Lightweight laptops, Reviews

Google has begun the New Year 2010 with a bang with the release of the much anticipated Google Nexus Mobile Phone last week in US. It is coming to UK soon. Designed by Taiwan’s HTC and running on Google’s very own Android OS version 2.1, this smartphone has a 3.7” OLED 480 x 800 pixels display. OLED displays are more bright and colour rich compared to TFT LCD screen. It has 512 MB RAM on board and a 1 GHz Qualcomm 8250 Snapdragon processor which makes it faster than either Apple’s iPhone or Motorola’s Droid (aka Milestone).

Dell Studio XPS 13 laptop from the Dell family has stylish look and excellent build. The lightweight laptop is available in three different configurations with varying processor speed, main memory, hard disk capacity and battery size and 3 colours viz. Obsidian Black, Arctic White or Merlot Red finish.

The lower end configuration is reviewed here which is powered by Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T6600 (2.2GHz, 800MHz, 2MB) and has 2048MB 1067MHz Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM with 160GB (7,200rpm) Free Fall Sensor hard disk. The small and cheap laptop has backlit ergonomic keyboard and touch pads. The 13.3″ WXGA (1280×800 pixel resolution) CCFL screen with TrueLife displays brilliant colours.

Why Online Backup?

Have you ever suffered from losing important documents, digital photos, videos etc due to hard disk crash of your cheap laptop? And then tried to salvage whatever you can using disk recovery programs? Most computer users would have faced such a situation some time or the other in their lives. According to an estimate about 140,000 hard disk crashes occur in US alone every week and about 10% of all hard drives fail each year all over the world.

With the advent of internet users have another problem to contend with: virus attacks that can virtually destroy entire files in the hard disk. A solution to these types of loss of data and also due to thefts and natural disasters is online backup. With communication costs coming down by the day, it is cheaper and convenient to save your data periodically using online backup service providers. They provide cheap, safe and secure remote location for your data that can be accessed from your cheap laptop anywhere wherever there is an internet connection. You only need to pay as low as one cent per megabyte per month for the first gigabyte and 0.3 cents in excess of 1GB or $5 per month for unlimited storage for the online backup facility!

The Acer Aspire 3810 TZ cheap laptop is slim, stylish and is of good quality construction. With dimensions of 12.7 x 8.9 x 1.1 inches and weighing 3.7 lbs, the small laptop is compact and portable. There are 3 models available in the Acer Timeline series each with a choice of display size, graphics processor as well as main CPU.

Intel’s 1.4GHz Core 2 Duo CPU U9400 CULV processor drives this lightweight laptop with main memory of 4GB 1066 MHz DDR2 RAM which is more than enough to load Windows Vista Premium operating system. The 500 GB 5400rpm capacity hard disk provides ample space to store all your music and video files. The display is13.3″ widescreen LED screen with a resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels.

Palm Pre is the latest mobile phone from Palm, Inc. packed with a no. of features. What makes the mobile phone unique are the apps that are loaded on to it: right from entertainment, social networking, news to navigation, 16 of them in all. It is a mobile phone and a netbook rolled into one! In fact the thin line between a mobile phone and a netbook is blurring with the introduction of devices like Pal Pre which is a fine example of the convergence of computing and communication technology.

Are you bored with the staid, traditional look of your laptop? Do you wish that it had a cool jazzy look that reflects your personality? You no longer have to be limited to the traditional monotonous colours of your laptops. Dell and other manufacturers offer laptop skins created by specialist graphic designers that give them unique colourful looks that blend with the surroundings.

Dell offers laptop skins in 3 different categories: 5 skins under colours, 8 under classics, 3 under product red totalling 16 in all. Here we review 10 of the best Dell laptop skins.

Toshiba has released its first lightweight laptops using the Intel CULV (consumer ultra voltage) processor through the T110 and T130 models. Apart from the processor which reduces power consumption, they also feature Toshiba’s unique Sleep-and-Charge technology that allows multiple devices to charge even when the laptop is switched off. In addition they also have Toshiba’s special 3D sensor for HDD protection, which by detecting free falls, shock or vibration, locks the hard drive to prevent loss of valuable data. It’s fairly cheap too.

Toshiba’s T130 lightweight laptop is powered by Intel Pentium Dual-Core processor SU4100 (1.3 GHz, 800 MHz, 2MB Cache) and has 4 GB RAM and 250 GB hard drive. The laptop is ultra thin with the thinnest part being less than an inch and weighs 3.9 lbs. It is available in pleasing red and white colours.

The Motorola Milestone is the latest mobile phone from Motorola and the first to run on Android 2.0 OS, the Google’s operating system for mobile devices. It has been released for sale in U.K. just this week and is already receiving rave reviews. It directly competes with Apple’s iPhone in many respects.

Called Droid in U.S. and Milestone in U.K., the device has been designed to bring desktop computing experience for mobile phone users. One can perform tasks like web browsing, emailing, instant messaging etc. using Motorola Milestone. It has already sold 800,000 handsets in U.S. since its release in November.

Dell 13z laptop in the Inspiron series uses Intel’s ultra low voltage (ULV) processor with low power consumption. Available in attractive black and cherry red colours, the lightweight laptop has sturdy build and matte surface finish that hides small scratches and dust. The 13z laptop is available in 3 variants with different graphics processors and hard disk size. The lowest end model is reviewed here.

Intel Pentium Dual Core Processor ULV SU4100 (1.30GHz, 2MB, 800MHz) drives the laptop that has 2 GB RAM and 250 GB capacity hard disk. Unlike many netbooks, this lightweight laptop is provided with internal DVD +/- RW Drive (read/write CD & DVD). The screen is 13.3″ WLED High Definition (1366 x 768) TFT Display with TrueLife but its reflective surface makes it a little harder to see the images when outdoors.

The Acer 75 netbook has attractive looks, is built on ultra thin chassis and is available in 3 pretty colours viz. black, red and blue. With dimensions of 11.2 x 7.8 x 1 inches and a weight of 2.75 lbs the netbook is a highly portable and cheap laptop.

The lightweight netbook is powered by Intel Atom Z520 (1.22GHz, 512KB, 533 MHz) processor with 1 GB RAM and 160 GB hard disk. The glossy high definition display has resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels. The graphics is handled by Intel GMA 500 integrated graphics processor and the netbook is somewhat slow when it comes to high speed videos.