Tim Wang's eLearning Blog

One of my co-worker is looking for a “small and thin” laptop and I think her search is over. Apple MacBook Air was announced at Mac World this week. Check out the dimensions first: 12.8" wide, 8.94" deep, and 0.16" to 0.76" thin and weight: 3.0 lbs (1.36 kg).

The entire laptop is only 0.76” thick! That is the base + lcd for less than 2 centimeters! This makes this laptop to be the thinnest laptop in the world today. But the immediate trade off is that there is no CD/DVD drive attached and only one USB port. However, the MacBook Air seems to have a new generation of wireless solutions: 802.11n2 and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR wireless technologies. Remote Disc option allows you to easily access other Mac computers’ DVD drive.

To me, the real eye catching component is the multi-touch trackpad, yeah, just like the iPhones…

Another thing worth to mention about the “thinnest laptop” is the 13.3”” widescreen LED supports resolutions up to 1280 x 800. This means you gonna get crystal clear images and good coloring from it.

What’s need to be noticed is the CPU power is not so great considering you can only upgrade it from 1.6GHz to 1.8GHz, and the price nearly doubled (originally at $1799, now $3,098). But you also get an extra of 2GB RAM memory though.

Here are the full specs of the default model: $1799
13.3" Widescreen LED Backlit (1280 x 800)
Intel Core 2 Duo 1.6GHz and 1.5GHz (4MB L2 cache, 800MHz frontside bus)
1.8" 80GB HD (same type in iPod) or 64GB SSD option
Multi-touch trackpad
2GB RAM (667MHz DDR2 SDRAM)
Intel X3100 graphics
Magnetic latch
1 USB 2.0 port, Micro-DVI, Audio out (analog)
802.11n wireless
Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
iSight camera built-in
37 watt-hour lithium-polymer battery
No optical drive built-in, but SuperDrive accessory available for $99

With a recent shoulder injury, the 20 lb Dell XPS (with battery and power supply) appears to be heavier than normal. It's interesting that the laptop sizes are going to the two extremes, the powerful ones are evolving from 13 inch to 14 inch to 17 inch to 20.1 inch (Dell XPS M2010)! On the other hand, the manufacturers are also making the laptops to the mini end: 12 inch to 11 inch to 10 inch to 6 inch (the world smallest laptop – Sony VAIO UX)!

Among all of the mini laptops, the 10 inch laptops seem to be the most “popular” and “mature” laptop products. Sony and Fujitsu were the first two companies that started the mini laptop series. But other laptop producers like Acer, Lenovo (IBM) and Apple immediately jump onto the mini laptop wagon.

This obviously is driven by the consumers. There are people like me looking for more powerful desktop replacement laptops, but there are people like my co-workers (whom owns the first generation of mini laptops – SONY VGN-UX) refuses to carry around heavy laptops. It seems more people I know are looking for the smaller solution at the moment, here I find a few models for their selections.

1. The newer version of my co-worker's Sony mini laptop is Sony VAIO VGN-T350P/L. The entire laptop weight only 3.04 lb, it uses Intel M 1.2GHz, 2MB cache memory, 512MB DDR SDRAM, 60 GB 4200 RPM hard drive, 10.6 WXGA LCD display, 10/100M wireless network card and an INTERNAL DVD Recorder! The VGN-T350P/L battery supports up to 9 hours of operation! Wow, my XPS battery only supports up to 2.5 hours and a risk of explosion! :) The advantage of this mini laptop is it's from a reliable series, my co-worker whom own the fist generation of Sony mini laptop has been using it for 3 years and barely had any problems.

