AllThingsD » chassis

Two Little Laptops With a Lot to Offer Their Core Users

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 02:04:09 +0000

For all the talk about new tablet computers like Apple’s iPad, laptops remain the computer industry’s bread and butter, and smaller laptops are especially popular with consumers.

So, I’ve been testing two diminutive laptops, both with 11-inch screens, that show how clever engineering can take a familiar device and customize it for particular audiences. These two machines couldn’t be more different, and they are aimed at radically different customers. Neither is a bargain-priced netbook, but both were designed with compactness in mind.

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One of these products is from Dell’s Alienware group, which specializes in potent computers for hard-core gamers. The device is called the M11x, and it came out this week at a base price of $799. It’s an attempt to pack much of the power gamers typically tote around inside thicker, heavier laptops into a much more portable chassis. The M11x weighs about 4.4 pounds, which in the gaming world is svelte, and is about 1.3 inches thick.

The other machine I’ve been testing was released by Sony over the holiday shopping season with relatively little mass-market fanfare. It’s called the Vaio X, starts at $1,299 and is easily the lightest laptop I’ve ever reviewed.

In fact, it’s so light, at just 1.6 pounds, that at first I thought it must be a mock-up made of cardboard. The Vaio X is also just a tad over a half an inch thick. Its processor and graphics system are like a netbook’s, so it can’t come close to matching the Dell (DELL) in performance. But it isn’t meant for the performance market. It’s meant for highly mobile users who do typical computing, want to show off something sleek and can tolerate a high price and weak battery life in the standard configuration.

The M11x is a chunky box that, despite its size, is immediately recognizable as an Alienware product. The power button looks like a space alien’s face, and, along with the keyboard and some other features on the front edge, it can be made to light up and pulse in a variety of bright colors.

Inside, it sports dual graphics systems—one powerful discrete graphics card for heavy-duty gaming, and one lesser integrated card for other tasks or when you want to save battery life. You can switch between them quickly, without rebooting.

I am not a serious gamer, but I briefly tested the M11x on some included 3D games, and they ran smoothly and well. The machine also did great on high-definition video and on common tasks like Web browsing, email and word processing. It’s also packed with ports, including an HDMI connector, the new standard for easy hookup to a TV.

On my tough battery test, the Alienware did pretty well, clocking in at just under four hours with the more potent graphics in use, and just under five hours with the lesser graphics turned on. In normal usage patterns, you could stretch these figures.

The downsides to this machine are that the keyboard is cramped, and the specs on the $799 base model might not satisfy a serious gamer or video creator. It has a relatively small 160-gigabyte hard disk and a low-end Pentium processor. The model I tested, with a 500-gigabyte hard disk, a Core 2 Duo processor and twice the base 2 gigabytes of memory, costs $1,099.

The Sony Vaio X is a world apart, a reminder that the company, which years ago pioneered small, thin, costly laptops, can keep doing so. This little computer can get lost in your briefcase.

The Vaio X comes in several colors, but has modest specs for the price. It uses the Intel Atom processor, common in netbooks, and integrated graphics. It only comes with 2 gigabytes of memory, and the base $1,299 model has a very small 64-gigabyte solid-state drive for storage. You can double the storage on the $1,499 model I tested.

The Sony (SNE) is gorgeous, and its lightness amazed everyone to whom I showed it. It handled all the common tasks I threw at it, including some HD video from YouTube, which played fine. But it also has a cramped keyboard, plus a tiny touch pad.

In addition to Wi-Fi, the Sony also includes a 3G cellular modem from Verizon, which I tested and which worked well. If you opt to use it, you have to pay Verizon, with monthly contracts starting at $40 and no-contract usage at $15 a day or $30 a week. All these plans have usage caps.

The Achilles’ heel of the Sony is battery life. Its petite built-in battery got a miserable one hour and 48 minutes in my test, which might mean 2.5 hours in normal use. Sony does include an expanded battery with the unit, which got an impressive eight hours and 11 minutes in my test, or perhaps as much as 10 in typical use. But this battery is huge. It covers the entire bottom of the machine and must be affixed with screws. The battery roughly triples the computer’s thickness and brings its weight to nearly three pounds.

