The touchpad and mouse buttons have sort of a black mirror finish that looks very elegant, but can result in unwanted reflections.
The overall design theme of the Getac 9213 is matte-black, gloss-black and a bit of powdercoated silver. It’s a very elegant combination and a very elegant understated design. It also feels remarkably solid for such a light machine. The only drawback is the elegant matte-black brushed top of the computer is smudge and fingerprint prone.
That’s unfortunate as the Dell XT2 hits a nice compromise between performance from its efficient yet powerful 1.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo SU9400 processor, weight (well under four pounds), decent battery life, and a nice complement of ports. Our review machine came with a silent and very quick 128GB SSD. However, no internal optical drive; that comes in a separate external package, and also no integrated camera. There is plenty of onboard security, including a fingerprint scanner.
As far as I can tell, this oddball number comes as a result of a 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio, effectively lopping off a horizontal stripe from an otherwise 12.1-inch screen. There seems to be a real push toward 16:9 for both laptops and LCD monitors, so why not netbooks too? It’ll be good for movies, assuming it can handle the video processing.
The upcoming Aspire laptops are expected to debut in time for the launch of Microsoft’s Windows 7, which will also be the operating system that will be enabled on the two designs. Price-wise, expect the two to become available for £499.99, featuring a dedicated graphics processing unit, while a £449.99 price tag will be available for a configuration with an integrated GPU.
Just yesterday, reports of ASUS’ upcoming Core i7-based portable systems hit the web, with details on two new models, the M60J and the gaming-ready G60J. It now appears that the Taiwanese company has finally decided to officially announce the two products, providing customers with a choice for Intel’s next-generation Calpella platform, specifically designed to enable the Nehalem microarchitecture on the next generation of portable computer systems. Both systems have been designed for ultimate performance, combining Intel’s latest mobile processors with NVIDIA’s GeForce GPUs for notebook PCs.
Trusted Platform Module (TPM) is a secure cryptoprocessor added to enterprise class laptops by many manufacturers. Without TPM support, Rob Enderle, principal analyst for the Enderle Group, says, “Successful netbook deployments in the enterprise are unlikely.”
While insiders say off the record that TPM and biometric support are ordered on laptops far more often than implemented, some customers demand them. Price will keep TPM and biometrics off netbooks for the foreseeable future.
Even Microsoft has figured this out, albeit slowly. Microsoft’s Windows 7, based on preliminary reviews, is leaner and faster than Vista. (Yes, there’s Windows Mobile 6.5 but I don’t think I’m going out on a limb by saying that this isn’t the future of smartphone operating systems.) Intel has got religion too. Its Atom and ultra- low-voltage (ULV) processors both offer significant power savings over standard Intel chip designs.
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