2.Fujitsu LifeBook P7230 (FPCM21122) has a nice look, the cool colored titanium skin make it attractive to young people and female laptop consumers. This laptop weight only 2.55 lb! Here is the default configuration with the mini laptop: Intel ULV Core Solo U1400 CPU (1.2GHz，Intel 945GMS chip set)，1024MB DDR2 RAM，80GB hard drive，build-in DVD/CDRW，10.6 inch LCD. What's special about this laptop is it comes with 2 batteries by default and 2 USB 2.0 ports and 1 fire wire port, a multi-card reader, and a wireless network card. Pretty much everything you will need when you are on the road. The advantage of this laptop is it's light weight and more memory)

3.Another one I really like is Averatec 1050-EB1 (AV1050EB1) , it is a Korean brand. The only wide screen mini laptop in the market I think. Weight 3.6 lb. Very slick design, dark red (wine color) skin and milk white keyboard makes it really attractive to the fashion seekers. The set-up of this computer is: Intel 1.1GHz M ULV 733 CPU (855GME chip set)，512MB DDR RAM，10.6 inch WXGA LCD (a very bright wide screen mini laptop with brightness of 240cd/m2)，80GB hard drive，and an internal DVD/CD -RW Drive. It also got both USB and Fire Wire ports, also D-SUB, Type II PC card slot, MMC/SD/MS/MS Pro multi card reader and built-in 802.11b/g wireless card. The advantage of this mini-laptop is it's crystal clear wide screen LCD display.

These are the top three mini laptops in the market today. However the mini laptops are often expensive and when you put all the processing power into a compact package, you can expect things may go wrong soon or later. So, choose wisely and carefully.

Here are the "student laptop" suggestions I promised my workshop students a few days ago. I have selected them based on the information from various of sources (notebookreview.com, sina.com, pcmagzine.com...). Here are the top 5 laptops I would recommend for the student in the beginning of the year 2007:

1. Dell 1501, on sale for $599 US at Dell's site. It has a nice silver and white platinum look to it. Almost looks as "cool" as the Mac Book Pro, but MUCH MUCH cheaper of course. It uses Mobile AMD Sempron™ Processor 3500+. (Dell newly adopted AMD CPU for their line of product.) It's got a 15.4 wide screen, 512 DDR2 SD Ram, 80G hard drive, a nice ATI RADEON® Xpress1150 with 256MB HyperMemory™. The beautiful thing of buying a Dell computer is you can configure it on the web. I would personally suggest one to swap the default setting with 1G DDR2 SD RAM. Because Windows Vista is gonna need the extra juice. The final price should come around $649. See if you can find some online coupons (search "dell coupon") on this item.

2.Sony VAIO FE, around $1155 US from SONY's web site. This one is a little bit more expensive than the Dell, but it comes with Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor T5500 (1.66GHz), 2GB RAM, and NVIDIA® GeForce® Go 7400 with 335MB Video RAM. For those students whom want to play some 3D games like World of Warcraft or simulations like Second Life, this computer will definitely do the trick. You almost don't need to upgrade anything from the default package.

3.Acer Aspire 5102WLMi, another great laptop. For $650 US, you get a laptop computer that is AMD Turion64 x2 TL-50 CPU. (the AMD version of Intel's Core Duo) 1 GB 533 MHz DDR2 RAM, 120 GB Hitachi 4200 RPM HD (very reliable HD), and ATI Radeon xPress 1100 integrated graphics card. The weak point of this laptop is it's graphic capbility. Due to the graphic card, you may not want to use this for intensive 3D gaming. But this is just my oppinion. It really depends on what games are you plan to play with the laptop.

4.Lenovo ThinkPad T60 (Previousely know as IBM ThinkPad), this one is a little over $1300, but it comes with T7200 (2.00 Ghz) Core Duo Intel processor (a little faster than SONY VAIO FE's default CPU), but only 1GB RAM, and a 120 GB HD, ATI X1400 128MB Graphic Card. But it does come with a cool, and unique Fingerprint Scanner like the other ThinkPads...

5.My final choice would be HP Pavilion dv6000t for around $1000 US. Now, this is really a “bang-for-the-buck” laptop. Why? Because it comes with Intel Core 2 Duo T7200 (same as the ThinkPad T60), a Fujitsu 120 GB HD, Nvidia GeForce Go 7400 with 256 MB graphic card and 2G RAM. This set up is really close to the SONY VIAO FE. The only thing I can see the difference is the Graphic Card where you can get the extended 128 MB memory from the VIAO.