These two creative designs show that, despite the coming wave of tablets, the laptop is still a platform for innovation.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free of charge, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

New Dell Laptop Exceeds Military Specs for Durability, Ugliness

John Paczkowski — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 22:35:12 +0000

It can survive a three-foot drop and withstand water sprayed from a fire hose. It’s sea fog-resistant. It meets military specifications for thermal shock and explosive environments. And if you hit someone with it hard enough, you’d probably kill him. What is it?

A Dell laptop, believe it or not. The Latitude E6400 XFR is Dell’s (DELL) first true entrant into the so-called “rugged” laptop category, and its an impressive one. Targeted at the military and first-responder market, the machine is encased in a chassis made of ballistic armor–one Dell claims has twice the impact strength of magnesium alloy. It’s powered by Intel’s (INTC) Core 2 Duo processor, runs Windows Vista and supports Wi-Fi, 3G mobile broadband and GPS. Perfect for military contractors, and more importantly, for the state and local governments currently lining up for billions of dollars in stimulus money. Said Dell spokesman Patrick Burns, “With the stimulus package under way, we’re getting lots of interest.” I’ll bet you are, because at $4,299, you’ll need a stimulus package to afford it.

Macworld '09: 17-inch MacBook Pro With 8-Hour Battery

John Paczkowski — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 18:14:07 +0000

Next up, the new and expected 17-inch MacBook Pro. Before introducing it, Phil Schiller notes that the MacBook has been the No. 1 notebook computer in the states.

The new machine is largely as predicted. It boasts Apple’s new unibody chassis and a glass touch trackpad. At 6.6 pounds, it’s the world’s lightest notebook. It has a hi-res backlit display. “The best display we’ve ever shipped in a notebook,” says Schiller, with a 60 percent greater color gamut than other machines.

The new Pro has the same glossy screen as its brethren, but thankfully, it’s available with a $50 anti-glare option as well.

Finally, it incorporates a new battery pack that boasts an eight-hour charge life and 1000 recharges, three times the industry standard. It’s not the zinc battery that some observers were expecting, but very innovative nonetheless. There’s a chip in the battery that intelligently monitors an “adaptive charge,” whatever that means. Bottom line: three hours more battery life than previous machines. According to Apple (AAPL), the battery should last five years, which will result in fewer batteries and landfills and makes this 17-inch model a greener machine.

The new Pro 17-inch MacBook starts at $2799 and will ship at the end of the month.

MacWorld 2009 Keynote Photos: 17-inch MacBook Pro

View photos at SmugMug

Apple Notebook Event: The Unibody Enclosure

John Paczkowski — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 17:30:09 +0000

Steve Jobs invites Jon Ives, senior vice president for industrial design, to the stage to explain the evolution of Apple’s design and manufacturing process. Looks like the “brick” manufacturing process could be true. …

Ives describes how excess aluminum left over from the original piece used in manufacturing is recycled throughout the process. The precision aluminum unibody enclosure that Apple used in the MacBook Air, he notes, is now being extended to the rest of the Mac notebook lineup.

Jobs returns to the stage. He explains that chipmaker Nvidia approached Apple (AAPL) about a new graphics chip that could be used in desktops. Apple decided to adopt it for laptops, however. The chip, called GForce 9400M, delivers graphics up to five times faster than Apple’s current graphics chips.

New notebooks will boast a multi-touch glass trackpad. The entire trackpad is the button.

The trackpad supports multifinger gestures, including some new ones. Four-finger gestures can control AMD app-switching.

A full-glass instant-on LED displays all connectors on one side. The notebooks feature next-gen graphics, mini-display port connector and a magnetic latch.

And they’re environmentally responsible. The unibody design, for example, requires only half the number of parts of Apple’s previous notebooks.

Jobs passes a chassis around the audience, and it is, indeed, very slick. “A tour de force of engineering,” says Jobs. Holding one of these in your hands, it’s tough to disagree.

More coming …