality and great keyboard. Prices start at $999 depending on how you option it out. I'm using mine as desktop to VPN into the office, driving dual external displays through an UltraBase.

C

iPad.










Sorry, just kidding. I wanted to see what it felt like to be the guy that ignored 90% of your requirements and made the inevitable fanboy suggestion.

I'm barely computer literate, but I remember my buddy back in 04 building a pc from parts off newegg. Can you build laptops yet?

the 2nd gen core i chips are coming out soon. if that's soon enough, I'd wait.

that said, we have 2 Alienware M11x machines at work that we used to run our head mounted displays. They are small and $1000 and had enough power to run full stereoscopic (ie two 1280x1024) virtual environments at 30FPS (one at 60) on battery power for several hours all while powering a head tracker and the head-mounted display itself and exchanging data over a wireless network.

They're about 1300 with the core i7.

I can't really say how they are as a day to day machine but they seem robust.

OH and they have fancy colored LED lights under the keyboard and front speaker holes that you can change or make cycle through in rainbow fashion!



Regarding 32bit OS: can you do it in a virtual machine on top of 64bit? I ask because you're limiting yourself to 3.2gb of ram right off the bat and that's just shitty. At least dual boot. Windows 7 starts so fast you wont care.



All that said, I'm still a HUGE Fujitsu fan. I've got one of their T4210 tablets with a core duo that's outlasted pretty much every other laptop I've touched in the last 4 years. I freshened it with a new hard drive, memory, and windows 7 and it's as fast as new.

10ish inch core i5 tablet w/multi touch:
http://store.shopfujitsu.com/fpc/Eco...do?series=T580

12.1 inch core i7:
http://store.shopfujitsu.com/fpc/Eco...do?series=P770

its shitty that you don't want a 13" one. It's going to be hard to find something powerful in a form factor that small. My current laptop has a 18.4" screen and I wouldn't trade it for a netbook ever.

Have you considered a tablet? I've also got an HP TC1100 tablet (about 5 years old now) and I love the thing. It's old so far from powerful but it runs windows 7 fine. I am sure there are newer versions and they'll be within your size range and come with a lot more power than netbooks.

I just looked and HP has something that you may like. It's the pavillion d1mz series.

I just priced one out with these specs:


Operating system Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit edit
Processor and Graphics AMD Dual-Core Processor E-350 (1.6GHz, 1MB L2 Cache)+AMD Radeon(TM) HD 6310M Discrete-Class Graphics edit
Memory 4GB DDR3 System Memory (2 Dimm) edit
Hard drive 128GB (Solid State Drive Flash Module) edit
Office software No Additional Office Software edit
Security software No additional security software edit
Primary battery 50% OFF!! Two 6-Cell Lithium-Ion Batteries edit
Display 11.6" diagonal High Definition HP BrightView LED Display (1366 x 768) edit
Personalization Webcam with Integrated Digital Microphone edit
Networking 802.11b/g/n WLAN and Bluetooth(R) edit
Keyboard Standard Keyboard edit
Carrying cases HP 11.6" Mini Sleeve edit


All that for $845.92. Significantly cheaper if you substitute a 250gb HDD for the 128gb SSD but you said you wanted fast.

There's not many laptops that are going to meet your criteria under 12" other than the ones already mentioned. There is the Alienware m11x, but I don't think that's up your alley. It has a bad hinge design. The 1830 probably suits you perfectly.

If it were me I would sacrifice 2" of airplane tray for a more powerful 13". I'm still in love with my eee701 though. :)

The first laptop that comes to mind is the M11x.

I'm getting nothing searching for D1MZ.... typo?

EDIT: Figured it out, DM1Z

Look at the HP EliteBook series. They come as small as 12" (for lightness) and are pretty configurable. Core i5 or i7 up near the 3Ghz range. Up to 8GB of ram. They usually clock in between 2000 and 2500, but they can get pretty crazy.

I was personally scoping out the Vaio Z. I liked the look of the X like you said, but the moment I saw the word Atom on it I sighed...

The Z can have up to a 1920x1080 13" screen which is pretty awesome. It has a 330M which is also good from a laptop as small as it is. Can come with a Core I7 2.8GHz which turbo boosts to 3.5Ghz. Has spots for 2 small SSDs to run in raid 0. Sounds like it can be a pretty wicked little ultaportable.

Welp, HP just lost a sale. I was really glad to see this thread started because I'm looking for a decent small laptop for my upcoming deployment since I don't want to take my desktop I just built a few months ago. Was going to order an HP dv5t series I customized but they won't ship to my APO address. Oh well, back to the drawing board.

Ya, I'm on the market myself. I just got to Baghdad and all I have at the moment is my Acer netbook and thanks to its Intel GMA 500 I can't even play fucking Minecraft.... I want something I can play some occasional games on and is potent, yet I still want something portable that I can easily bring between my trailer and my worksite.

