If you're out on the road a lot, you want a notebook that won't give you a sore shoulder at the end of the day, but you may not want to give up all the features of a full-sized notebook. Can you have both?Many of you may be thinking "not another notebook review" but the truth is, notebook vendors have a range of products they target at different markets and this time around we're looking at truly portable notebook PCs.
You may not really notice much difference between these market segments and the prices are no help; they all seem similarly priced. In notebooks aimed at power users, you pay more for a faster processor and bigger display. But in an ultralight notebook, you pay more for lighter weight, longer battery life, and a smaller footprint.
For almost as long as portable PCs have been around they have been touted as the death of desktop computing. Sixteen years ago we saw an 8086-based XT PC that was built into a Samsonite briefcase; it even had a seven or eight-inch CRT mono monitor crammed into it along with a single 360K 5¼in floppy drive (dual was an option). Naturally they were not battery powered. At the time these sold much closer to their desktop siblings, from memory I think the price was about AU$13,000 with an XT desktop costing around $11,000, and that was in 1987. Anyhow, enough of the history tour and back to the subject at hand, the imminent death of desktop computing...only joking.
We have learned through contacts at a multinational computer retail chain that their notebook sales have reportedly been soaring over the last 12 to 18 months, while their desktop sales are not really growing. The primary purchasers of all these new cheaper notebooks are the SME market. People in this market are beginning to see the benefits that cheaper, more powerful, and feature-rich notebooks can provide.
Although notebooks are becoming quite similar in price to desktops, there is a hidden cost that many people don't necessarily consider. Notebooks are based solely on proprietary hardware designs and components; in two or three years of normal use the replacement/repair parts required may simply be too expensive to warrant an economical repair. But then again in this day and age of disposable goods what is a notebook or two between friends? Keeping this in mind, the warranty on parts is certainly something to consider before investing in something as proprietary as a notebook.
The notebooks in this review fall into the ultralight category. Most sport smaller screens to accommodate the lighter weight and smaller physical footprints demanded by the people who need to use their PC on the go. The CPU and memory configurations are not up to those of a power-user notebook, but they are more than adequate to get the job required done effectively. These ultralight notebooks also generally don't support legacy devices such as parallel and serial ports.
One benefit of these differences is that ultralight notebooks have longer battery life, which ultimately is really what truly mobile computing should be all about. Yes, we've all heard the "Centrino" propaganda spouted by the Intel marketing bandwagon. If you drill down deep enough into it and look through the hype, Intel is making some valid points such as longer battery life and use of wireless technologies--Bluetooth for connecting to your personal devices (PDAs and mobile phones) and 802.1x wireless LAN technology for surfing the Web and connecting to your corporate network.
An ultralight notebook fits this profile perfectly. Some notebooks reviewed here don't necessarily have the Intel mobile processor with more cache, or the mainboard with the Intel chipset and integrated Intel 802.1b network chip. Without these three ingredients, notebooks can't qualify for Intel's "Centrino" moniker, whatever that means, however the concept is still there.
News around the wire is that mobile notebook "on" battery life of 10 hours or more will soon be possible. This would make notebooks on par with PDAs and mobile phones--depending on your usage patterns you only need to charge these types of devices every couple of days.
Disagree with comments on the Sony. While it is loaded with a lot of stuff, the unit is, like just about every other Sony notebook ever manufactured, cheap junk. Tiny worthless little screen, "chicklet" keyboard, horrible, short warranty serviced by third party companies whose success is based on their ability to evaded their warranty responsibilities. The IBM X31 got short shrift in the review, but it is easily the best unit of all. Maybe the best ultralight ever produced. Solid (titanium case), three year warranty, great customer support, superior high quality hardware.