Which ones do you guys like the best? I've always liked the thinkpad X series and x##t series tablets. This one looks pretty impressive-

http://mossblog.allthingsd.com/20080213/x300/

The blog/article compares it mostly to the ultralight du jour, the macbook air. Does anyone have an ultralight they absolutely love or hate for any particular reasons? The dell 1330 isn't quite as thin, but it's the only light+small laptop I know of with an ok graphics card.

2/14/2008 9:05:41 AM

ever heard of apple? i hear they have a small one out.

2/14/2008 9:18:49 AM

Quote :

"he blog/article compares it mostly to the ultralight du jour, the macbook air. Does anyone have an ultralight they absolutely love or hate for any particular reasons? The dell 1330 isn't quite as thin, but it's the only light+small laptop I know of with an ok graphics card."

^ Did you even read his post?

2/14/2008 9:26:23 AM

^^ Gee golly mister, I thought apples were a kind of fruit!

2/14/2008 9:28:13 AM

"some kind of fruit company."

2/14/2008 9:31:59 AM

Anyways, obviously since I mentioned it and linked to an article that compared it to the upcoming x-series thinkpad I did magically know about this so called "macbook air" that I suppose they grow in orchards of genetically modified iTrees.

Anyone have first hand experience with the 13 inch dell xps laptops or the ultra-light sonys?

2/14/2008 9:41:15 AM

To the advantage of the ThinkPad X300, I think it wins in practicality. It has all the features of a regular laptop. While, the Macbook Air is an oversized iPhone with a keyboard. Price of Macbook Air with SSD drive is more than ThinkPad X300 as well.

If you want something trendy, I guess MB Air will be nice to show off to your highschool buddies. If you want functinality, the X300 should be a good contender in the ultralight category.

2/14/2008 9:49:03 AM

^pretty much.

i have 0 interest in a macbook air.

2/14/2008 9:51:04 AM

nobody in their right mind would get the SSD at this point, putting the price back to what, $1800? It's pretty competitive..

the thinkpad's are always solid as shit though.

i'm not sure how you claim the air isn't practical/functional, i assure you it is.

2/14/2008 9:53:25 AM

fujitsu?

2/14/2008 10:14:21 AM

^^ No DVD drive.

Single usb port

non-removable battery

[Edited on February 14, 2008 at 10:33 AM. Reason : they are still pretty sweet though.]

2/14/2008 10:32:35 AM

yeah, i can agree with you there... I ALMOST sent back my macbook pro and ordered one since the price was comparable but i already don't really have enough usb ports on pro (and shouldn't have to carry around a hub..) and without a dvd drive i'd be screwed...

2/14/2008 10:45:15 AM

^ def depends on personal needs. i have seen varied results with ThinkPads, but those didn't belong to me so can't say for sure what the causes were. i love my mbpro, but i agree with the others in this thread that the SSD, and the MBAir, aren't good choices right now

FWIW, used an Air yesterday for a minute and it was pretty slick... a bit premature on getting rid of that dvd drive tho.

i'm curious when Apple is going to release their tablet (supposedly been in the works for a while now, who knows)

[Edited on February 14, 2008 at 10:55 AM. Reason : ]

2/14/2008 10:51:59 AM

The CloudBook from Everex. http://www.everex.com/. Its show-cased on Everex's homepage, they don't even have a separate page set up for it yet.

This isn't in the same class as the stuff mentioned above....but its definitely ultralight at 2lbs and only costs $399. I'm thinking about buying one because of the price and portability. Oh, and it doesn't come with Vista. Big plus!

2/14/2008 11:58:25 AM

my 3.3 lbs acer sure feels super light after lugging around a 9 lbs beast for years. i like it, but u probably want something even smaller.

