Page 2 - ASUS or macbook?

WAIT wait wait.... the guy is looking for a "Small and Light" laptop.... macbooks (not even the macbook air) fullfill this category. Sure... the air is light... but its still got a 15 inch screen.. so it won't fit comfortably in your shoulder bag (add to that the fact that its got no drives, almost no ports... forget it)

if you like Asus, then go for the Eee PC... they actually work really well (played with them at the store...surprisingly zippy!), they're small, light, impact resistant(SSD), have great battery life... and they're CHEAP... use that on the go, and you've saved yourself money to buy a nice powerful rig for at home.

or go for the new HP 2133 mini-note http://www.engadget.com/2008/04/08/hp-mini-note-2133-officially-official/

also cheap, also plenty powerful for mobile uses (of course not gaming) also small and light with great battery life. but a larger LCD than the EeePC... and prettier on the outside. Uses a VIA chip tho...

or if you have a lot of money to spend (i see people throwing the number $1400 around) you could go for a lenovo thinkpad x series. The newest ones will run you $3000, but you can get a used one for much less... if you're willing to consider a used macbook, I would consider a used thinkpad first. I have an x40 thats 4 years old, well used and still works like a dream (even the super small 4 cell battery still gives me 1.5 hours on an old 1.0 ghz centrino).

edit: I just looked at that ASUS U3S-A1W.... that is pretty sweet for $1500...

Macbooks and macbook airs both fulfill the small and light category.

Portables are generally 12"-13" and 4-6 lbs. Ultraportables generally are 2-3 lbs.

The macbook air does not have a 15" screen it has a 13" screen, its the same as the macbook. The macbook weighs just over 5lbs and is also a small and light laptop.

And yes EEE's, cloudbooks and HPs version are extremely light. But are severely underpowered.

severely underpowered is kind of a strong statement. It all depends on what you intend to do with it.

and 5lbs is not light.... maybe you're training for a triathalon, but I certainly wouldn't like carrying around a 5lb computer in a shoulder bag.

as for the screen size being 13 and not 15... my bad.

maybe my opinion of small and light is warped by the fact that I live in Japan...

we've got some crazy stuff over here.... ultraportables are way more popular than in the states

Well its severely underpowered for anything but im and internet.

And 5lbs is not that heavy, I carry my laptop around with me everyday, never have any issues with it whatsover weight/size wise.

And yes you have a lot of nicer stuff over here, other than things like an underpowered ee, ultra portables are insanely expensive.

BTW, this thread is 2+ months old, been revived twice, I don't even know where the Original poster is.

what else would you use a laptop for, other than IM and internet? an EeePC would be plenty powerful for office applications, music listening, movie watching... java and flash games, educational uses...

not that the EeePC has the HDD space for any of that tho! (honestly... 8G max... sad... the only thing that keeps me from buying one right now.)

Who actually plays an FPS or a major pretty MOORPG on their laptop?

and sorry about the thread being 2 months old.. the last post was only 12 days ago... so i figured it was still relevant... That and I'm dead bored at work... Its that season again...

only crappy thing about eeepc is the screen... and the price isnt all that cheap either tbh. i've seen 15 inch laptops with dual cores and 2 gb ram at 500-600$....

hard drie being 8 gigs, you can add a usb key which can contain 16 gb for the price of half the eeepc if you wanted to...

The screen is pretty small...

but about the price comparison.... you have to remember you're paying a premium for the size and the battery life.

Do the $600 crap laptops that Dell sells last for 3 hours on a charge? And how much do they weigh? And can you drop them from a table and expect them to keep working fine? Its comparing apples to strawberries... both sweet fruit... but the strawberries are so much tastier and harder to grow... thats why they cost just as much for a box as you'd spend for a big bag of apples. (over here its like $5 for a handfull... so if you think my comparison is dumb then its because I've been in this country way too long)

on another note... I'd opt for the HP mini-note over the EeePC anyway...

but were I rich and my wife loosened my chain... I would buy something much more expensive

personally i'd love a laptop with a 14 inch oled screen, doing 1440x900, lipoly battery which lasts 8x longer than the normal one, SSD hdd, dvd burner could be optional where a battery could replace it when not needed.

of course, today, such a thing would most likely cost 23000$ or so.

the x300 is only $3k... start saving up! I'm pretty sure there are lots of sony laptops with led backlit displays...

i don't know about oled displays tho... i don't really understand what the advantages of oled are either... they go bad sooner than regular leds and they cost a lot (well... now anyway, could change in the future) is there a big difference in power consumption or color?

$3000.. that's a ton. Considering all of the other laptops considered have been around $1000, that's definitely out of the budget.

its better than the best lcd/plasma/crt can produce in terms of contrast. iirc, i've seen figures of 1 million to 1. Sony has a 11 inch OLED tv right now which costs about 2 grand last time i checked, iirc, it was the XEL-1.

*edit*XEL-1

They consume far less power and are significantly thinner - as thin as a piece of paper. some variants of oleds can also be bent. the reason why they dont last too long is because they are organic (hence the O in OLED) however, given sony has shipped and is selling 11 grand 11 inch oled tvs, i am sure we are almost at the point where they will last long enough for normal usage.

in sum - we could see the day where laptop screens are rolled into a part of the laptop and would not be damaged in the event of an accident. plus they would look damned awesome.

Well... if you're a super business user, perhaps the price is worth it! The macbook air is pretty expensive too, isn't it? like 2k or 2.5k ?

and those aren't even the most expensive or smallest out there... you do know about the oqo right? http://www.oqo.com/ starts at $1299... but the most expensive model is about $3100 for a 1.6ghz cpu, 64GB SSD, WiMax, wifi, bluetooth, usb ports, 1 gig of ram, screen tweaked for use in sunlight, running XP or vista...

basically the smallest full fledged computer out there... now that would be cool to whip out of my pocket...

It's one of the thinnest laptops ever made.

And i never suggested it.

And those OQO's, wow its SSD ok, its still running a slow via chip.

Its like the eee or cloudbook. Great if you just need internet and e-mail, but if you want to do anything else, its not going to do so well.


@ dragonfly, if you could put your screen away like that it would be awesome. Just so you know though, the 11" OLED isn't 11grand, its more around 2-3 grand. Still a lot for a 11" screen, but not as bad as 11.

been there, seen that... they sell it at the bigger electronics retailers in Tokyo. Its really not that impressive up close. Its pretty, sure... but its just too small for practicality. I don't personally notice the color difference. It looks smooth because they've done full HD on such a small screen, but it would look smooth like that if they made an small full HD regular LCD display too. But the smallest those come is 32 inch.
The design is interesting the way they made the floating effect over the tuner/signal processing unit, but then that part of the unit takes up space... They should have made it wireless like Hitachi's newest LCD displays... THen you just have a sexy thin LCD hanging on the wall and you can hide the rest. ... Well... you still need a power cable, so not all is solved.

We'll just have to wait till the first products with intel's new Atom come out.... hopefully those will be speedier.

... btw, I wasn't suggesting the air.... or the x300 for that matter... just having a lively discussion... if a bit off topic.