VAIO's are generally expensive, but the high end ones like the Z-series basically have no competition and the build quality is always stellar. There is just no other ultraportable that packs all that hardware into a package that small.

I googled reviews of the Z series with the core i7 cpu in it. It performs within a couple hundred points of the M11x in 3DMark Vantage on the GPU test and just absolutely TROUNCES is on the CPU test. In PCMark tests it just knocks it out of the ballpark compared to any other ultraportable available. The i7 and the raid 0 ssds are really what make the difference on the Z. One site tested read speeds of around 450MB/s.

I owned a Z1 series back in college and it was an amazing machine. I've also used the TX series that Joe owns now and they were awesome as well as his experience reflects.

Now I really sound like I'm selling this thing lol, and I don't even own one. Probably going to be picking one up in the next couple weeks though. I'm just not 100% yet, so I'm not pulling the trigger.

Dells haven't even been discussed and while that's probably with good reason, I'll share my experiences. My Dell XPS M1530 is a huge, steaming pile of crap. It gets very hot and the battery has developed memory or something and won't last longer than a minute. Both speakers are blown, half the USB ports don't work and drivers seem to disappear from the hd every couple weeks.

I'm going to pick one of these up soon:

http://www.computercloset.org/IBM_PC_Convertible.jpg

Alienware is Dell...

Possible contenders: HP Elitebook 2540p, Acer TimelineX 1830 / 1872, Lenovo X201s...



I hadn't even considered Lenovo, to be honest. I had no idea they were playing in the small-and-light space.

The X201s definitely looks like a contender- what's killing me is that the X100e would be absolutely perfect were it not for the lack of a touchpad and the less-than-stellar CPU. Why couldn't they have put the i5 and the X201s' touchpad into that chassis?

I don't know. What does being banned feel like? :D



My old machine still has some life left in it, but I'll probably be needing to replace it within 6 months or so. The batteries are what's driving the timeline right now. The little one is down to less than an hour of runtime, the big one is currently giving me about 5 hours but fading fast. I don't want to spend $225 for a new battery for a machine I'm planning to replace anyway.



Well, with the exception of my "big" home PC, all of my machines run 32 bit, including the ones I use for work. The memory limitation hasn't been a problem yet. I'll have to see whether I can get CommunityMonitor (the app suite in question) to run under VMWare on a 64 bit host- I've never tried it.





I used "big" laptops for about 8 years when I worked for Harris. For a while, in fact, I used nothing but a laptop with a docking station when in the office. But I really do travel a lot, and when you're constantly going through airports, working on airplanes, carrying everything you need to work around with you from one job site to the next in a backpack and then working in cramped spaces once you're there, you really learn to appreciate the value of small and light.

And I'm completely serious about the airplane seat thing. Several years ago, I was in coach with a Dell notebook (14", if I recall) and had the screen in just the wrong position, because when the person in front of me reclined suddenly, it caught the upper lip of the screen and proceeded to shatter it. Fortunately that was a corporate machine, so they FedExed me a new one the same day, but I don't want it happening again.

And honestly, I really don't mind the small screen and keyboard. Maybe it's just what you're accustomed to, but I find the 11" screen perfectly adequate. If I could find a 10" class machine which met my other demands, I'd buy it immediately.



Nope.

I actually own two tablets already. Fujitsu Stylistics. I use them for Megasquirt tuning. They're great for simple shit like that, but the work I do requires a lot of keyboard input. I realize that most of the machines sold as "tablets" today are actually convertibles (with a fold-out keyboard) however in my experience, they offer no size/weight advantages over a conventional laptop design, have slightly poorer display quality (owing to the touchscreen overlay) and I would gain virtually no benefit from having the tablet-only mode of operation available to me.







I'm finding that there are some. It just kills me that both Dell and Sony either discontinued or dumbed-down their old 11" class machines into what are essentially netbooks.

And I did look at the Alienware machine. IThe reviews all criticize the battery life, and I have no need for a hardcore graphics card. No polygon-based object will ever be displayed on this screen.




Yeah, Sony is sort of the Mac of the Windows world. Expensive as hell, closed-architecture, sexy design, and very, VERY well made.

I just looked at the Z series, and while I like the specs, it's too big. I put a tape measure over my TXN, and by comparison, the Z looks like a mainframe.


Damn you, Sony. You practically invented the ultraportable category, and now you have forsaken it.

My company gave me a Dell 11z (or was it the m101z ?) to test drive for a couple of days and it was pretty good. It had a full size keyboard or one close enough I couldn't tell it wasn't. They had also just started using the faster Core Duo in them recently. I watched Hulu and tried a few other things to sample it's capabilities and was pleasantly surprised. I didn't try any really heavy lifting like gaming, but I don't do any of that on a work computer anyway. The big downside for me was it included no onboard DVD/CD drive. I play product videos for customers on occasion. Upsides- I got really great life out of the 6 cell battery, and the optional 9-cell is supposed to be ridiculously long lived. Upside- very light and portable.

