Ultralight Laptops

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-08-20 08:52pm

How much does a laptop these days cost that is

2 lbs with the battery or lighter
6.5 hours of battery life
Preferably from HP or IBM, but I will take any reputable company with good customer service.

I am not buying, just wondering for a friend, and wondering where I can do my own research and look for these kinds of laptops for the future. The specifications do not matter as long as there's wireless Internet and it runs Windows.

I am guessing I'm looking at $2500+, but if there's such computers out there that sacrifice system specifications for portability that would be perfect (as long as it matches the first two criteria) that are far cheaper around the $1000 - 1500 price range.

Brian

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-08-20 08:55pm

Less than a kilogram? You're fucking nuts.

InnocentBystander · Post by **InnocentBystander** » 2006-08-20 08:55pm

2 pounds isn't an ultra-light laptop it's a tablet or pocket PC. Even the Lenovo/IBMs ultra-light are 3pounds.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-08-20 08:57pm

Okay, well I have an HP NC4000 and it's 3.5 lbs. I assumed technology had gotten better the past three or four years but I guess not.

What about 3 lbs laptops?

<edit>I looked up prices just now and it looks around 2k USD. A little steep but I got my 3.5 lbs computer for 1.5k CDN two years ago (it's a three or four year old computer) and though it's system specs are a little shit, it does everything I need. I am obviously looking for a lower end ultralight, as cheap as possible, while still being light and having a very long battery life. Suggestions welcome, flames, whatever.</edit>

Brian

InnocentBystander · Post by **InnocentBystander** » 2006-08-20 09:00pm

http://www.pc.ibm.com/us/notebooks/thin ... index.html
$1500 and up

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-08-20 09:02pm

Like IB says, the Thinkpad ... er, T42. The Dell also has (had) a very light (1.2kgs) laptop last year, the X1. However, the smallest I can find now are the XPS at 2 kilos. Asus has nice iBook-alike small laptops too.

The Asus w5f and w7 series.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-08-20 09:06pm

Okay thanks IB and Stark, I have a starting point now.

Now to save enough quarters for that.

Brian

InnocentBystander · Post by **InnocentBystander** » 2006-08-20 09:21pm

Didn't apple make a 3 pound laptop?

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2006-08-20 09:28pm

brianeyci wrote:Okay, well I have an HP NC4000 and it's 3.5 lbs. I assumed technology had gotten better the past three or four years but I guess not.

There are physical limits to how light you can build a laptop without dipping into "pocket PC/overgrown PDA" territory. The display will weigh a certain amount because there's so much material in it. The hard drive is a significant weight, and nothing short of solid-state hard drives will cut that down; solid platters will do that to you. Another component which will be heavy no matter what is the big honkin' battery. Another thing to consider is the frame; too light and the laptop becomes flimsy, even brittle.

Technology has certainly become better over the past four years; development has simply been focused on higher performance rather than on making sub-kilogram laptops. At some point the expense and performance penalties of miniaturization begin to exceed what most people are willing to sacrifice for additional portability.

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2006-08-20 09:35pm

If you're really hell-bent on a super-light laptop, Toshiba made a computer called the Libretto, which has a tiny 7.2" display. It's probably the lightest "laptop" you're ever going to find, and even then it still weighs in at just under a full kilogram.

Libretto U100 review

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-08-20 09:41pm

Uraniun235 wrote:If you're really hell-bent on a super-light laptop, Toshiba made a computer called the Libretto, which has a tiny 7.2" display. It's probably the lightest "laptop" you're ever going to find, and even then it still weighs in at just under a full kilogram.

Libretto U100 review

My laptop already does everything I need. I was mainly wondering what kind of laptops are out there right now and whether I could sell my current laptop for say five hundred bucks and shell out a grand for something a few pounds cheaper, faster and with a longer battery life than this piece of crap 3 hours (preferably 6.5 hours). But 2k USD is still a little steep. I guess I'll have to wait until I graduate and rake in the dough to fulfill my dream of a laptop I can hold with my pinky fingers. And yes I am hell bent

.