My top pick? It must be the SONY VIAO FE. I think Sony just lowered the price on this model after February. These 5 models are suggested by me because of their low price, hardware configurations and buyers' reviews. It's only aimed to students laptop selections for the beginning of 2007. Good luck and study hard!

NEW: Thinnest Laptop 2008 - Only 0.76 inch thick!!!

Check out the top 3 mini laptops (10 inch laptops) I recommend to my friends

GOOD NEWS: You can save $100 instantly on the world smallest laptop SONY VAIO® UX Series from the Sony's official web site today!

My previous laptop review was written mainly for the "serious" computer users. For those of you who dig the "coolest", "fanciest" gizmos outa there, here is a new toy:

This is got to be the smallest laptop available today - Sony VAIO UX. With a dimension of 5.91”×3.74”×1.50”, Sony VAIO UX is equipped with a 1.2 GHz Intel Mobile CPU, 512 MB DDR2 PC2-3200 400 MHz RAM and 32 GB Ultra ATA Hard Drive at 4200 RPM. Of course it comes with all of the network gadgets like blue tooth, wireless modem, etc. Sony VAIO UX combines the best features from mobile phones, PDA, and Laptop computers. For example, it has two built-in cameras! one on the back can be used as still photo camera and the one in the front can be used as a web camera. This laptop also has a stereo speaker built in! The sliding keyboard makes it slick and small. Oh, did I mention, it is a tablet PC? And it comes with USB 2.0, IEEE 1394 / Firewire, VGA and AV output! It has a slide-out keyboard! For normal typing, it's more than enough!

The battery is weight 1.2 lb which can last 3-5 hours and the Intel graphic media accelerator 950 supports maximum resolution of 1024 x 600. Yes, it is a PC which means it's attached with MS Windows XP Pro.

I have had some interesting laptop shopping experience recently:

Not long ago, I wrote this laptop review, because I was looking for a new notebook. After hours of reading and searching on the net, I zoomed down to 3 different laptops: MacBook Pro, Toshiba Satellite Pro and Dell Inspiron XPS. The IT staff at my work place suggested the MacBook Pro but I am a PC person. The new Mac Boot Camp and the Intel Core Duo based MacBook Pro is quite attempting since it is possible to have Windows XP installed on it. However, I still felt a little alienated and uncertain while looking at the white apple on the silver case. I only used Toshiba laptops in the past 8 years - 2 Toshiba Satellite laptops and 1 Toshiba Tablet PC. I have had very little experience with Toshiba's support services since they all cost money and hard to reach. This time around, I am looking for a desktop replacement laptop which means it has to be something powerful enough for graphic design, 3D rendering and possible server application testings. Therefore, I chose the Dell Inspiron XPS which is one of the fastest laptop available today and at a similar price range compare to the MacBook Pro. Toshiba does not have any laptops as powerful as the XPS so it was ruled out.

This is the first time I purchased a laptop completely online (compare to buying the Toshiba laptops from The Future Shop after fiddle with them for a few hours!), this is also my first time buying anything from Dell. The new Inspiron XPS arrived 5 weeks ago, and a couple days later, I realized that there were two dead pixels (black spots) on the 17” ultra bright wide screen LCD. Since the screen is so finely made, the dead pixels are pretty hard to notice. I had a couple of friends taking a look at it, they hardly saw the dead pixels. According to them, there is no way for any manufacturers would agree to replace the laptop just because of a couple of minor dead spots. I personally dealt with Toshiba before and they refused to replace any laptop with less than 10 dead pixels (and all of the dead pixels have to somehow line up with each other). So, I called Dell with very low expectation, but guess what? After I explained how important a flawless screen is to me, the Dell representative simply said they will send out a brand new laptop right a way and will have the old one picked up by UPS after I receive the new one! Wow, what a service! I didn't even have to beg them!

However, the story doesn't end here, two weeks later, I received my new Dell XPS replacement, it also has some issues with the screen (ghost shadows) which caused me once again, acted as a “picky customer” and called Dell. They agreed to send out another XPS after apologizing for the inconvenience! Yesterday, I received the third XPS (the 2nd replacement), and this time, the screen is perfect! I have to say Dell's customer service are amazingly good and Dell Support is simply the best out there! You can bet my future computers will have a Dell logo on it!