M101z:
http://www.dell.com/us/p/inspiron-1121/fs
Refurbed 11z:
http://outlet.us.dell.com/ARBOnlineS...=22&l=en&s=dfh

You guys are probably looking for something in a whole different class, but I'm trying to be helpful anyway...

XP Mode
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/w...indows-xp-mode

you can basically run xp 32bit on top of win7 64 bit.

Macbook Air or Macbook pro. Install Windows on it. Or install VMware on mac os. Snapshotting your OS is nice.

OR

My GF has a Dell "Latitude 13" and it's fucking amazing.

Also, go 64 bit and max out your memory. 8-16GB memory FTW!

AND

for performance, get a SSD!!! The hard drive is the only moving part in a computer and the majority of UI latency is due to the read/write arm swinging around. Latency measured in ms vs us (ergh, milliseconds vs nanoseconds).

Skim the thread?

The 101z might merit some consideration, though I've heard a lot of negative things about Athlon-equipped machines with regard to battery life. I'll see if I can find some real-world reviews on that one. Not a fan at all of the processor choices on the 11z. I really don't want to skimp here, and those machines are borderline netbooks.

I did, however, stumble across the Latitude E4200 at the Dell Enterprise site. That machine looks like a very serious contender. Expensive ($2,031 configured the way I'd want it) but it seems to check all the right boxes.



Yes, I'm extremely familiar with XP mode. It's the only reason that I paid extra to get a legit copy of 7 Pro (as opposed to 7 Home Basic) when I built my most recent i5 machine.

It sucks.

Specifically, all it is is a pre-loaded copy of Microsoft Virtual PC with a licensed version of XP Pro pre-installed. It loads slowly, it runs slowly, and it does not support transfer of files between guest and host OS. I never use it, finding VMWare to be considerably more versatile.

The 32 vs. 64 bit thing isn't a 100% deal-killer (I can always just continue to use VMWare) but if given a choice between the two I will choose 32 bit, and if I can find the appropriate drivers, I will ditch 7 altogether and continue using XP Pro. I can live without TRIM support.



You know, I honestly did consider the Air. It's got a decent processor, enough RAM, a good SSD, a good keyboard, and the 11" version satisfies my requirements for smallness and lightness. There's only one problem:

"Get up to 5 hours of battery life on a single charge on the 11-inch model"

Yup. You're stuck with a 35wh battery, and unlike every other laptop on the face of the earth, you can't carry a spare battery with you and swap them out when you run the first one down. And of course, we all know that "up to 5 hours" means "approximately 3 hours of actually using the computer."

That's a deal-killer.


Did you read the first post in this thread?
For reference, here's what the Gold Standard measures out as:

10.6" wide
7.8" deep (front to back, including battery)
1.3" thick at thickest point
8.1" (worst-case) from desktop surface to top of screen when open.
2.75 lbs with 6-cell battery and DVD/CD-RW drive installed (measured on postal scale)

That's the goal. I can deal with a little extra width and even a little extra weight, but depth (front to back) and height (to top of display when open) are not highly negotiable.

Oh. :jerkit:

repost:

http://store.shopfujitsu.com/fpc/Eco...do?series=T580

Approximately 10.63" x 7.44" x 1.56" Weight: 2.98 lbs. with 3-cell battery, 3.19 lbs. with 6-cell battery

It may be that I need to reconsider my prejudices against tablets.

However, the Aspire TimexlineX 1830T is still very high in the running as well. 11.6" display, ULP i7 processor 4GB standard, 11.2" x 8" x 1.1" and 3 lb. It's just that its so... cheap. Only $900 for all of this, vs. $1,500-$2,000 for some of the other machines I'm looking at. There's gotta be some downside, right?

the difference between a convertible and a tablet is you get a keyboard and can swivel your monitor. and now that they have multi-touch in addition to pen support, it's win win win.

My fujitsu is a tablet. I may have used it as such for a cumulative 30 minutes in the last 3 years.

Well, the reason I'd been ignoring them is that if you really get down and compare the specs (especially from a manufacturer like Fuji, which offers nearly identical models in both laptop & convertible designs) you do tend to pay a VERY hefty weight penalty for the hinging mechanism, which I don't think I'd ever actually use.

Consider, for instance, the conventionally hinged LIFEBOOK P770 vs. the tablet-convertible LIFEBOOK T730. Both have the same 12.1" display, both offer Core i-series processors, both have standard 6 cell batteries (although the T730's battery is slightly smaller at only 5.2 Ah vs/ the T770's 5.8 Ah) and yet the P770 weighs only 3.0 lbs WITH the optical drive in place, whereas the T770 tips the scales at 3.9 lbs WITHOUT the optical drive.