Anyway I think I'll just run this computer into the ground, which since it's HP will take a decade lol. Then I'll buy 1.5 pound computer in 2015 with a 10 hour battery life. The 4-5 hour battery life for most laptops really irks me, it really does, and I have no idea how someone who's portable all the time can stand it.

Brian

Praxis · Post by **Praxis** » 2006-08-20 10:13pm

InnocentBystander wrote:Didn't apple make a 3 pound laptop?

I think the 12" PowerBook was 3 point something, but they no longer sell that model.

Dell makes a 3 pound Latitude, as their smallest model.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2006-08-20 10:32pm

The Fujitsu Lifebook Q2010 is only 2.2lb but you'll get less than two hours battery life out of that. You'll probably want a ThinkPad X-series with one of the battery options (but that'll increase the weight)

RThurmont · Post by **RThurmont** » 2006-08-20 10:41pm

The ThinkPad X41T tablet is 3.5 lbs, so that's probably also not light enough. I suggest the small Fujitsu tablet if you want the ultimate in portability, or maybe one of the 8" or 10" Motion Computing slates.

Edit: You could also go for a $399 Palm LifeDrive, which is sort of a laptop-replacement PDA-get one with a wireless or bluetooth keyboard, and you'll have a reasonably versatile device to complement a less mobile laptop or a full desktop. Hurry though, as the rumor mill (and CNET's Alpha blog) has it that the LifeDrive is not long for this world.

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2006-08-20 11:18pm

brianeyci wrote:Anyway I think I'll just run this computer into the ground, which since it's HP will take a decade lol. Then I'll buy 1.5 pound computer in 2015 with a 10 hour battery life. The 4-5 hour battery life for most laptops really irks me, it really does, and I have no idea how someone who's portable all the time can stand it.

I'm pretty sure that's why some people buy a second battery; I think some laptops support having two batteries installed, while others you just wind up swapping them out after a certain amount of time.

People who are constantly on the go most likely carry power adapters with them; either AC adapters when they're in an office, or car adapters for when they're on the road. I'm pretty sure the vast majority of laptop users wouldn't be actively using their laptop for more than a few hours straight without at least some access to external power during the day, even if their batteries supported ten hours of operation. The only situation I can think of that has a laptop being used for hours on end without access to external power is someone who's out camping - out of curiosity what are you doing that necessitates such extremely long battery life?

Another problem to consider is that below a certain size, keyboards become somewhat impractical to use; I used one of the old Pentium-166 Librettos at work once, and it was damn hard to type on the thing. I wouldn't want to post on web forums on it, let alone write out letters, and a term paper or business report would be completely out of the question. Yeah, you can get an external keyboard, but then you're just jacking up both the weight you're carrying around and the surface area you're taking up when you set the thing down to use it, and you're getting a really tiny screen to boot.

But the other problem, as I mentioned earlier, is that above a certain size you're running into the frame contributing a significant amount of mass, and you can only cut that down so far before you start making the laptop fragile and flimsy... which is more or less the precise opposite of what most people want out of a laptop they're taking all over the place.

Is there a particular reason you want an extremely-light laptop?

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-08-20 11:32pm

Uraniun235 wrote:Is there a particular reason you want an extremely-light laptop?

I already have a 3.5 lbs laptop. I was just wondering how much better it could get if I was willing to sell this one (a 3-4 year old model) for a bit and shell out another thousand bucks for a new one. I was expecting Star Trekish datapads and now you have to ruin my day

.

As for extremely long battery life, the 10 hours was facetious, but just barely. I just find it annoying to carry an AC adapter around and be limited at all. I want to charge, go on campus, type all day wherever I want, and come home and recharge. Three hours is too short.

Anyway thanks for all the suggestions. I will stick with what I have now, since it hasn't gotten any better. Or more accurately, I see that getting anything now will add no more new capability than what I already have, a 3.5 lbs laptop with an AC adapter.