On June 2nd, 2006, Dell released their flag-ship product: Dell XPS series to China. This indicates Dell is aware of the Chinese gaming industry. The models Dell is releasing to China include Inspiron XPS M1710 and M1210. The M1710 is the fastest laptop from Dell at the moment:

* System: Dell XPS M1710 (Red color lid)
* Processor: Intel Core Duo T2600 (2.16 GHz)
* Memory: 2GB @ 667MHz - 2 DIMM Slots (2 x 1GB) (Max Ram 4GB)
* Hard Drive: 100GB capacity at a speed of 7200 RPM
* Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce Go 7900 GTX with 512MB DDR memory
* Screen: WUXGA Truelife (1920 x 1200)
* Optical Drive: 8x CD/DVD burner (DVD+/-RW/+R) with Dual-Layer
* OS: Microsoft MCE 2005
* Wireless Card: Intel 3945 (802.11b/g)
* Battery: 9-cell lithium ion rechargeable battery
* Ports / Slots: 5-in-1 Memory Card Reader, DVI-D, VGA video output, S-Video, IEEE 1394 (Firewire), 6 USB 2.0, Express Card slot, Modem, Ethernet/LAN, Microphone in, Headphone out
* Integrated Subwoofer
* Price of this configuration: $4,215 (base price of black metallic M1710 starts at $2,600)

It is an ideal laptop for the serious gamers and one of the fastest laptop computer out there in the market today. The current Chinese gaming industry has 26.34 million players, over half of them are paid customers. The Chinese gaming industry generated 3.77 billion yuan (500 million CAD $) in the year 2005. I foresee the Dell XPS series will have a good market in China.

Click here for a detailed review on current laptops!

Dell has been using Intel for all of their products. However, this is about to change. In Dell's first quarter financial report (2006), they have indicated that Dell will introduce AMD processors to their product line. Dell did not indicate the reason of the new movement, but I assume this has everything to do with cutting the cost and reaching a bigger market.

Dell's financial report indicates their first quarter profit was 762 million dollars which is 18% lower than the first quarter in 2005.

UPDATE: Check out my new review on the world smallest laptop pc - Sony VAIO UX!

UPDATE: Top 5 Student Laptops in 2007

I have been looking for a desktop replacement laptop for quite some time now - P4 1.8 GHz desktop to be replaced by a laptop. I had to brush up my hardware knowledge in a short amount of time. Let’s just say after hours of reading, I have learned much about the current laptop market and want to write a review of all the knowledge I have learned along with some reviews of the laptops that I have checked out, read about and tested. Hope this review will help someone to purchase a laptop for an education-related profession this summer. I am going to organize the review into different categories based on the laptop components that I think are most critical to identify and compare. The review is written for the newbie (plain English) which I was one a few days ago.

1. Laptop CPU Review (Central Processing Unit)

This determines the general speed of your laptop. The newest technology in laptops on CPU structure is Intel’s Dual Core (Core Duo in Mac Vocab) technology. In short, it means two processors engineered onto a single chip. Theoretically, you would get twice the computational power of a traditional single processor. Watch the following two Flash demos created by Intel, you will understand why dual-core and what is multi-thread calculation.
Why Intel Dual Core Processor
What is Intel Multi-Core Platforms

However, I do need to point out what’s coming on the horizon – AMD Turion 64 X2 or Athlon 64 for 64-bit processing. It is scheduled to reach the market by mid June or July 2006 which will cause the Intel Dual Core chip based laptops to drop price. The AMD Turion Dual Core will be 64 bits where Intel dual cores are 32 bits. If you want to dig deeper on AMD VS. Intel in the multi-processor race, read this review. For those of you trust my opinion? You don’t need to worry about the 64 bits processing until the year 2008 when the major software corporations upgrade their product line to 64 bits. But even then, can they be brave enough to discontinue the 32 bits supported products? I highly doubt it.