Is it really that much to ask for computer manufacturers to build the exact machine that I want? :D

Just dropped ~$1300 for a fuji t730, 500GB external and an extra modular bay 6 cell battery. Probably could've done better if I looked around more but I'm running out of time before I ship out.

Not in the sense that you can "build" a desktop PC out of discrete parts. While we do now have standardization of certain things, such as the MiniPCI Express form factor for internal expansion cards (commonly used for small SSDs, WiFi adapters, 3G cards, etc), so far as I am aware, there are absolutely no standards at all for things like motherboard form-factor.

In a way, this lack of modularity is a good thing. As an example, laptop processors, unlike their desktop counterparts, tend not to be socketed but rather soldered directly to the motherboard. This has two advantages; it increases thinness and smallness (sockets take up space), and it also provides some degree of thermal coupling from the CPU into the board, decreasing the requirements for conventional fan and heatsink capacity.

The only problem I see with the dell you linked to Joe was the cheesy integrated intel graphics. For the money I'd expect better.

Came to mention the E4200, but i see it's already up for consideration.

The intel chipsets are a lot more durable / reliable than the nvidia ones (can't speak for ATi/AMD) and usually offer better battery life / less heat.

Gotta point there, thats why some of the higher end laptops have dual GPU's.

For small and light, IMO, I'd look at one of the eeepc models, small, light, cheap, and some have 10+ hours battery life. Drivers for whatever OS you want are available. I had a 701 and for a 2 pound, 7" screen it rocked, especially running Linux with a 2gb ram upgrade.

but for serious, for a super light machine with some power its hard to beat a 13" macbook air with 3gb ram. 7 hour battery, SSD, Nvidia GPU, etc. It would run just about any OS out there as well.

JMHO of course

I almost spent a few hundred bucks on the Penryn core 2 duo processor for my computer as a cheap upgrade... apparently they are socketed sometimes.

I know you said battery life is a deal killer with the Macbook Air, but what is really the difference between an extra battery and an external one? Hell you can get one of the Hypermac 222 watt external batteries and run it for 36hours-kidding, I think that one is like 5 lbs or something. But there are several external mac batteries.

every laptop i have touched in the last 5 yrs has had a socketed processor, you might be running on some dated info there joe.

There are TONS of current gen laptops that use ULV cpus that are often BGA.

the old mac laptops had BGA logic boards. they desoldered themselves after a while.

people fixed them:

http://geektechnique.org/images/1220.jpg

I found this out because a roommate had this problem. Rather than go through the disassembly, I simply put a ratcheting wood clamp on the area to the right of the track pad. shit worked great except for the big clamp hanging off.


HEY JOE: have you run across any awesome 13-14" laptops? My wife's HP DV2700 has fallen apart in the last two years.

mcarp22 pretty well encapsulated my feelings here, and it's one of the things that turned me away from the Alienware machine. I don't want a high-performance graphics chipset. They cost money, yes, but more importantly they take up more space, consume more power, and produce more heat than the current generation of integrated graphics controllers. I don't play high-end 3D games on my big desktop machine, and I certainly don't intend to do so on my laptop. (At most, I occasionally fire up DOSbox or NEStopia for a little 8 bit excitement.)

All I need the graphics chipset to do is show me some relatively static database screens and occasionally play back mpeg-encoded video when I'm bored.


The Eee machines have their place. I bought one of the 10" models for my sister a couple years ago and she loves it, and I wholeheartedly endorse them as tuning laptops. However, they all use either Intel Atom or AMD Athlon processors, and that's a step backwards from my current machine. If I were willing to live with an Atom, I'd have already bought a Vaio X and this thread wouldn't have started.

I appreciate the sentiment, and I did go and have another serious look at the 13" Air after reading this.

You're right, it's a nice-looking machine. But apart from a bit of thin-ness, it doesn't offer anything I can't find elsewhere. It's wider and deeper than the other machines I'm looking at, has an older-generation processor (Core2Duo), less RAM (2GB, max 4), costs quite a lot more, requires me to buy and carry around an external dongle to connect to an external display, and still doesn't have a user-replaceable battery.

Like I said before- if I were a "Mac person", then I could probably deal with these annoyances. But since I don't really care what brand the hardware I'm running is, there's just nothing about either of the Airs that makes them ideal for me.


Quite the opposite, I think.

While I realize that sockets are still around in some trailing-edge applications, I'm referring to newer machines- specifically those in the thin & light class. As neogenesis2004 said, most of these machines use solder-type BGA CPU interconnects, rather than PGA or LGA.

Y8S mentioned the Penryn (a member of the now discontinued Core 2 family), and indeed, some of them used Socket-P. However, all of the lower-power Penryns were BGA, as were the lower-power Meroms. Sockets were used only on the higher-power versions of these, as well as the super-power Conroe/Allendale and Kentsfield. (By "power", I am referring to electrical power dissipation, not computational ability)


Moving to more modern designs, 100% of the Atom-branded processors are socketless. The old Diamondvilles were straight BGA, the newer Pineviews are µFCBGA.