2/14/2008 12:21:32 PM

meh...i'll be going from my 5lbs toshiba to a 5.1lbs HP, but the battery is a 12-cell, so it's worth it to me

2/14/2008 12:43:01 PM

^^^in that case why not just buy an Asus EEEPC
http://eeepc.asus.com/global/product.htm

2/14/2008 1:17:07 PM

3.45lb Lenovo X61T here, freaking love it

2/14/2008 3:03:07 PM

I'm kind of torn between macbook (not air), x61t, saving and waiting for an x300, or an xps m1330. The sad thing is that I know which one of those machines maple would run best on and it's not the xps...

2/14/2008 3:31:29 PM

oh which is it

2/14/2008 8:42:33 PM

Ok so this is extremely subjective and all, but I have a 2.2 ghz core 2 duo windows xp laptop with 2 gb of ram and 256mb of video ram and had, until recently, a 1.86 ghz core duo mac book with 1 gb of ram. Forgetting that it boots twice as fast as the windows machine already, starting maple up on the macbook took about 1/3 the time as it does on my windows laptop. Once up the program consumed less total memory (without coming close to using up all availible memory), the ui responded more quickly, and calculations were executed in around the same time if they were short. Long scripts and full work sheets did execute much faster on my windows machine, but I never use maple to do anything extremely complicated anymore anyways.

I think it's more a testament to how terribly inefficient the windows version of maple is than it is a statement about the efficiency of OSX.

[Edited on February 14, 2008 at 8:49 PM. Reason : ]

2/14/2008 8:47:21 PM

^I'm still waiting on the next gen Macbook Pro for a personal upgrade. Came within an inch of buying the current model, but the heat was a dealbreaker for me.

2/14/2008 11:01:01 PM

you know how i feel about my x41t

2/14/2008 11:02:48 PM

^^ wish i could get the next rev... only cause i love the one i have and i know the new ones will be even better

2/15/2008 12:39:34 AM

I had an X41T for work for a little over a year, and I loved it. Solidly built and small enough to carry around in a standard-size bookbag, or just tuck it under your arm. The stylus on the 41's was badly designed but I think they fixed that on the 61 series. That's the only one I have experience with though.

I will say, from having seen a demo of and handled the new Dell Latitude XT tablet, it's a damn nice machine also. But it's frighteningly expensive. ($2500 I think?)

2/15/2008 2:43:57 AM

$2499, I got the newest dell mail out shit today

2/15/2008 11:02:47 AM

Small laptops are great for students but if you plan on doing anything business related, then do yourself a favor and get normal size one. The extra screen real estate itself is worth the extra weight.

2/15/2008 11:31:26 AM

^ agreed...for what i do, 14.1" is perfect, but i wouldn't go any smaller...15.4" if i had to, but then they start to get too heavy for me to want to carry it around with me

2/15/2008 11:47:29 AM

^^I don't know if I agree with that. While I'm still technically a part-time grad student, I also have a full-time job, and in my job (computer support) I'm moving around enough that size/weight are very important to me. I went from the X41T I selected in my former position (3.5 lbs, 12.1") to a Gateway M285-E convertible tablet (7 lbs, 14.1" widescreen) that I inherited in my current job, and it's really night-and-day mobility wise. I use the tablet functionality for note-taking in meetings as well as for things like to-do lists and outlines that I find I work better physically writing/sketching out than typing up, and a smaller device really works better as a tablet--easier to move around, to hold while standing up, to find a comfortable "writing" position, etc. And I find myself leaving the Gateway behind in my office or at home sometimes when I would have taken the Lenovo along with me because hauling around 9 lbs. (with a/c adapter, etc.) on your shoulder or a device the size of the Gateway in-hand does get a bit old.

Granted, while using in standard laptop mode, the Gateway does have some nice features--faster processor, nicer screen (though I really don't like the reflective coating, give my my matte finish back please), and ridiculous battery life (4+ hours on a charge). All things considered though I'd gladly take the slower X41T back if I could, and whenever it comes time for me to get a new PC, it will be a 12.1" lightweight tablet of some sort.