Conclusion on CPU, don’t buy a Pentium M (single core) notebook at this point, go for an Intel Dual Core laptop if you need it right now. If you can wait until the summer is over, go for an AMD Turion 64 Dual Core Processor based laptop. As expected, the chips use Intel's new model-numbering scheme. The Intel dual core products are labeled as T2600 (2.16GHz), T2500 (2GHz), T2400 (, 1.83GHz) and T2300 (1.66GHz). I have chosen a T2500 (2GHz). Today’s laptop technology makes it possible to upgrade CPUs down the road, but it does depends on the particular laptop you buy and expect for an expensive labor cost.

2. Laptop Graphic Cards Review (or GPU – Graphics Processing Unit)
A graphic card is probably the second most important in computer hardware configurations. It determines how well you run the graphic based programs (where 99.9% of the software programs today have fancy graphic user interfaces). If you ever want to use the laptop to watch video contents, view animations or play games, you must know your graphic card chart well. When it comes to graphic cards, I put them into two categories: Integrated Graphics Cards, and Add-on Graphic Cards. Simply put, if you are going to use your laptop mainly for surfing the net, checking email, word processing, 2D graphic design and occasionally playing some games, a laptop with an integrated graphic card would do for you. However, if you work with animation creations, multimedia developments (e.g. video rendering) or game playing (3D games like Quake 4, Half Life 2, Far Cry, FEAR, Battle Field 2), you do need the add-on graphic cards. The graphic cards makes a huge difference on laptop prices, but the one thing you can bet, the more expensive the graphic cards are, the better 3D support they provide. The top of the line graphic cards today are: ATI Radeon X800, ATI Radeon X800XT, ATI Radeon X1800, ATI Radeon X1800XT, Nvidia Go6800. Nvidia Go7800, Nvidia Go6800 Ultra, Nvidia Go7900GS, Nvidia Go7800GTX, Nvidia Go7900GTX. These graphic cards come with minimum of 128 MB GPU memory and the Go7900GTX comes with 512 MB Memory. In the common laptop brands: Dell, Toshiba, Sony, Lenovo (IBM) and HP, Dell XPS 1710 is the only laptop that comes with the Go7900GTX card and of course it’s overall performance is also the highest. In general, Nvidia cards have higher 3D benchmarks over ATI cards based on the similar models. Here is a very well written article on Mobile Graphic Cards, read it for a better understanding on the graphic cards comparisons. Don’t worry, this article is also written for newbie.

Conclusion on Graphic cards, try to get an add-on graphic card when your budget allow and don’t go for the high end ones if you do not play games. I personally believe ATI cards are good for video editing and nVidia cards are great for gaming. Please note that it is awfully difficult (almost impossible) to change the graphic card on laptops for upgrade down the road, therefore, think wisely and choose carefully.

3. Memory (RAM)
Hardware people would tell you, when you have a limited budget, the most “bang-on-the-buck” investment would be computer memory. Same thing for the laptops. If you don’t want to invest an extra $400 on a 512MB graphic card, or $300 on the next line of CPU, you can always choose to spend an extra hundreds dollar or so to get a memory upgrade.

My opinion is that don’t settle with 512MB RAM today, go for the minimum 1G. Do make sure the laptop has room for further memory upgrade because if you want to use Windows Vista, 1G is the minimum requirement. You might need to kick in another 1G pretty soon. Laptop Rams are fairly easy to upgrade.

4. Screen, Laptop Size and Weight
Two types of laptops today if we categorize them by size and weight, the desktop replacement laptops and day-to-day carry around laptops. The desktop replacement laptops come with 17 inch wide screen and heavy bodies (8 lbs to 12 lbs) while the day-to-day carry around laptops ranges from 9 inch to 12 inch to 14/15 inch with a weight from 3 lbs to 7 lbs. My experience tells me that you don’t want to carry an 8 lbs+ laptop walking around. A good trick I learned from the forums is you should find out the weight of the particular laptop you want and put books with equivalent weight into a backpack and walk around. Trust me, avoid buying an over-weight laptop!

One thing to note is that many manufacturers today (Dell, Toshiba, Sony) offers ultra-bright and ultra-sharp LCD as an upgrade option for their laptops. If the price is under $250, I’d suggest you go for it. Because they do make a huge difference when you watch a movie or play games. These screens used to cost over thousands of dollars a couple of years ago.

