Thinnest Laptop – Apple MacBook Air

One of my co-worker is looking for a “small and thin” laptop and I think her search is over. Apple MacBook Air was announced at Mac World this week. Check out the dimensions first: 12.8" wide, 8.94" deep, and 0.16" to 0.76" thin and weight: 3.0 lbs (1.36 kg).
The entire laptop is only 0.76” thick! That is the base + lcd for less than 2 centimeters! This makes this laptop to be the thinnest laptop in the world today. But the immediate trade off is that there is no CD/DVD drive attached and only one USB port. However, the MacBook Air seems to have a new generation of wireless solutions: 802.11n2 and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR wireless technologies. Remote Disc option allows you to easily access other Mac computers’ DVD drive.
To me, the real eye catching component is the multi-touch trackpad, yeah, just like the iPhones…
Another thing worth to mention about the “thinnest laptop” is the 13.3”” widescreen LED supports resolutions up to 1280 x 800. This means you gonna get crystal clear images and good coloring from it.
What’s need to be noticed is the CPU power is not so great considering you can only upgrade it from 1.6GHz to 1.8GHz, and the price nearly doubled (originally at $1799, now $3,098). But you also get an extra of 2GB RAM memory though.
Here are the full specs of the default model: $179913.3" Widescreen LED Backlit (1280 x 800)Intel Core 2 Duo 1.6GHz and 1.5GHz (4MB L2 cache, 800MHz frontside bus)1.8" 80GB HD (same type in iPod) or 64GB SSD optionMulti-touch trackpad2GB RAM (667MHz DDR2 SDRAM)Intel X3100 graphicsMagnetic latch1 USB 2.0 port, Micro-DVI, Audio out (analog)802.11n wirelessBluetooth 2.1 + EDRiSight camera built-in37 watt-hour lithium-polymer batteryNo optical drive built-in, but SuperDrive accessory available for $99

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04/03/07
Mini Laptops
Filed under: Laptop-Notebook — timwang @ 11:43:05 am
With a recent shoulder injury, the 20 lb Dell XPS (with battery and power supply) appears to be heavier than normal. It's interesting that the laptop sizes are going to the two extremes, the powerful ones are evolving from 13 inch to 14 inch to 17 inch to 20.1 inch (Dell XPS M2010)! On the other hand, the manufacturers are also making the laptops to the mini end: 12 inch to 11 inch to 10 inch to 6 inch (the world smallest laptop – Sony VAIO UX)!
Among all of the mini laptops, the 10 inch laptops seem to be the most “popular” and “mature” laptop products. Sony and Fujitsu were the first two companies that started the mini laptop series. But other laptop producers like Acer, Lenovo (IBM) and Apple immediately jump onto the mini laptop wagon.
This obviously is driven by the consumers. There are people like me looking for more powerful desktop replacement laptops, but there are people like my co-workers (whom owns the first generation of mini laptops – SONY VGN-UX) refuses to carry around heavy laptops. It seems more people I know are looking for the smaller solution at the moment, here I find a few models for their selections.
1. The newer version of my co-worker's Sony mini laptop is Sony VAIO VGN-T350P/L. The entire laptop weight only 3.04 lb, it uses Intel M 1.2GHz, 2MB cache memory, 512MB DDR SDRAM, 60 GB 4200 RPM hard drive, 10.6 WXGA LCD display, 10/100M wireless network card and an INTERNAL DVD Recorder! The VGN-T350P/L battery supports up to 9 hours of operation! Wow, my XPS battery only supports up to 2.5 hours and a risk of explosion! :) The advantage of this mini laptop is it's from a reliable series, my co-worker whom own the fist generation of Sony mini laptop has been using it for 3 years and barely had any problems.
2.Fujitsu LifeBook P7230 (FPCM21122) has a nice look, the cool colored titanium skin make it attractive to young people and female laptop consumers. This laptop weight only 2.55 lb! Here is the default configuration with the mini laptop: Intel ULV Core Solo U1400 CPU (1.2GHz，Intel 945GMS chip set)，1024MB DDR2 RAM，80GB hard drive，build-in DVD/CDRW，10.6 inch LCD. What's special about this laptop is it comes with 2 batteries by default and 2 USB 2.0 ports and 1 fire wire port, a multi-card reader, and a wireless network card. Pretty much everything you will need when you are on the road. The advantage of this laptop is it's light weight and more memory)
3.Another one I really like is Averatec 1050-EB1 (AV1050EB1) , it is a Korean brand. The only wide screen mini laptop in the market I think. Weight 3.6 lb. Very slick design, dark red (wine color) skin and milk white keyboard makes it really attractive to the fashion seekers. The set-up of this computer is: Intel 1.1GHz M ULV 733 CPU (855GME chip set)，512MB DDR RAM，10.6 inch WXGA LCD (a very bright wide screen mini laptop with brightness of 240cd/m2)，80GB hard drive，and an internal DVD/CD -RW Drive. It also got both USB and Fire Wire ports, also D-SUB, Type II PC card slot, MMC/SD/MS/MS Pro multi card reader and built-in 802.11b/g wireless card. The advantage of this mini-laptop is it's crystal clear wide screen LCD display