Ultraportable Laptop Buying Guide
May 28, 2009 at 01:05:42 PM, by Jesper Berg
To qualify as an ultraportable the laptop should weigh no more than 4 pounds, and have a screen measuring 13 inches or less.
As opposed to netbooks, ultraportable laptops are built on conventional (but less power-hungry) parts instead of the lower-end, slower parts used for netbooks. In other words, ultraportables are much more expensive than netbooks, but also far more capable.
To minimize the power draw and maximize battery life – which is really the most important aspect of an ultraportable – the manufacturers use low-voltage components such as the ULV (ultra low voltage) series of processors from Intel. Recent Core 2 Duo ULV processors have a TDP (Thermal Design Power) of 10 watts, compared to mainstream Core 2 Duo’s which have a TDP of 25 or 35 watts. ULV processors also have a reduced clock speed compared to mainstream CPUs, but are still more than capable of running a full-featured OS and office apps.
An ultraportable is obviously the ultimate laptop for anyone who spends a lot of time on the road, giving you excellent performance in a tiny form factor. One of the drawbacks is, as previously mentioned, a rather hefty price tag. Because of the limited space, the number of ports may be reduced and ultraportables often come without an optical drive.
Some examples of ultraportable laptops from different brands: Apple MacBok Air, Toshiba Portege, Lenovo ThinkPad X, Sony Vaio TT, Asus U, and Dell Latitude E4200. All of these laptops are equipped with low-voltage processors and sometimes physically smaller hard drives (1.8”) or SSDs.
Recommended Minimum Specifications:
- CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo ULV 1.2GHz-1.4GHz
- Memory: 2GB RAM
- Hard Drive: 64GB-128GB SSD
- Screen Size: 13.3” or smaller
- Operating System: Mac OS X, Windows 7, XP or Linux
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