Acer Aspire AS5742-6475 Review & Rating | PCMag.com

Acer Aspire AS5742-6475 Review & Rating | PCMag.com: "Finding a cheap laptop can be an incredibly daunting task, because what got left out to get to that price is always in the back of your mind. The Acer Aspire AS5742-6475 ($599.99 list at Tiger Direct) isn't fully-loaded, but it's a sweet deal because it made the fewest sacrifices among its peers. It comes with a high-end Core i3 processor, 500GB of storage, and has over 5 hours of battery life - features you would normally find on a bigger budget. For this reason, it's the new Editors' Choice in the budget laptop category."

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Get an HP Pavilion dm1z ultraportable for $419.99 | The Cheapskate - CNET News

Get an HP Pavilion dm1z ultraportable for $419.99 | The Cheapskate - CNET News: "Laptops and coach seats don't mix. I was reminded of this the other day while trying to contort myself in strange and painful ways at 33,000 feet. Never again. A netbook would have been a much better fit, but I find most models too small for my tastes--and too underpowered as well.

Where's the happy medium? Right here: HP has the Pavilion dm1z ultraportable laptop for $419.99 shipped (after applying coupon code SAVE30HP). That's a total savings of $130.

The dm1z may look like a netbook, what with its 11.6-inch screen, absent optical drive, and overall compactness, but, brother, it ain't no netbook."

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Apple MacBook Air 13-inch Review & Rating | PCMag.com

The original MacBook Air ($1,799 direct, 3 stars) took the concept of thin to a whole new level, but ended up sacrificing too much in the process. Just when you thought the MacBook Air was about to collapse under its shortcomings, Apple, inspired by what it did with the Apple iPad, breathes new life into the MacBook Air 13-inch ($1,299 direct). We all knew Apple had the design chops to push the boundaries of thin, but what it added in terms of features and performance set the precedent for what's to come. After all, Steve Jobs called the latest MacBook Air, "the future of MacBooks." The 13-inch version adds an extra USB port and an SD slot-features it desperately needed to compete as a laptop. It completely transitions to flash storage (SSDs), which, in addition to enabling the Air's zippy wake-from-sleep times, made room for a bigger 50Wh battery and its over 5 hours of battery life. But for those who complained about the MacBook Air's steep prices, they'll be complaining for a while longer.

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Apple MacBook Air Clone from E-Stary Looks Almost Like the Real Thing - Softpedia

You know it, we know it and Apple certainly knows it too that China is the land where just about any electronic device can be copied (and sometimes, even improved) in a very short amount of time, the knock-offs coming from this part of the world becoming pretty famous, especially since the “source of inspiration” is a device that's managed to seriously keep itself in the spotlight, such as the MacBook Air from Apple. In fact, although the redesigned MacBook Air has only been around for a fairly limited amount of time, its first knock-offs have already appeared on the Chinese market, the latest being the HY118 portable computing system developed by a company called E-Stary and uncovered by the people over at Shanzaiben.

The HY118, despite sharing the external design of the MacBook Air, has the core of a netbook inside, sporting a choice of Intel Atom N270/N450 CPUs and Intel 945GSE/NM10 chipsets, as well as 1GB of DDR2 memory and an 160GB HDD. Quite obviously, the clone sports a 11.6-inch display (1366x768 pixels resolution) powered by either integrated Intel GMA 950 or 3150 graphics chipsets.

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Going Hands-On with Sony's Quad-SSD Vaio Z

Without a doubt, Sony's Vaio Z series notebooks are some of the most powerful, portable and elegant computing systems out there, the Japanese company really managing to outdo itself with the latest addition to the series, which we've had the chance to check out live, during a local launch event.

First and foremost, it's important to mention that, similar to all of the other business Vaios, the Z series is manufactured entirely in Japan, at Nagano, in a factory Softpedia had the privilege of visiting earlier this year.

This ensures that the Z series provides a great build-quality, the device being crafted from carbon fiber and aluminium for maximum portability and robustness.

Additionally, the notebook has an all-black design, as well as a tough yet light palmrest is precision-machined from a single thick slab of aluminium.

Moreover, despite its cook looks and the powerful hardware packed within (which we'll detail as follows), the Z series Vaio is actually pretty lightweight and easy to carry around, the device tipping the scales at under 1.47 kilos).

However, leaving aside the elegant, business-oriented external design, what really makes Sony's Vaio Z series stand out is the extreme level of performance it provides, a lot more than one would normally expect from such a portable system.

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