The same is true of the current-gen Arrandale processors; the i3, i5, i7, plus the "Pentium" U5 and "Celeron" U3 chips. The high-power ones typically use Socket G1 (which is PGA), however 100% of the low-power and ultra-low-power models come in a BGA-1288 package. (The fact that Intel sometimes refers to this design as "Socket BGA-1288" adds confusion, however like all other BGA packages, BGA-1288 is inherently socketless.

Interesting...

I knew that these devices existed for things like MP3 players and smartphones, and I'd wondered about the possibility of making something like that for a laptop. Guess somebody beat me to it as usual.

To answer your question directly, the difference between an extra battery and an external one is the fact that once I've switched to the external, I will now have a battery hanging off of my laptop attached by a cable, so when I'm at a jobsite moving between studios and racks, instead of simply picking up my laptop with one hand and walking away, I'll have to carefully gather up an assembly consisting of a laptop and a battery conjoined by a cable, and of course I won't be able to set it down in as small a space as I now can either.

Not to mention the fact that I'll also have to bring along two separate chargers with me wherever I go (one for the laptop, one for the battery) plus the extra two cables you need to conjoin them.

A noble effort, and probably useful for the die-hard Mac owners who wouldn't even consider carrying a machine that didn't have a glowing picture of fruit on it.



One other thing I just noticed. Neither the 11" nor the 13" Airbooks have an on-board Ethernet port.

WHAT THE FUCK, STEVE?

Ok, so I've accepted that RS-232 is a dead standard, and I'm totally OK with having a USB to RS-232 dongle in my toolbox for the few occasions when I still need one (our consoles still use RS-232 for the diagnostic port) but I think 802.3 still has a little life left in it, don't you? Not everybody lives in a world where everything is on WLAN.



Haha. Actually, that's not too far off from how we rework BGA chips in the lab. :D

I really haven't been paying any attention at all to machines in the 13-14" class recently. I do suspect that shopping for a good 13-14" machines would be easier, for a number of reasons. First, you're not infringing on netbook territory, so they all have "real" processors. Size & weight also aren't big concerns, nor is battery life, as you're more likely to be using them in mostly stationary applications (eg: sitting at the kitchen table, where power is available) rather than constantly moving about with them as I do.

I see them all the time in the TigerDirect Deal of the Day emails, often in the $400 range.

yeah, I really don't know what they were thinking when they ditched ethernet. I'm not sure what else out there is small, light, and fast that has not been mentioned, but I wish you luck on your quest. I know how hard it can be to find a machine that is exactly what you want without comprimises.

Just got back from Fry's where I had some hands-on time with the Acer 1830T. Pretty nice machine, actually. It's almost an exact match for my VGN size-wise, and they keyboard is really quite nice indeed. (A few reviews I've read criticized the keyboard- I assume that the people who wrote these were the products of seventh-generation intermarriage.)

Two things bothered me a little bit. The display isn't quite as awesome as what I'm accustomed to- less saturated and slightly lower contrast. This was obvious only because it was sitting right next to a Vaio X, and I can live with it.

The touchpad bugged me, though. It's not smooth, not in the least. Basically, it blends into the rest of the top cover, which has a texture consisting of rough and irregular horizontal ridges running across it. What this means is that it offers a vastly different amount of resistance to a finger running across it in a vertical direction vs. a horizontal direction, like what would happen if a piece of 60-grit sandpaper were projected into a one-dimensional universe. Kinda weird. The fact that it blends right into the rest of the top surface also means that while you can see where the boundaries of the touch-enabled surface are, you can't feel them. In particular, this made it very hard for me to locate and smoothly operate the scroll feature which is standard on most touchpads, by sliding up and down along the right edge of the pad.

Oddly, I've not heard of one reviewer complaining about this. They complained about the size (which doesn't bother me at all) but not the texture. Maybe I'm being overly sensative?

I was all set and ready to walk out the door with that machine, too. Now I have doubt.

Ok easier to see why an external battery might not work for your needs but remember these batteries will also charge the onboard battery while powering the system so you could squeeze more free time out after being plugged in and I think they use the same apple AC adapter(I could be wrong) so no additional cords(the battery to laptop cord is integrated I think.
As far as ethernet it is a $10-20 external USB adapter for the 5% of the time you need LAN access.

Some laptops at work have that touch pad, or at least one similar. It's full of small holes, designating the outer boundary but it is more difficult to feel the edges over the older recessed style. I'm not a huge fan, and I don't use it enough to know if I like it or not.

Yes, I'm sure there are ways to make the experience less frustrating. But in the end, it's just a nuisance that I don't want to deal with.