Brian

P.S. As for the reason, if you really want to know, I'm a 124 pound weakling and every single pound makes a difference to me. In high school I rolled a backpack around with wheels and right now I'm renting a locker on campus. If I could shave a pound off my laptop and not carry my AC adapter, it'd be a big burden off of me. It's hard to get... unless you're me. It may be that I'm obsessed with it, but oh well some people are obsessed about penis compensation but I'm the other way around. Now you computer engineers, electrical engineers and engineering science majors, start designing a fucking laptop that's 1.5 lbs!

Master of Ossus · Post by **Master of Ossus** » 2006-08-20 11:50pm

Sony, Toshiba, and IBM/Lenovo are generally the manufacturers that would make good ultralights, since they're by far the most business-oriented of the various computer manufacturers.

InnocentBystander · Post by **InnocentBystander** » 2006-08-21 12:23am

There are, actually, Star trek style tablet PCs, some of them are even under 3 pounds (usually around 2.2lbs; examples that I've seen include the Motion LS800 and NEC's Versa LightPad, both of which won't go past 3hours on one battery anyway), but I don't think anything exists yet which is around 2 pounds, gets 6-8 hours of battery life, and is a functional computer. If it does, I suspect it would have a pretty high price.

However, some of newer, 3.5ish pound tablets do have a life in the 4-6 hour battery range under light load. They're expensive however, I've seen people using them at the NYMEX, however those guys could be plunking down 5 grand and wouldn't bat an eye.

Ypoknons · Post by **Ypoknons** » 2006-08-21 12:54am

The 2.76ibs Sony Vaio TX exsists for $2100, but it's hard on the eyes - resolution crams a lot of dots onto a small screen. The weight hasn't really fallen - I guess there's a engineering limit - but performance has gotten better.

Darth Sephiroth · Post by **Darth Sephiroth** » 2006-08-21 01:18am

One thing with Ultralights is that they are even more expensive to repair or upgrade if you eventually need to

Praxis · Post by **Praxis** » 2006-08-21 01:59am

InnocentBystander wrote:There are, actually, Star trek style tablet PCs, some of them are even under 3 pounds (usually around 2.2lbs; examples that I've seen include the Motion LS800 and NEC's Versa LightPad, both of which won't go past 3hours on one battery anyway), but I don't think anything exists yet which is around 2 pounds, gets 6-8 hours of battery life, and is a functional computer. If it does, I suspect it would have a pretty high price.

However, some of newer, 3.5ish pound tablets do have a life in the 4-6 hour battery range under light load. They're expensive however, I've seen people using them at the NYMEX, however those guys could be plunking down 5 grand and wouldn't bat an eye.

I'd imagine you could get it down pretty dang small...an LCD with a low-power processor, smallest RAM possible, solid-state hard drive, a tiny screen, no disk drive...the battery would probably be the bulkiest part.

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2006-08-21 02:22am

RAM wouldn't be as big a deal. You're right about the battery, though.

I think the biggest obstacle is the fact that you'd have to sacrifice a lot of performance for something that wouldn't be very popular and would likely be even more expensive than conventional laptops. People tend to like larger screens (easier to see things, more desktop real estate) and comfortable keyboards.

Max · Post by **Max** » 2006-08-21 09:16am

I have a Toshiba Portege, I'd recommend that.

Lisa · Post by **Lisa** » 2006-08-21 11:15am

Tandy Model 100

it's small, light and the battery life is insane (8 hours) compared to batteries on regular laptops.

I'm joking of course, but that's what my late partner used when she went through college, everyone else had 286s and 386s they lugged around....

Even the eMate 300 (An Apple Newton with a keboard)which is all solid state is 5 pounds, which is still significantly lighter then most other laptops. It's comparable to some WinCE devices out there. A newton with a keyboard weighs less then the 2 pounds but that would be a pain to use.

I don't believe you're going to get what you want at the price you'd like with out switching to some sort of PDA platform in a laptop format, and even then those are scarce. IBM had one called the IBM WORKPAD Z50 but it's been long discontinued and uses an older version of WinCE.

Mobius · Post by **Mobius** » 2006-08-21 12:45pm

I think that a laptop that could fufill your desire is the Panasonic thoughbook Let's Note R5 with his 999grams and his 11h life battery (but you must add a (pricey) separate optical drive unit)

edit: typo