Re: [NTLK] No New Newt

On Jan 16, 2008, at 9:37 AM, Steven Scotten wrote:

> And I for one am impressed. Is it revolutionary? No. But maybe it
> pushes the industry in the right direction. When was the last time
> anyone other than Sony put out a laptop that was under six pounds?

Erm. Lenovo has more than 30 models under 6 pounds. They have 4
models under 3 pounds.
Toshiba has a 1.88 pound laptop.
Panasonic's W7 is 2.4 pounds.
Dell sells machines under 4 pounds.
Asus laptops start at two pounds.
Fujitsu has models that are smaller than the Newton.
Acers start at 4.3 pounds.

Subnotebooks haven't gone away.

>
> It's just one of my pet peeves, because "subnotebooks" were all the
> rage in the 90s. Every manufacturer had a superslim sub-3lb notebook
> computer stripped down with no CD or floppy. Since then? Once in a
> blue moon you might see something small and light.

Some of those notebooks are under 3 pounds *with* a DVD drive.

Myself, I don't really care if a notebook is super-slim. My
subnotebook is over an inch thick. However, it's quite small in the
length-by-width measurement, and THAT matters a lot more to me; a big
thin thing is still a big thing overall.

I'm hoping prices on used 12" Powerbooks drop now. :)

> Also, I'm just guessing, but that solid state drive has got to make
> the Air outperform every other machine on the planet even with that
> underpowered processor. Boot time and application load time is gonna
> drop by what? A factor of twenty? Good riddance to spinning disks.
> They've been computing's biggest bottleneck for at least two decades.
>

Actually, solid state disks aren't /that/ much of a performance boost
over normal drives. The main benefit from a solid state drive in a
laptop is the lack of moving parts, and therefore much less heat.

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Received on Wed Jan 16 11:36:42 2008