FWIW, utilizing this extra battery system requires a total of five additional power cables/devices (plus the battery itself):

1: The battery requires (and includes) its own charger, which is similar to the charger that an intel-style laptop would use (It has a standard coaxial DC jack rather than a proprietary mag-break thingy.)

2: Plus the AC cable for the above charger.

3: To connect the battery to the laptop, you first buy a MagSafe airline adapter from Apple,

4: Attach the little adapter that turns the airline plug into an auto-style plug, and then

5: You connect that cable+adapter combo to yet another cable (included w/ the hypermac) which adapts it to plug into the battery.

They even have pictures illustrating this:

http://www.hypershop.com/v/vspfiles/...ne-Adapter.jpg

http://www.hypershop.com/v/vspfiles/.../MBP-060-4.jpg

http://www.hypershop.com/v/vspfiles/.../MBP-060-3.jpg


That's it. It's done. I am not lugging around two chargers and a mess of other cables just to emulate a feature that has been standard on every other laptop computer since the Tandy model 100 was released in 1983.


I use my laptop to configure and manage audio consoles and routers made by my company. This is done by connecting to their 10Base-T ethernet port via an ethernet crossover cable. Thus, when I am in the field doing my job, I need wired ethernet access roughly 100% of the time, and having a dongle hanging from the side of the machine to accomplish this is just one more trivial little annoyance that I don't need.


I really wanted to like the Air. I thought "Ok, this is my chance to finally prove that I'm not a Windows bigot (even though I planned to run Windows on it) and own something that some hippie in a turtleneck who is dying of cancer (again) says is trendy and fashionable."

I've given it due consideration, but Apple is just not in the running at this point. Until Apple produces something with an ethernet jack, a user-replacable battery, a processor that hasn't been discontinued, and (preferably) a VGA or HDMI port, they just aren't going to find their way into my backpack.

I've seen the style you mean. Can't recall whether it was on an HP or a Fuji- one of those two I think. And I don't mind those.

This is different. It's actually rough, like dragging your finger across the grain of coarsely-hewn wood.

Which actually gives me an idea. I wonder what a bit of 400 and 800 grit sandpaper followed by polishing compound might accomplish here? It's entirely possible that this might not be a lost cause.

You may want to rethink that, depending on what technology is used on that touchpad Joe.

Touchpads use capacitance to detect fingers, and depending on what technology is used that may destroy how the touchpad detects your finger.

if your concern is scrolling, look into the two-finger-scroll hack for synaptics touchpads and see if the laptop in question has one.

http://lifehacker.com/5493849/get-ma...windows-laptop

I don't like having the side scroll thing. I like knowing that when I put down a second finger, I get scroll.

You can also do 3 and 4-finger gestures if you so desire. It's a very useful hack.

I'd like to begin by sharing with you all a poem which I recently composed:

Fuck you, Sony.

You invented the high-end ultraportable category, and then abandoned it to lesser entities.
The Vaio TX, TZ and TT, great machines they all, and overpriced;
yet we faithful flocked to your tit with our dollars each time, though your founder a turtleneck did not wear.

Now we have nothing, alone in the darkness we wail,
For the Vaio X, the lightest, thinnest, awesomest machine yet;
Though it cost $1,500, be crippled with an Atom processor (and the attendant limitation of 2GB of RAM, which is imposed by the licensing restrictions of Microsoft and Intel.)

Knew this you did, and yet- the fall.

I hope that you die of AIDS, but you are a corporation;

I hope that you die of corporate AIDS.

This is getting hard. The Acer is out. I simply cannot abide that horrible touchpad. Damn shame, as it was perfect otherwise.

I've made a grid. Engineers like grids. For reference, these prices are not baselines, but are as-configured the way I'd probably buy them, which includes things like RAM upgrades, bluetooth modules, and six-cell batteries where optional, but does not include upgrading the hard drive to an SSD:

http://img40.picoodle.com/i51n/thrad..._689_u77ts.gif

That E4200 is still clearly king. It's the lightest, the second-smallest, and while it's not an i-series processor, the Core2Duo SU9600 is still a pretty good chip, having the lowest TDP of the bunch at a mere 10 watts despite supporting most of the current-gen features (no turbo boost or hyperthreading, though.) On the plus side, a 128 GB SSD is standard, so knock $280 off the price for comparative purposes (making it still the most expensive machine in the lot, but by a smaller margin.) And the fact that it comes standard with a 32 bit OS is a plus for me. (Yes, I've heard all your cautionary tales, and yes, I understand the address-space limitation on RAM. Trust me, I have a reason for this logic.)

A couple of the Fujis are looking ok. The T580 is dimensionally similar to my TX, though it has only a 10" screen (vs. 11.6"), while the P770 has a 12" screen yet is nearly a full inch deeper (depth front-to-back is really my most critical dimension.)


