pouët.net

the commander would know how to operate those

doom, the only reason you hate touchpads is because you've never used them enough to become used to them.

they are now as natural to me as mice.

hm, I actually prefer my dell M1330 (also 13.3", but a little bit thicker) to this air thingie. some reasons:
- stronger cpu
- a "real" graphics card (M8400 GS)
- replacable battery
- express card slot
- 2 usb slots (i would prefer even more)
- dvd drive (yes, I don't use it very often but how do you want to install an operating system on the mac thing? and installing software with mounting the dvd on another pc/mac seriously sucks)
- costs less (not much but a bit)
- microphone jack (yes I actually prefer to use a headset than an inbuilt microphone)

I just don't see the point of making a notebook some millimeters smaller and throwing away useful stuff instead (and it's btw. quite heavy). ok perhaps i'm not in their target group but who is? people who travel a lot prefer something more stable I think. Like a thinkpad or something.

I also can't imagine the mulitouch touchpad to be useful... (at least it's not more productive)

and btw. the price for the SSD is just crazy.

i have an ibook "12
ideal travel companion + battery power

but i'd switch to an air
(though i agree with stefan that the display is too big for such a product)

Trackpoints are way to go! I actually use the stupid touchpad only when I really need to. I always take a very small mouse with me.
Touchpads are imprecise and take up a lot of space when used in small laptops... Who ever invented them was a masochist...
I loved the trackpoint I had on that little Toshiba back then... <3

xeron: You may have a point, but with the trackpoint it was much easier. I had never used it before, but when I tried it I could work with it perfectly!
That touchpad made me wanna smash my laptop several times already.

I find touchpads more precise than trackpoints.

the future lies maybe in a eye-tracking system :>

Solid state disks (disks...) are expensive. $15 per GB is no joke.

if you don't need lots of GB for a mini-server or embedded system, you can make your own cheap SSD with 'high speed' Compact Flash (like Transcend) and a IDE/CF adapter :)

It's actually more than $15 per GB. You remove the other harddrive and add the SSD. So it's even more...
But I agree with you that SSDs are very expensive in general :(

src: Not according to apple(store)! For them having you buying more expensive hardware is a big problem. They want their design hardware in the right fashionable hands! Not some random geek who thinks the hardware is "useful".

what do you guys have against trackpads? mine works like a charm

probably just because all your sucky non-apple laptops have bad cheap trackpads ;)

Clicky piccy

The EEE is nice, but the screen is definitely too small. There's lots of space left around it and if they add a 9-10" screen and double disk space I'd buy one.
I heard they're planning a new version with a Merom processor for Mid-2008, probably with 945 chipset.

When will they do a version with a MOS 6510 processor?

xeron: I get that it's all about getting used to one or the other, but a lot of people have newer Thinkpads with both trackpoint and touchpad. They always end up using the trackpoint. Many even completely disable the touchpad, to get rid of all those accidental clicks and cursor movements.

I've used laptops with only touchpads a lot, and I can get by with one, I guess it's better than carrying a mouse around (which, mind you, a lot of people do), but considering the alternative, it's just uncomfortable and clumsy.

The surprising thing is that nobody really knows which one's objectively faster to use, or easier on your wrist, or quicker to learn, or even which is more popular. But then, Thinkpads give you both nowadays. So you can make up your own mind. Macs give you.. well, a multi-touch touchpad.. apparently. I'm actually a little curious to see how that works out. Although I'd prefer a 12" tablet PC with multi-touch touchscreen and pressure-sensitive stylus support. Any day now.

Battle Droid: haave a look at the Dell Latitude XT

Hah! Well there it is. :D

Although, from the review it appears that nobody really knows if it's a multi-touch screen. And no way to tell if the stylus is pressure-sensitive. Not knowing that prevented me from buying an X41 Tablet for a long time. Then it turned out X41T contains a complete 12" Intuos-quality tablet (albeit with a cheap stylus but any Intuos stylus should work). I guess they forgot to tell the marketing people that. Or maybe it was part of the deal with Wacom, so that X41T wouldn't end up competing with their forever-expensive Cintiq tablets.

Anyway I'll look into the Latitude XT. If it has a multi-touch screen it might be worth it, but if not, it'll just be a cheaper built X41T at twice the price.

Hehe, it has one flaw though, I just noticed. It doesn't have a solid keyboard layout.



Look at the upper-right hand corner. Why were IBM the only ones to get that right?

imb laptops are SHIT

aren't they lenovo now ?

They are. But they kept the IBM logo for a while. Dunno if they still have it. Never imb though. :)

And I wonder in what way they're shit..?

better buy a m1330 - WOW 2 usb ports (that's still VERY few imho), ETHERNET PORT!, fancy blue touch keys, 160 gb hdd, nv8400gs, max 4gb ram, 2 x snd out, 1x mic port, optical drive, thin fancy display, sd mmc ... card reader thingy (i don't use that anyways...), firewire, hdmi, vga, remote control, fingerprint shit... and from the money you did not spent for the macbook air you still can buy a really nice logitech vx nano mouse (kicks ass imho). ubuntu & winxp work great. Uhh and yeah there's also wlan! macbook air sucks.