[ivwshane]

After about a year of casual browsing and six months of serious looking I finally purchased a laptop. I never needed one before but for my new career it's a must (and I'll get to write it off too).

Here is what I was looking for:

Ultra portable (preferrably under 3lbs)
12.1" screen
DDRII memory to take advantage of the lower power useage
pcmcia slot
integrated bluetooth
integrated wifi
external cd drive or media bay
Pentium M or LV, ULV cpu
touch pad mouse

I looked at the toshiba r200, dell x1, x300, and leveno x41, and panasonic.

I originally had my eye set on the dell x300 and was willing to settle for no DDRII but it was discontinued and replaced by the x1. The X1 would have been perfect but no pcmcia slot

The toshiba r200 then seemed like a good option but it didn't have integrate bluetooth and an external drive was an addition to the already high price (but damn that laptop is light and small). I really wanted to like IBM but I can't stand the damn penis tip mouse that is the only option on the x1. Next up was the panasonic laptops which was pretty much a perfect fit except for the super high price tag (if money wasn't an issue I would probably go for it).

So after looking for so long I thought my search was hopeless but then I decided to up the wieght just a tad.

And this is what I decided on:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834115192




So why did I choose this one?
At 3.1LBS with the 3 cell battery it was just a little over my weight requirement but it met all other requirements and came with a few bonuses.

It comes with two batteries, a 3 cell (under two hours of use) and a six cell (over four hours of use). For the price (~$1300) it also included an external cd rw/dvd drive, windows xp pro, a memory card reader that does sd/mmc and ms/pro which will finally allow me to hack my psp.

Other than the weight being a little more than I was originally looking for the only other negative was the slow hard drive which almost all the ultra portables had. Luckily it takes a standard 2.5 hard drive so I ordered a 5400 drive and an external encloser that I plan to house the old drive in.

This is the most I've ever spent at one time on computer stuff and since newegg has an "all sales are final" policy I hope I made the right decsion.

[superman]

nice decision but personally i would have gone with the (lenovo) IBM Thinkpad X series
smallest size is about 1 inch think and only weighs 2.7lbs with up to 7 hours battery life

[ivwshane]

Like I said I really wanted to like the leveno's but it had a couple things going against it. The first strike which is the biggest for me is the lack of a touch pad, some people like the stick but I can't stand them. The other negative is no ddrII support.

With regards to the longer battery life, it only has longer battery life if you buy the optional 8 cell battery which is an additional $135 (rasing the price difference to $835).

Also performance was almost double in benchmarks when comparing the acer and the x40.

[Chair]

those are nice machines, I use the 17" model when I'm doing work out in the lab (along side my trusty 12" ibook ) and it never fails, great battery life and pretty handy features. Good range on the wireless too.

[ivwshane]

Yeah all the reviews said the wireless range on this laptop was amazing.

[BrentN]

Not trying to piss anyone off, but I used to sell acer machines and they were fucking shit boxes. Keep in mind, the one that we did carry was the first one our company ever bought from acer (normally we've been carrying only toshiba, sony, hp compaq and panasonic for years). Every one I sold came back, it either had a dead pixel or wouldn't even turn on. 3 of them were like this, all 3 that I sold.
Our company never carried acer again!
This was about 5 months ago or so. It was a 999$ model, the lowest price point out of all the notebooks, so everyone wanted it becuase of the price. Hopefully this one that you bought has some decent quality parts in it...

[ivwshane]

Yeah that was definitely a concern and I researched thoroughly for any build quality issues. I found some for their other models especially related to the hard drive dying. On this particular model the only negative was that the fan can get loud when plugged into an outlet and the top right palm rest can get warm.


Believe me price wasn't the only deciding factor but it is hard to ignore a $500 difference.