That’s not really a netbook, it’s an awesome laptop.
They have a 12 inch version, which is probably as close as you are going to get to awesome power, tiny package as a macbook air while having good battery life:
Samsung also has their 9 series of laptops coming out that look like they’re just straight Air clones.
I have one of these. It is awesome as a tablet and it will be very nice as an Android netbook someday (hopefully soon), the IPS screen is absolutely gorgeous.
However, the firmware on the docking keyboard is currently so flakey that I cannot recommend it as a netbook until they fix it. Kind of a shame because the keyboard is actually super nice as far as netbooks go in terms of layout/look.
Great recommendations. Thanks!
My new Toshiba R830 laptop’s 9-cell battery says 10 hrs 26 mins with 86% remaining. This weekend I’ll try using it on battery for the entire day and see if it’s true. It’s a good competition to the X220, but it loses without the IPS screen option.
Before getting an m11x you should be aware that there is a design fault in the screen hinges (video, more details). It’s supposedly fixed in the latest R3 model but the $599 version above is the original R1 model. Dell have promised to fix all the affected units, but are experiencing “supply problems”.
Thank you for that. It’s refreshing to have the arguments made while citing the relevant resulting characteristics; too often people who don’t value such things leave them out entirely and just compare the rest of the numbers.
One argument I would make: the current Air is probably very late-cycle. The existing model used an outdated CPU by necessity, but that necessity is gone. The Sandy Bridge update should be imminent (June?).
Yeah, it’s pretty trivial to get a laptop with 8 SOLID, REAL hours of battery life.
That’s the one I have. Strong recommend.
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it does 8 hours of hardcore wifi web surfing no problem on the included normal size battery. It’s advertised as “12 hours”, and you might get that if your usage is lighter.
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it has switchable Nvidia / Intel integrated GPUs so you can choose between plugged in graphics grunt, or unplugged long runtime. Killer feature.
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it is also a “real” dual core CULV processor, none of this shitty underpowered Atom or AMD’s Atom Clone (E-350?) bullshit. Performance is awesome, I recently had to replace the mobo on my i7 based desktop so I was stuck on this laptop for a few days and outside of Google Maps I was amazed how little I felt the perf difference.
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Even the touchpad is decent. I mean by PC standards, not Apple touchpad quality, but that’s the holy grail.
All told this is probably my favorite laptop I’ve ever owned in 20 years.
Unfortunately the newer models of this laptop with i3 chips are not as energy efficient. Given what I know about how Sandy Bridge efficiencies – I built a HTPC on a 2100T that idles at 17 MOTHERFLIPPING WATTS1 – it might be worth looking into the CULV-equivalent Sandy Bridge models of this if they are available.
The MSFT employee purchase program discount for alienware is a joke - $25 on a ~$1300 laptop.
The main problem with underpowered machines is always the hard drive. That netbook with an SSD would make it feel like an entirely brand-new machine.
The entire reason why the new Macbook Air feels so fast is 100% because of the SSD. Not the CPU, not the GPU, not the ram, not the OS. It’s the solid state storage.
My work laptop felt like a piece of shit for years, and it has a super-fast CPU, 4GB of ram, etc. I installed an SSD and it felt like a brand new machine, and today months later, it still feels faster than most every other computer I use.
In general, yeah, but not for the netbook I’m using. The atom can barely keep up with the windows control panel.
The Rent… is too damn high!
I can’t even find an ultra-low voltage (CULV) sandy bridge laptop out there – like a Core i3-2100t model.
Do they even exist?
Ah, looks like I want the Core i3-2310M I guess. Not seeing much in 13" sizes there.
(and Jason is right – Atom performance was OK-ish in the era of Windows XP 10 inch netbooks, but it has not kept pace at all with a javascript and video heavy internet, much less Windows 7 etc. Intel is crippling themselves out of an entire market here by hobbling Atom performance so heavily to protect their main CPU line.)
This is about all I can find for Core i3 Sandy Bridge low voltage small laptops:
Not really correct since it’s an i5 and thus too power hungry.
http://www.amazon.com/MSI-Notebook-FX420-002US-I3-2310M-Windows/dp/B004XKQUFW/
close, but has an optical drive, meh.
The ULV Sandy Bridge model names ends with a 7 instead of a 0. (See this wikipedia table.) I randomly searched some models, and i5-2537m matches this Samsung Series 9, which competes directly with MacBook Air.
My new Toshiba R830 laptop’s 9-cell battery says 10 hrs 26 mins with 86% remaining. This weekend I’ll try using it on battery for the entire day and see if it’s true. It’s a good competition to the X220, but it loses without the IPS screen option.
Aha, the R830 and R835 can both be configured with the i3-2310m, which is what you want.
http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/laptops.to?family=portege&model=R830
@kao – I don’t think the i5 series is what we want here. Though the thermal envelopes seem similar(ish), I am not seeing many substantiated claims of 8+ hour battery life in the i5 series.
AH WAIT, I see what you mean. the 17w ones are the 2617M, 2537M, and 2657M.
Yeah the x220 does start with the i3-2310m as default for $849
http://shop.lenovo.com/us/notebooks/thinkpad/x-series/x220
I also found a Thinkpad using the 17 watt i5-2537m at costco
I like how Intel came up with this new naming scheme to simplify things. Well done, guys.