Then there's this other machine which I stumbled across yesterday at Fry's. The HP DM1Z.

http://img37.picoodle.com/i51n/thrad..._495_u77ts.jpg

I spent some time playing with it. Excellent keyboard, good trackpad (the buttons are a bit weird, but I think I could get used to them) adequate (though not awesome) screen... It's not the smallest or the fastest or the lightest, but real-world reports say that the battery life is pretty awesome.


But... it's an AMD.


Honestly, I don't know shit about AMD processors apart from that I haven't owned one since the 486 era, back when they were targeting the bottom of the market with shitty, under-performing CPUs and using confusing and deceptive marketing tactics to sell them. Actually, I guess not much has changed, really. :D

So I'm at an impasse. The Zacate processor architecture is fairly new (it was released to the public two weeks ago) so there's not a ton of real-world data on it. The reviews I've seen show that graphics performance is far superior to the competition (which I don't care about) but that general-purpose processor performance is midrange at best. While varying between "slightly better than a D-series Atom" to "Quite a lot better than a D-series Atom" depending on who you read, it consistently lags way behind even the lowest-end offerings in the Intel Arrandale family.

So here's my dilemna: how the hell do I compare this machine to what I have now?

On the plus side, RAM is expandable to 8 GB. Frankly, that's one of my big problems right now- my TX is maxxed out at 1.5 GB, and it spends a lot of time disk-bound. Tripling the RAM would probably solve a lot of problems right off.

But in terms of processor power, how the heck do I compare the AMD Zacate E-350 processor to my current Intel Yonah-architecture U1400 Core Solo?


More Graphs!


I finally managed to locate a website which has comparative benchmarks of all sorts of different CPUs- not just the modern stuff, but classics as well. http://www.cpubenchmark.net/

Here are all of the current contenders ranked on the Passmark Performance Test benchmark scale, which measures general CPU performance but excludes things like I/O and graphics:

http://img37.picoodle.com/i51n/thrad..._53b_u77ts.gif

So, what to make of it? Well, the Atom 550 did outperform my current machine by a surprising margin, but the 2 GB ram limit has already excluded those machines from the competition. The E-350 fared reasonably well, but as predicted, underperformed all of the newer Core processors. (What really surprised me is how closely the old Penryn-3M Core2 Duo fared against the Arrandale i3. That Dell E4200 is still a contender.)

But how to interpret the data? Is 500 twice as much as 250? Is 1,500 three times as much as 500? I mean, where would an 8086 fall on that scale? Would it be 1 or .0000000000000001?

And of course, it gets really depressing when you overlay the desktop processors at the same scale:

http://img40.picoodle.com/i51n/thrad..._731_u77ts.gif

Funny, my desktop machine at home (an i5-750) doesn't feel seventeen times faster than my laptop. 2 or 3 times, maybe.

I think they're toshiba netbooks with swivel touchscreens. I guess these days that makes them a tablet?

I like your grids. Compare more.

anything more than $300 with anything running on an atom class processor is a damn ripoff.

The netbook market was more entertaining before it was called a netbook, while microsoft stayed the hell out

I didn't have a good chance to double check it before, but the recently upgraded version of the Inspiron 11z I tried comes with the Intel Core i3-330UM processor, 11.6" HD display, 2GB memory upgradable to 4GB, 250MB HDD, 3.44 lbs., 3 USB 2.0 ports, RJ45 Ethernet, VGA, and two mini card slots (whatever that means). It also says this: 7-in-1 Flash memory reader supporting SD, SDHC, MMC,MMC+, xD, MS, MS Pro Transfer files quickly from your digital devices by plugging the card in instead of carrying and connecting USB adapters.

http://shop.sprint.com/NASApp/online...wZipCode=33563

^_^

I think the 4200 only holds 3gb of memory max.

Depending on what os you're using you may have some issues with 32bit and more than 4gb of ram, here's some info from microsoft.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...(v=vs.85).aspx

Hmm. It doesn't show up in Dell's current catalog, but there are still some in the used/refurb market for not too much money. The reviews on them aren't great, though. Battery life on the 6-cell version is supposed to be good, but that's apparently the only thing folks are liking about it.

"With a 3 cell battery, the laptop is just under an inch thick. But a 6 cell battery adds almost an inch to the height of the laptop in the rear. That causes the keyboard to tilt at an almost-but-not-quite uncomfortable angle. While it’s fairly common for PC makers to add a little tilt to the keyboard, I don’t think I’ve ever used a PC with a keyboard angled quite as sharply as the one on the Dell Inspiron 11z."

"In a series of benchmarks, the Inspiron 11z fell somewhere between a notebook with an Intel Celeron SU2300 CULV processor and one with a more powerful Intel Core 2 Duo SU7300 CPU."

