Best ultraportable notebook? - Page 2

Dell had the 300M but i guess they stopped making it and put in the New 700M..So i guess the 700M is portable.. I don't own one to tell you though

The 700m gets under 2.5 hours on the standard battery according to the reviews.

An often overlooked ultraportable

I have the D400 which I purchased about 6 months ago and it has been a wonderful laptop for many purposes. The screen is absolutely fantastic, bright and very sharp. A resolution of 1024 X 768 is perfect on a 12" screen. The keyboard has a great feel. It is a little smaller than a full size keyboard but does not feel cramped at all. It runs very cool and quiet. The location of the dedicated volume, mute and power buttons just above the keyboard is excellent. The location and feel of the pointing stick and the left and right click buttons for it are perfect for laptop use. It has an excellent selection of useful ports and connection devices as well. There are 3 USB 2.0 ports (one which shares the powered D-bay connector function), firewire, VGA out, 9 pin serial port, a single PCMCIA slot, RJ-11 modem, RJ-45 gigabit network, infrared and a lock slot. Another great thing about Dell is that finding and downloading and installing the drivers for the various hardware featues is very easy and straightforward. The best thing is the form factor. It is very comfortable in my lap even using it for a long time. I generally get about 4 hours out of each battery, so betwen the two batteries I have an easy 8 hours plus battery life. For an ultraportable I don't think you could do much better. I was very fortunate to have picked mine up through their outlet as a refurb with an extra battery, 1.4 Pentium M processor, a 40gb 5400 RPM drive, 512mb memory and te external DVD drive at a good price.

I took it with me to Hawaii on vacation and it handled e-mail, photoshop, music and movie playing and ripping and video transfer and editing very handily. It is the perrfect size and weight to take just about anyhwhere. However, I personally do wish it had an integrated optical drive. I am forever installing software, ripping music CDs, burning DVDs, backing up data etc. So for me an integrated optical drive would be very nice. I have looked at the Fujitsu S series for this purpose but they seem very expensive for the feature set. I am so pleased with the D400 I think I will stick with it for an ultraportable. I have an external firewire DVD/CDRW so I can at least burn CDs if needed. The only drawback is that it needs a seperate power supply. I also went ahead and ordered a Fujitsu E8010d so I will have a full size for daily use with all the bells and whistles.

Oh, and by the way, I don't care for the widescreen formator the various reflective screen technologies, thus my preference for my D400 over some of the other choices. The Fujitsu S7000 series looks really nice as well.

Good luck on your quest.

"if you like xbrite"????

There are people who actually don't care for the xbrite screen.

Can I ask why they dont like it? I am actually not sure if I know what a xbrite screen is (I have just heard it is nice)

I am another one that does not like XBrite, ClearView or any of the reflective screens. I LOVE the color depth and contrast ratio and viewing angle, but hate the reflectivity. I recently saw an S Series at FRY's, and asked the sales guy if we could take it away from the tungsten lights in the store. We went into the presentation room with it, dark except for a couple very soft lights. There STILL was glare off the screen, and you still can see yourself reflected in the screen. If that does not bother you, you will love XBrite. If it might bother you, go to FRY's, CC, BB, etc. and check out an IPS technology screen before buying.

Andrew
Austin, TX

yeh the reflections are really annoying in low-lighting conditions. some people don't mind it, i wouldn't knock it until you've seen it, but personally i can't stand it.

I interpreted this as best ultraportable, meaning lightest/smallest notebook you can buy that is still good. And hence you've skipped over...

Sharp Actius MM20
---2 pounds
---0.62 inches thin
---3-9 hours batter

That is ultraportable. And still pretty decent. Would be able to play many games... no Doom 3 or Far Cry but along the lines of Diablo 2, Counter Strike, and other games that I can't think of right now. plswdth has a review+pics here.

I love this notebook . (I dun have it though)

played around with that one in the store, i think its too
i had a sharp av18p (sort of like the mm20 but with internal optical), it held up quite nicely. build quality was quite good.

i believe the mm20 it has an excellent docking feature (comes with station). a desktop will see the mm20 just like a portable HD. makes for a luxurious no-wires transfer of documents / files.

To go off the beaten track a bit... if your brother is really only concerned about writing, email, internet, etc. and is not bothered about extensive Windows compatibility, why not try an Apple iBook? 12" screen, under 5 lbs., about 4 to 5 hours battery life, and it's a lifestyle statement. One of my students uses an iBook and he's an engineering student: suits him fine.

Because it's a Mac .

That's not fair lol... the iBook would be great, as it is slightly cheaper... but I don't like Mac's so I will still say the MM20 .