[Edited on February 15, 2008 at 1:34 PM. Reason : f]

2/15/2008 1:32:16 PM

I had a toshiba M45 tablet I believe it was my last year of school, after having an old M205 (I think?) for a year with the 12" screen I LOVED the bigger screen the M45 had to offer. I would never have a 12" screen again, partially because my handwriting is so sloppy and big it was useless to write on a 12" screen. Battery life was ~3 hours on the M45 too

Obviously that doesn't matter much to this thread but just my experience.

[Edited on February 15, 2008 at 1:38 PM. Reason : actually it was a R15-S829 not M45...not sure where I got that from]

2/15/2008 1:35:03 PM

I personally value screen size over weight because I can't stand not having enough room for several terminal windows.

2/15/2008 1:51:17 PM

Yeah, I've already got a desktop with 2 monitors and a 15.4 inch laptop. I'm fine on screen real-estate and am looking for something portable with acceptable power to run some sigmaplot, matlab, maple, etc. occaisionally but mostly office.

Something light, reliable, and with long battery life with the most power I can afford is my order of selections mostly. Maybe an x61t with xp on it at this point is my current favorite.

[Edited on February 15, 2008 at 2:11 PM. Reason : ]

2/15/2008 2:08:09 PM

^^

Quote :

"but if you plan on doing anything business related, then do yourself a favor and get normal size one. The extra screen real estate itself is worth the extra weight."

Depends on your "business". The x61 is 1400x1050 and provides me the perfect amount of screen density to do what I need. For a developer of any kind you are absolutely right though, having a widescreen with enough density to have at least two SxS windows up is pretty critical

2/15/2008 4:43:06 PM

Quote :

"my 3.3 lbs acer sure feels super light after lugging around a 9 lbs beast for years. i like it, but u probably want something even smaller."

Is it 14 inch? A 14 inch laptop that only weighs 3.3 lbs would be great as long as it wasn't 3 inches thick or something strange like that. The thing doesn't have to be pocket sized but something that's weight and size are small enough to be non-issues. Under 3.5 lbs and under 14 inches is preferable.

^Yeah when I need 3 pdf's, exel, a terminal window, sigmaplot, matlab, and word open at the same time for a report or lab then I'll use the desktop or 2000lb laptop of mine. No sense carrying that real-estate with me everywhere though.

[Edited on February 15, 2008 at 5:42 PM. Reason : ]

2/15/2008 5:40:45 PM

it is 12.1" screen. at first it was a lil small, but it isnt that bad. came standard with a slightly heavier/larger battery that gets about 4 hours on a charge too.

2/15/2008 8:04:23 PM

^^I generally swap between 2-3 open windows at a time, with 10-15 open apps/windows total and have no problems on the tablet

2/15/2008 8:12:13 PM

Quote :

"I had a toshiba M45 tablet I believe it was my last year of school, after having an old M205 (I think?) for a year with the 12" screen I LOVED the bigger screen the M45 had to offer. I would never have a 12" screen again, partially because my handwriting is so sloppy and big it was useless to write on a 12" screen. Battery life was ~3 hours on the M45 too "

I had a fujitsu tablet that I used for work with a 14" display, but the thing did not handle being outside in cold weather well at all. I had 3 hard drive failures inside of a year that all happened when I was working in sub-freezing weather. My next tablet was spec'd out for extreme weather use, but the smaller screen size of 11" made the thing practically unusable. I found myself rewriting a lot of my standard spreadsheets to try to make the data on the screen readable.

2/15/2008 8:12:41 PM

Quote :

"^^I generally swap between 2-3 open windows at a time, with 10-15 open apps/windows total and have no problems on the tablet"

Not talking about swapping windows but about having to look at multiple sources of data at once. If you have to manually trascribe a column of handwritten data in a pdf, cut columns from 2 other sources, and paste them into a sigmaplot cell- it does help to be able to have all the windows open and viewable at once. Having to move data through multiple programs is made a little easier when you don't have to alt-tab through them. This is particularly annoying since some of the programs will show up in the program list n+1 times (where n is the number of windows open) so that they screw up the order when you alt-tab. Alt-tabbing between acrobat pro and exel seems to do that as they both show up as the windows you have open plus an exel or acrobat icon that likes to superimpose itself in front of the windows you're trying to swap between. Anyways, not a huge deal, but if you've already got a lot of screen-space it is a noticeable thing.

