Skinny laptops

[t1grm]

Time to renew my laptop. This time I fancy one of those ultra portable 20 mm thin jobbies. These seemed to be all the rage a year or so ago but now no one seems to do them. I can only find the Dell Latitude X300 at around the 20 mm mark. The Toshiba Portege and Sony Vaio – previously bastions of the ultra slim laptop - are both over the 30 mm mark for the smallest models now and the slimmest HP’s and IBM ThinkPad’s are sumo wrestlers by comparison. Compaq and Digital also used to do a nice slim line but they’ve been swallowed up by HP

So what gives? Am I missing something? Did they all turn out be too fragile and temperamental? The rough spec I’m after is as follows:

60 GB HDD
512 RAM
Processor anything above 1 GHz
Combined DVD & CD-RW – can be external
Internal (or in an available expansion slot) Ethernet, modem, IR, blue tooth and wi-fi
20 mm or close thick/thin

It’s a business PC so sound and mega graphics are not top of the list. RAM is more important than processor speed because I run a lot of thin client apps (Oracle E-Business suite for ex.). Budget is around 2K GBP ex VAT. I prefer established brand names. At the moment the Dell is the only one I can find that fits the spec.

http://commerce.euro.dell.com/dellstore/config/frameset.asp?c=605&n=3715&b=50306&m=gbp&cu=ukbsd&l=en&s=ukbsd&store=ukbsd&sbc=ukbsdlatit&v=d

Any ideas?

[jay-aim]

Stick with Dell and update your RAM to 1GB

[TUS 373]

I'm using a Samsung X05, plus there are higher models X10, X15 available - all Centrino with onboard WiFi. All very thin, think mine is 27mm thin/thick. Any thinner and I think it may snap!

Very pleased with mine: 1.4 Ghz Centrino (equivalent to something like a 2.4 Pentium 4), 512 Mb, DVD with CD-RW, 30 Gb HDD - but can get bigger. Battery life is 4-4.5 hours and all machines are very light. All models are silver and stylish, higher models come with finger print recognition for security. Maybe worth a look for you?

[Andy M]

www.apple.com/uk/powerbook/index15.html

Before you rebuff the idea, at least try one! (a tenner you'll buy one if you do! )

[t1grm]

Bryan

Never thought of Samsung. I'll give them a look.

Andy

Much as I would like to try a Mac I'm a contractor and have to be able turn up on site, plug my laptop into the client's LAN and use their applications. These are always MS windows sites. I know for a fact that the java applet that runs Oracle E-Business Suite won't run on a Mac and since I'm an Oracle Apps consultant that limits me somewhat


>> Edited by t1grm on Monday 5th April 09:39

[stuuu]

I'm using a Tosh Portege R100, 1cm thick (thicker when 2nd battery is installed), weighs 1.1kg and the battery lasts for 5 hours easy.

Cost me £2038+Vat, came with 1.25GB RAM, Bluetooth card, extra power supply and 3 years on site support.

You looked at the new StinkPad X31???