Summer of the ultraportable laptop
It's no secret that we have a soft spot for supersmall laptops. Ultraportables, as they're called, generally have 11- or 12-inch screens and weigh in at less than four pounds--perfect for lugging around all day or hanging at the local coffee shop with. Unfortunately, these guys are usually plagued by the twin devils of high prices and poor battery life (not to mention occasionally underpowered processors).
The Sony VAIO TZ150
This, however, has clearly been the summer of the ultraportable, with a generous handful of exciting new systems generating heavy buzz. But with all these new choices, which one is right for you?
First, we have Sony's VAIO TZ150-- we loved pretty much everything about this 11.1-inch laptop, which is less than an inch thick and weighs less than three pounds. Well, everything except the $2,299 starting price and somewhat sluggish performance (which we were able to improve by uninstalling a bunch of junkware).
Neck-and-neck was our most wanted laptop of the year, Toshiba's Portege R500. A bit larger than the Sony, and with a bigger 12.1-inch screen, it was actually slightly lighter and thinner. So light that one of our colleagues picked it up and asked if it was a dummy model.
The Toshiba Portege R500
Both of these systems include optical drives, which is something we wouldn't have seen in a laptop this size in past years. Both also offer excellent battery life, which is perhaps the most important thing for computing on the go.
Sadly, the Sony and Toshiba ultraportables range from $2,000 to $3,000 depending on options, including solid state flash hard drives, which are cool, but still way too expensive to be practical. If you're looking for a supersmall laptop without a supersize price, we managed to find a few slightly less flashy options. Averatec makes a handful of ultraportable systems that offer surprisingly good value for the money. You'll sacrifice the sub-one-inch designs and some battery life, but the company's 11.1-inch Averatec 1579 is $1,299, while the 12.1-inch, AMD-powered 2371 starts at $899, making it the cheapest ultraportable we can think of.
The Averatec 1579
Of course, all this info is useless if you're buying a laptop on the company dime and The Man won't let you get one of these snazzy consumer systems. HP has a pretty good new ultraportable, the HP Compaq 2510p, from their corporate line. It's still around $2,000 for a decent configuration, and the battery life is poor, but it adds security-friendly features such as hard-drive encryption.
There you have it, five new ultraportable laptops for the summer, with something for almost every budget. For a more detailed breakdown, check out our side-by-side comparison here.
New York native Dan Ackerman, a former radio DJ turned journalist, has written about technology and music for publications including Spin, Blender, The Hollywood Reporter, and USA Today. He hosts the weekly Digital City podcast and the New York edition of Editors' Office Hours. Dan's new album, Tales Out of Night School, is available now. E-mail Dan.
http://blog.thetechnonaut.com/?p=150
Dell's XPS 1330 comes close to being an actual ultra-portable gaming rig. A few years ago, the idea would have been ridiculous. But we play our hand-held DS systems, we run our notebooks out to big monitors and TVs, and (thanks to Dell) we know real, live video cards can go in super thin rigs. So how long until someone -- say, Alienware, where battery life is always a non-concern on laptops anyway -- pulls a gaming-capable ultra onto the market? Granted, it would never compete with actual gaming rigs. But if we could do all our office work and still hook in to our MMORPGs ... say on the new airline wireless services on cross-country flights ...
But when you think about it, it's a better option to get laptops just a bit bigger for less, and with more bang for your buck.
Like commenter #1 already said... Dell's XPS M1330 is looking really good. At 13.3", you'll probably pay less, and get discreet graphics, better processor speed and RAM, and last but not least, bigger screen.
Screen size usually is a very personal thing. I'm kinda going blind here, so a screen smaller than 13" is hard... laptop has to be really close.
An alternative for Dell's is Sony Vaio SZ series. And if you want something even smaller, there's also Sony UX...
- Lame, imcomplete, uncritical review
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by bdwelle
August 8, 2007 4:24 PM PDT
- This is the sort of lame review that really bugs me. I see the teaser, "ultraportable laptops of your dreams", and click through to read a cursory overview of a few machines, none of which the reviewer is all that positive about. Among others, the reviewer leaves out what is in my opinion the best ultraportable on the market, the Thinkpad X61 -- an opinion with which CNet's own editors seem to agree: http://reviews.cnet.com/4323-6527_7-6509056.html?tag=txt -- and also fails entirely to address the question of whether an optical drive is an asset at all on an ultraportable machine when it adds cost and weight is so rarely used.
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Reply to this comment
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(5 Comments)Overall, this sort of review smacks of amateurism and serves to do more harm than good in giving uncritical exposure to sub-par products in the guise of an informed, objective "review". Please, you guys can do better than this.