pasithea: glowing girl (Default)
pasithea ([personal profile] pasithea) wrote2008-01-15 11:33 am

Size Matters

Heh.

It's funny. Just yesterday I was at lunch and I saw a couple of people with Dell notebooks and I was thinking, "Holy crap. Those things are enormous. How can they stand lugging them around?" Indeed... Compared to my Mac, they are about 3 times as thick and weigh about twice as much...

So today... Apple announces their newest laptop. It's an ultraslim model.
http://www.apple.com/macbookair/specs.html
Wow. That's really starting to make it look like we're living in the future.

Personally, I don't need one of these. It's not as fast as my notebook and it only weighs about 2lbs less, but weight was definitely a factor when I bought my notebook. You notice things like weight when you're bicycling 10 miles a day with it on your back. :) (Tho I only bike 5 miles a day since we moved offices)

I do have to admit that it pings that geek chord in me though. :)

[identity profile] captpackrat.livejournal.com 2008-01-16 06:55 am (UTC)(link)
The only problem with those super-slim notebooks (and I had one of the old Sony ultra-slim models) is they don't have a CD drive, so by the time you start lugging around an external CD drive, and the power cords and everything else, it's not much smaller than a regular notebook.

Dell makes what is probably the largest laptop, the M2010. It has a 20 inch screen and weighs over 18 pounds! It's a return to the age of the luggable computer, along the lines of the Osborne or Kaypro.

[identity profile] shizouka.livejournal.com 2008-01-16 12:01 pm (UTC)(link)
Most of the portable CD/DVD drives are usb powered, small things.

Though unless you need to read CDs/DVDs on a frequent basis, you can just use a dock based DVD like the Lenovo X60.

[identity profile] dv-girl.livejournal.com 2008-01-16 05:09 pm (UTC)(link)
Yeah. I go weeks without using my CD/DVD drive and when I do it's nearly always at home. Though since I nearly always use my laptop either at home or at work, I could also pull that stuff across the network from a machine with a drive just as easily has having the drive mounted directly on my notebook.

For most stuff I transfer to my machine via sneakernet, I use a 1G USB flash drive.

[identity profile] shizouka.livejournal.com 2008-01-16 11:58 am (UTC)(link)
We deal with a lot of Asus notebooks at work, they push a lot of very thin and small notebooks, which is nice. Though since we also repair notebooks, we get to see a lot of those dell monstrosities.

First leather bound notebooks, now Wood? Its going to be... interesting.

I need to get back into my habit of riding. Darn weather and deadly traffic.