5. Hard Drive
Laptop Hard Drives are easy to choose, the common ones today are 60GB, 80GB, 100GB and 120GB in two different speed 5400RPM and 7200 RPM. The second one is relatively faster than the first.

I suggest go for 80GB which gives you enough space to hold contents and software and not blow your pocket. Speed wise, if you are not don’t any video editing or running software that needs constant access of the hard drive, 5400RPM would simply do it. Other wise, spend the extra $350 for a 7200 RPM drive. Laptop hard drives today are easy to replace and upgrade.

6. Battery
Now battery life has everything to do with the parts mentioned above. If you use faster CPU, powerful graphic card, bigger and brighter screen, and a large hard drive to watch movie or play games, well, good luck with your battery life. Laptop batteries come with different number of cells: the 6-cell, all the way to 10-cell Lithium Ion Battery. The higher the number of cells, the more power it stores. But like I said, if you do heavy duty tasks with your laptop, plug it into the wall!

7. Peripherals

- Make sure the laptop come with enough USB plugs. (at the least 2)
- A 5-in-1 or 6-in-1 card reader will be really handy on the road
- DVD burner would be nice when you have a smaller hard drive (smaller than 80GB )
- All laptops today have wireless card build in, but you might want to check on Bluetooth. It would be useful since more printers, communication devices and home appliances are Bluetooth equipped.
- A IEEE 1394 Port (Fire Wire) is important for video editing
- DVI Connector for the new laptops and Mac cinema displays
- S-video out if you want to project the laptop content to home TV

Personal Picks
Here is list of laptops I personally recommend, Google them or check with your local venders for the latest prices:

$1000-$2000:
Lenovo (IBM) ThinkPad T60, for around $1550, this is a fast enough laptop with a dual core processor and ATI X1400 graphic card for normal computing an home entertainment. Specs: 5.1 lbs, Intel (1.66 GHz Core Duo), 512 MB, 14.1 in TFT active matrix. The specs are little low I would say, but for daily computing, this is more than enough.

Sony VAIO SZ120P/B, one of the smallest dual core laptop available in the market today. With a LCD of 13.3 in TFT active matrix, the laptop is only 4 lbs. I have seen the local London Drugs carry this laptop with NVIDIA GeForce Go 7400 (128MB Dedicated Memory) as the graphic card, you may even use this laptop for some high end gaming experiences. This laptop comes just around $2000. If you wait for another month, I bet it will drop to $1900 or lower.

Dell Inspiron 6400, a very nicely priced unit, for under $1800, you can get this laptop bundled with Intel® Core™ Duo processor T2500 (2MB Cache/2GHz/667MHz FSB ), 15.4 inch UltraSharp™ Wide Screen SXGA+ Display with TrueLife™, 1GB DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz, 100GB 5400rpm SATA Hard Drive, and 256MB ATI MOBILITY™ RADEON® X1400 HyperMemory™. This set up is good enough for daily computing plus home entertainment and gaming purposes.

$2000 or above:
Apple MacBook Pro, comes in either 1.83 GHz or 2.0GHz Intel Core Duo processor, 1 GB DDR SDRAM, ATI X1600 and 15.4 in TFT active matrix. With a light weight of 5.6 pounds, this laptop is ideal to carry around or use as a desktop replacement computer. The ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 graphics processor is good enough for almost all of today’s newest games and it has great video play back capabilities. One can get this unit for around $2500 which is worth the investment by far. One thing I do want to point out is that with the Mac Boot Camp, you can install Windows XP to this machine as well!

Dell XPS M1710, now this is a monster Laptop; it is one of the top 3 laptops available in today’s market. With the Intel dual core processors, 1GB + RAM, NVIDIA GeForce Go 7900 GS (GTX) with 256MB (512MB ) DDR memory, this is the fastest laptop with a popular brand name (one of the Dell, Toshiba, Sony, Lenovo, Asus, Apple and HP) you can find on the market. With a similar price as the MacBook Pro, PC users certainly also get a bang-on-the-bucks product on this product as well.