"The Dell Inspiron 11z’s touchpad is pretty much the same one used on the Inspiron Mini 10v, but bigger. You would have thought Dell could have used that extra space to place right and left buttons below the touchpad instead of integrating them into the touch area. But they didn’t. And so find this touchpad just as frustrating to use as the one on Dell’s 10 inch netbook. The idea is that Dell can provide a larger touch surface by using integrated buttons. But this means that in order to click, you need to move your finger to the lower right or left portion of the touchpad and press down. It also means that you have to be very careful not to move the finger you’re using to click, lest you should accidentally move the cursor."

"If you intend to use the built in touch bad a lot you may be in for major annoyance. On almost any review you read about this laptop they will complain about this touchpad. I agree with them. it is what stops this laptop from being FANTASTIC. "

"One Con, which is the touch pad. It's the terribly worst touch pad I have ever used in my life. I even used a cover to dis-function it. "

"I find the touchpad unusable, even more than other notebook touchpads, and even with all the special gestures disabled, especially because the integrated mouse button substitutes are too stiff."

"The touchpad on the 11z is the first one that I absolutely can't stand to use. Some notebooks have laggy touchpads which might be annoying, but they are still usable. This is not the case with the all-in-one touchpad on the 11z. Dell decided to copy Apple by going with integral buttons under the touchpad surface, but didn't design the hardware or driver support correctly. On a MacBook if you have a finger resting on the touchpad surface to trigger the button while selecting text or moving around objects, it can tell the difference. It knows that finger shouldn't be recognized as a variable in the multi-touch movements or standard movements; the Elan touchpad can't."

My recent experience with the Acer made me really appreciate the value of a good touchpad. And this doesn't seem to be one.






I am looking at the Dell service manual for it right now. Both the SU9400 and SU9600 models of the E4200 have 1GB on-board and one memory socket which will accommodate a 1, 2 or 4 GB DIMM, for a total of 2, 3 or 5 GB pf physical RAM.






Some folks are failing pretty hard today at reading comprehension... Quoting myself from the first time I addressed this:... and from the second time I addressed this:Yes. I get it. I understand how address space works. I have been working with microprocessor-based computers since they came with 16k of RAM and you could actually print out the entire memory map and hang it on your wall.

The reality of the situation is that the one database application I use which places the most stringent demands on the machine just so happens to be the one that absolutely will not run in a 64 bit environment. So I can either run it in a 32 bit environment natively, or I can run it in a 32 bit environment inside a virtual machine. Which do you think will be easier / faster / more reliable?





Shit just got real. I found a source, local to me, no less, of refurbed E4200s for hella-cheap. (That's right, I used the word "hella", and the phrase "shit just got real." What are you going to do about it?) So how's this:

http://img40.picoodle.com/i51n/thrad..._b7c_u77ts.gif

Again, these dollar values are "as-configured". At today's prices, figure an extra $280 for a 128 GB SSD, and the effective price of the HP rises to $805. Add another $40 for an external DVD drive and it's a full $100 more than the Dell. For that $100, I can pick up a second 6-cell battery for the Dell, which I can carry around with me for less than the 1lb differential. So the Dell is faster, cheaper, has more battery power, a slightly better touchpad (the HP has soft-buttons, which get cranky when you rest your thumb on them), eSATA, metal hinges, and doesn't require me to use VMware for 32 bit apps.

Can anybody think of a reason for me not to buy this?

Dude you'd be getting a Dell.

Aha, I guess 4GB modules weren't available at RTM (like 2008) when I was trained on them.

For that price on a refurb, I don't think you can do better!

I read your post about the library for the DB, I understand that, and realize why you don't want to run a virtual machine. Is there a way to get 32bit XP to use more than 4gb of ram though? I honestly thought saying that might help because buying a machine w/ 8gb of ram and only being able to use half of it would be kinda lame. My current home laptop has 4gb in it and due to some bios limitation can only use 3 of it, kind of annoying, but 2gb chips are cheap and 3 > 2.

Not that I'm aware of- we're dealing with a physical limitation. If you have 32 address bits, you have a total of 4,294,967,296 addressable locations, and some of that space needs to be reserved for things other than physical RAM.

It's not as though I'm locking myself into a corner here. The E4200 is still a 64 bit machine, I'm just buying a version of it that includes a 32 bit OS. If at some point in the future Sid manages to transplant VMCC into a 64 bit-compliant library, then I can always upgrade. Until then, I can live with wasting 1 GB of RAM (especially at $10 a gig.)

most processors have been 64-bit capable since before there was a mainstream 64-bit OS. but I agree that 3.2GB of useable memory is adequate for most non-3D applications that will be tolerable to use on a sub-12" screen.

I ran into the limitation at work where I open large complex surfaced CAD models and it made me cry a little. memory IS cheap, but if you hit a ceiling, then what's the point?

on a sidenote: bill gates never said that 640k is enough for anyone.
http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/1997/01/1484