The World Of The Ultrathin Laptop

The ultrabook or the ultrathin laptop - an Apple invention that's been nothing but a welcome breath of fresh air to anyone who hates lugging around a 9 pound laptop, right? Well, Intel certainly agrees that it's a welcome introduction. For the claim that the ultrathin laptop was their idea. They say they had lots of rounds of research and identified the ultrathin laptop as a direction to take in the future. Long before Apple over came out with the MacBook Air.

Well, whatever you are comfortable believing in, the truth is that the concept of a very light laptop that you can pick up with two or three fingers is a wonderful one.

If this idea did originate with Apple, you have to give them credit for really understanding  the concept of smallness and lightness really well.

What is it really that an iPad can do? It's far less powerful than even a netbook. And multitouch notwithstanding, it's not the most user-friendly way to use a computer to not have a keyboard at all.

But Apple knew that when you have a sliver of computing device in your hand, you can find all kinds of uses for it. And they were right.

Whoever came up with the idea first, computer manufacturers who make Windows laptops aren't far behind. They have lots of ultrathin laptop models on the market too. Sometimes, they are more expensive than the MacBook Air (that sells for $999), and sometimes they're not.

But they all have two things in common - they are no more than 3 pounds of heft, and they all try to conserve battery power and to give you a speed bump by using solid-state drives instead of regular hard drives.

In general, models by Dell, Lenovo, Toshiba, Samsung and HP - all the great Windows laptop makers - try to run with a few other common philosophies in ultrathin laptop design. They don't have DVD drives of course, but they also do their best to cut out as many external connectors as possible.

This can be a very annoying thing - not being able to connect to anything. But at least, all these Windows ultrathin laptop models are better than the MacBook Air in this department. The MacBook Air comes with exactly 2 USB ports, a Thunderbolt port, and a card reader slot. That's it.

You probably wondering - a stripped down laptop - is that what an ultrathin laptop is? If so, how is that any different from a cheap netbook?

That's not a fair comparison at all, actually. Most ultrathin laptop models come with a Core i5 processor. Many come with i7. A netbook on the other hand, is powered with an Intel Atom processor. That's like an ancient Pentium 4.

If you're on the market for one of these, look at the Toshiba Portégé Z835 at $900. Now there's a bargain. HP's Folio, also at $900, is an astonishing bargain. And it comes with seven hours on the battery.