Those mini-laptops

[Baldrake]

I've been considering getting an ultra-portable laptop. Not a netbook, a real laptop, like an Adamo or a Vaio TZ, or a Portege R600. This is not for gaming, but for easily shlepping about and doing work on.

My concern is that the processors on these things are Core 2 Duos in the 1.2 GHz range. I'm afraid that that will feel too damn sluggish, with long boot times, etc.

Does anyone have any experience with these?

[Oban]

I use a MacBook Air on occasion and it seems quite speedy for web browsing, word, excel and powerpoint.

The key items that made up my choice to go with the Air were the keyboard and the form factor.  I used to love Sony ultra-portables, but lately their keyboards have been crap.

Try before you buy.

[Salamok]

It's been 5 years but old hatreds die hard, that said in my experience anything Vaio is complete shit.  

For the past 10 years or so I have always recommended Dell (Austin bias maybe) and that new laptop looks pretty sweet.  Unfortunately Dell has done nothing but piss me off for the last 2 years so F them too.

Looking at your price ranges have you thought about going with a 13.3" Macbook and loading XP or Vista on it as a dual boot option?  I'm not a fan of apple but since Vista's poor showing and Dell's lackluster customer support it has become more attractive to me.  Not to mention as a web dev i wouldn't mind having access to the OS for compatablity and iPhone app reasons.

[Ingmar]

I find the teeny keyboards annoying to type on. YMMV.

[Tale]

I have a Samsung NC10. Officially it's a netbook, but the keys are 90% the size of a regular keyboard so it feels normal to type on (I'm a fast touch typist and I write for a living). I bought it because of the keyboard and because it's consistently the best-reviewed netbook.

You say you're not after a netbook, but this thing has a 160Gb hard drive, I get six hours of battery life from it, boot time is very fast, and I've been using it as a notebook when working from home. Except for the smaller screen size (which can be fixed via VGA out), the experience isn't any different from using my full-sized notebook in my old job. And it was half the price of a small notebook.

[Baldrake]

Interesting about the Vaio. I hadn't heard anything negative about them until now. Will look closer.

That Samsung is no faster than the one I'd be replacing (although a darn sight lighter), and I find it far, far too slow. Maybe I should elaborate that I would want to run heavyweight apps like Office and Visual Studio, so speed and Windows compatibility is an issue. And I'm not spending my own money, so price isn't that big an issue either.

[Salamok]

Interesting about the Vaio. I hadn't heard anything negative about them until now. Will look closer.

My gripe is from the point of view of someone who regularly gets other peoples messed up machines tossed in his lap for some freebie fixit work.  Usually they have malwared their ass into no mans land and I don't even bother troubleshooting i just take a quick look and go straight to the reinstall.  My other quirk is i hate "bonus apps" installed by the manufacturer (Sony loves em though) so I generally try for a from scratch reinstall vs. a recovery disk reinstall. 

Last time I did this with a Vaio the drivers were not easily found on the website, the machine had a system tag you would think would relate to a hardware build and the appropriate drivers.  Unfortunately it was not easy to locate these online and once I eventually found them the HW description for that system tag did not match the machine (ATI vs. nVidia & different chipset).  Just an overall PITA tracking stuff down vs. the 60 or so Dell's I have worked on where there were no such discrepancies.

Seems like this would be a semi easy fix (unless the system tag database is permanently dorked) so you may be just fine.

[Oban]

I say occasionally use because my wife has pretty much taken over the MacBook Air and dumped her Sony Vaio.

I used to love Sony laptops because of their features and... well... http://dynamism.com/ 

[MrHat]

I say occasionally use because my wife has pretty much taken over the MacBook Air and dumped her Sony Vaio.

I used to love Sony laptops because of their features and... well... http://dynamism.com/ 

Whoa, nice website.  Thanks for that.

I love the sony portable ones.

I've found that 13.3" is a perfect laptop size.  It's big enough that you can get a decent resolution screen, and full size keyboard, but the size keeps the weight down and makes the whole thing portable.

I say, look in the 13.3" range and put as much as you can into it.  Are there ASUS in that range?

[Baldrake]

I say occasionally use because my wife has pretty much taken over the MacBook Air and dumped her Sony Vaio.

I used to love Sony laptops because of their features and... well... http://dynamism.com/ 

Whoa, nice website.  Thanks for that.

I'll second that. I now realize that I want a Sony Vaio G or a Toshiba RX2.

Neither of which are available in Canada. 

[Oban]

Dynamism ships to Canada.

[Baldrake]

Yeah, but if I wait a few months, no doubt they'll become available in Canada for a thousand less. And maybe even with standard US keyboard.