looking for a small & powerful laptop

Hi all

I'm interested in getting a small but powerful laptop that I could use 6+ hours without charging. Netbooks are out: I need something with a faster processor. Built-in DVD drive is not necessary.

This Acer Travelmate seems to fit the bill pretty well but I'd rather have a SSD.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834115682

Also, something that could play starcraft 2 would be a bonus but not necessary.

Any suggestions?

anything in the 13.3-14" range should fit the bill. if you want to game make sure it has an ati or nvidia discrete card in it. I like to suggest ThinkPads because they've had the best track record with me. Looks like most are only going to give you 5hrs max battery time, and of course as you get more powerful, you'll use more battery.

Thinkpad Edge possibly? edit: just saw there is one with an 8hr battery.

fiji said:

Hi all

I'm interested in getting a small but powerful laptop that I could use 6+ hours without charging. Netbooks are out: I need something with a faster processor. Built-in DVD drive is not necessary.

This Acer Travelmate seems to fit the bill pretty well but I'd rather have a SSD.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834115682

Also, something that could play starcraft 2 would be a bonus but not necessary.

Any suggestions?

Click to expand...

Check your local bestbuy, and see if they carry the Alienware M11x... that thing gets 6+ hours battery life with the CPU oc'd while running on integrated gfx, and I personally (before I had to ship it back to dell cause they wouldnt fix my order) gamed for over an hour and a half, on battery power, while I was waiting for my car at a Mazda dealer. It had over 60% battery left after that too

Honestly, if it wasnt for the order snafu from Dell, I would still have it. after 2 botched replacement orders, I demanded a full refund. The BestBuy M11x runs 899.00, comes with the SU7300 C2D, 4 gigs of ram, and a 7200 rpm 250G HDD, only down side is no bluetooth, but thats what the MX-Anywhere is for

I have a Dell Inspiron 11z. The battery gets 6 hours easy under Ubuntu, so it should be more with Windows 7. Mine has a dual core ULV Pentium SU4100 1.3GHz/2MB cache/800FSB. I got mine for a tad over $500 with 2GB of memory and Bluetooth. I added my own SSD (A-data 32GB) and it runs pretty damn good. The negative reviews are mostly about the touchpad. The good news is the touchpad has been revised, and its much better than the one it originally came with. The unit itself is a little bigger than a netbook (11.6" 1366x768), but with much more power. Its very light and easy to take on the road. Being that Im at my girlfriends half of the week, its pretty nice having such a mobile system with a reasonable amount of power. The chipset is an ICH10 with an Intel X4500HD GPU.

I just purchased the Asus UL30VT-A1 and it is amazing! I have it underclocked right now at 1.06 Ghz and it blows my stupid old 1.6Ghz atom out of the water with its C2D proc. So far I've gotten 10 hours out of it just writing and surfing the net on power saver settings but I've only been through one charge cycle. Everything about it is amazing though. It's a 13.3" at just under 4 lbs. This particular model has dual graphics cards so you can use onboard Intel for power saving or switch to an Nvidia 210m for gaming. It handles SC2 beta, MW2, Portal, HoN, plenty fine for my standards. Not maxed but playable. I feel like writing a full review of this laptop as I'm blown away by it, I'll let you know if I do.

Edit: I see the laptop you mentioned is in a similar category to mine (ie. CULV). If you want something light with good power savings then the C2D CULV's are the way to go. There are some i3/i5/i7 models coming but they're bigger power hogs and they're heavier machines. I couldn't find anyone else but Asus doing what they're doing right now in the C2D CULV line. That is, an under/overclockable CPU (1.06Ghz to 1.73Ghz) which dual graphics cards. It's a really versatile machine and I haven't seen anything else out there like it.