2/15/2008 10:40:14 PM

^Sorry, that's what I meant. I generally keep 2-3 windows open concurrently (side by side or top and bottom, etc), and task switch between 7 or 8 configurations of that.

2/16/2008 4:01:22 AM

I like the dell xps1330, not much of an apple person. Fujitsu's sound nice from what I've read but don't know how reliable they are since I haven't seen any in person or know anyone who has one. I settled for a Inspiron 1440, which isn't quite ultralight but the price was much more reasonable.

2/18/2008 3:10:04 AM

I've settled on a x61t:

Intel® Core™ 2 Duo L7700 LV (1.8GHz, 4MB L2, 800MHz FSB)
Genuine Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005
12.1" MultiView + MultiTouch WVA XGA TFT, 2x3 UltraConnect II antenna
2 GB PC2-5300 DDR2 SDRAM 667MHz SODIMM Memory (2 DIMM)
120GB Hard Disk Drive, 7200rpm
Intel Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN (supporting Centrino Pro)
Integrated Wireless WAN: Verizon Sierra CDMA2000
ThinkPad X60 Tablet 8 Cell Li-Ion Battery
3-year Depot Warranty with ThinkPad Protection

1779.85

Gotta love employee purchase+sale pricing. I'll probably replace the HDD in a year or two with an SSD when the cost becomes less significant.

2/18/2008 10:26:05 PM

^Um you need to change the software package to Vista Business/Premium.

The one HUGE gain in vista is for Tablet PC's. It's lightyears better than 2005. Not only that, you won't get ANY multi-touch with XP, it's vista drivers only (from the app side anyway, I think the drivers may be vista only as well).

Lemme know how you like the screen, I opted for the higher res, pen-based Wacom screen and have wondered how the other one would compare.

2/18/2008 10:30:33 PM

Good catch on the screen. I had configued a different one then switched over when I saw a $400 discount + free ultrabase option in the employee stuff my dad sent me. I'm going to see if I can reconfigure it...

Yeah, SXGA+ now- and 100 bucks cheaper because no multi touch. I'm sticking with XP because I have an unopened vista business copy and this will let do both if I run into issues with either.

[Edited on February 18, 2008 at 10:49 PM. Reason : ]

2/18/2008 10:44:53 PM

wacom is the way to go

2/18/2008 10:50:11 PM

The ultrabase is awesome, one of the few docks I've ever really liked.

2/18/2008 10:50:16 PM

I've liked most of the Thinkpad branded docks- just wish the retail cost on the ultra bay drives wasn't so much.

2/18/2008 10:53:55 PM

I about wish I had bought a new IBM tablet now instead of this macbook pro--ah well, I'll get a tablet in a year or so next time work buys me a new one. Tablets completely slipped my mind when I was shopping around a month or two ago.

2/19/2008 7:59:02 AM

looking at 12 - 14 inchers for grad school. Durability and performance are my highest concerns.

I like the Sony SZ series, $1400 off of Amazon right now

I am replacing a dell, and want better quality, so I'm not even looking at them

I have looked at the Lenovo X61, and a cursory glance at the Asus, Fujitsu, mac, and HP offerings

is there anything I am missing? Anyone out there with a Sony SZ or experience with one, it looks like a great choice right now

2/19/2008 6:57:24 PM

I would have gotten a Sony if it was IT supported at work. Several coworkers with various newer models and they all love them.

2/20/2008 1:03:11 AM

^^ Toshiba has a really nice ultraportable

2/20/2008 1:17:24 AM