Personal Technology » MacBook Air

Dell Aims for Style With New Laptop and Family Model

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 01:02:03 +0000

Dell is bound and determined to show that it can be a bigger player in the consumer market. The company also is trying to shake its reputation for stodgy design.

I’ve been testing two new Dells that aim to prove both points. One is a pricey, style-conscious, ultrathin laptop; the other is an economical all-in-one desktop with an optional touch screen that lets you flick through pictures, music and video, and perform other tasks, with just your fingers.

[ See post to watch video ]

Both computers, the Adamo laptop and the Studio One 19 desktop, are attractive and functional. But neither is ground-breaking. The laptop is a belated competitor to superthin, high-end machines like Apple’s (AAPL) MacBook Air and Lenovo’s ThinkPad X300 series. The desktop is a belated competitor to Hewlett-Packard’s (HPQ) TouchSmart touch-screen series.

Before getting into the physical attributes of these computers, a major caveat is in order: Both run Microsoft’s (MSFT) sluggish, annoying Windows Vista operating system. That puts them at a disadvantage to computers using the faster Microsoft Windows XP, or Apple’s superior Leopard operating system.

The Studio One is handsome — bordered with cloth, wrap-around trim in red, blue, white or other colors. And its optional touch screen is a sexy feature, complemented by special Dell touch software called the Touch Zone. Perhaps its most striking attribute is price. You can get one for as little as $699, far below the $1,200 base price of the H-P TouchSmart.

However, there’s a catch to this low price. The $699 base model lacks the touch screen. That costs $100 extra. Also, all of the Studio One 19 models — even those configured to cost more than $1,000 — have a relatively small screen: just 18.5 inches. The base model of the H-P has a 22-inch screen.

Dell (DELL) says it deliberately made the Studio One smaller so it would fit on a kitchen counter, where family members can walk up to it and use it as a kiosk for viewing photos, surfing the Web and performing other tasks. It even comes with a family calendar program, called Cozi; a touch-based notepad feature for leaving messages; and an appealing finger-painting program for kids.

In my tests, all worked pretty well, and the touch features also work in regular Windows programs, not just in the Touch Zone. The only downside of this latter capability is that, to make touch control easier, Dell has blown up the text and graphics in Vista, with the unfortunate side effect of making some program icons look jagged and fuzzy. (You can turn this effect off.)

As for the kitchen scenario, I have my doubts. In my kitchen, the Studio One took up precious counter space — it’s as wide as my microwave — and the wired keyboard and mouse on the cheaper models clutter up the counter.

On the other hand, there’s nothing cluttered about Dell’s new Adamo laptop. Like the MacBook Air, the Adamo uses a solid metal case and a sealed battery, and it simultaneously projects sleekness and solidity. It’s gorgeous, in both its black and white versions, and feels great in the hand. If the label was hidden, you’d think it was from Sony (SNE) or Apple, not Dell.

Like the Air and the ThinkPad 300 series, the Adamo uses a screen that’s about 13 inches, with good resolution. And, like its two competitors, it’s very thin. In fact, the Adamo is thinner than the tapered Air at the latter’s thickest point. The Adamo also has a far better selection of built-in ports than its Apple rival, though almost all are inconveniently placed in a protruding strip at the back of the machine.

Also, like the Air, the Adamo has touch features built into its trackpad. It has a built-in solid-state drive, like the Apple and the Lenovo. Such drives are faster and use less power than regular hard disks, but cost more. Also like the Air, it lacks a DVD drive.

Dell’s Studio One 19 desktop

In my tests, the Adamo performed fine, and drew admiring glances wherever I took it. But the Adamo has three big flaws.

First, it’s expensive for these economic times — $2,000 with a 128-gigabyte drive and two gigabytes of memory. The Air can be bought for $1,800, with a slightly smaller regular hard disk. With the same size solid-state drive as the Adamo, the Air is $500 more.

Second, for all its thinness, the Adamo is relatively heavy. It weighs four pounds, versus three pounds for the Air.

Finally, it has mediocre battery life. In my tough battery test, where I turn off all power-saving features, leave on Wi-Fi, and play an endless loop of music, the Adamo got just 2 hours and 44 minutes, which likely translates in normal use to maybe 3.5 hours. By contrast, the Air lasted 40 minutes longer in the same test, and the Lenovo beat the Dell by 21 minutes.

With these machines, Dell is making a strong bid to win back consumers’ hearts. It’s off to a decent start.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

Netbooks Come Into Their Own

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 02:10:04 +0000

Somewhere between the laptop and the smart phone, the computer industry has long believed there could be a small, low-cost device that would please consumers and sell well.

The device would be more versatile than, say, an iPhone, but much cheaper and more portable than, say, a ThinkPad. The trouble is, every attempt to create such a category of computer has met with failure — until now.

This year, that in-between type of computer now called a “netbook” has finally caught on. Since I reviewed a pioneering model, the 7-inch, $300 Asus Eee PC back in January, the market has been flooded with new and better, if somewhat more expensive, netbook models. Nearly every company — from big names such as Dell and Hewlett-Packard, to obscure ones like MSI — has jumped into the fray.

[ See post to watch video ]

Netbooks still constitute a smaller niche than laptops and the exploding smart phone, or hand-held computer, category. But they are threatening to break into the mainstream in a big way, especially in an economic climate where a low price and fewer bells and whistles are suddenly more attractive.

They are much more portable than most standard laptops. They are easier to use on a plane or carry around town. And they are way cheaper, between $300 and $500, than the very lightest, thinnest standard laptops, which often top $1,000.

Compared with even an amazingly powerful pocket device, like the iPhone, the Google (GOOG) G1, or the forthcoming BlackBerry Storm, a netbook, at about twice the price, offers a much larger keyboard and screen. And they can run far more sophisticated software and perform a much wider variety of computing tasks.

But netbooks come with serious compromises. While they are great for light use on the go, their cramped screens and keyboards, and slow processors, make them much less potent and less comfortable to use than even a so-called ultraportable laptop. And, as small as they are, they can’t fit in a pocket like smart phones can, be as easily used as a still camera, or function as a cellphone.

Netbooks aren’t tablets. They look and act like regular clamshell-style laptops with keyboards and track pads, but are much smaller. Most current models have 8.9-inch screens, though some now sport 10-inch displays. Dell (DELL) is even planning soon to launch a netbook with a 12-inch screen for around $600, which will blur the line with traditional laptops, some of which can be bought for less with larger displays.

Compared with sleek, thin, but much costlier notebooks, such as the Apple (AAPL) MacBook Air or the Lenovo ThinkPad X300, the netbooks of today are stubbier and chunkier. But they take up much less room on an airline tray table. When the person in front of you reclines, you can happily keep using them, because their screens are so much smaller and extend upward so much less.

The early netbook models relied on the unfamiliar and somewhat geeky Linux operating system, and most still offer it as an option. But many now also can be purchased with Windows XP, with which consumers are far more experienced, and which can run many more well-known programs.

At the start of this year, most netbooks lacked hard disks, instead offering very limited storage via memory chips — often less storage than a $199 iPhone. They were pitched as limited devices mainly meant for using the Internet — thus the name “netbook” — and their makers assumed users mainly would use Web-based applications.

Now, many offer decent-size hard disks and include serious programs, such as Microsoft (MSFT) Office or Microsoft Works. But none offers a built-in DVD drive, which makes it hard to install some new software.

To offer readers a feel for today’s netbooks, I selected four representative models to test and review. I am not declaring these four as the best on the market, nor do I mean to slight makers like H-P, whose entries aren’t included in this review. The truth is, there are far more similarities than differences among competing netbooks that might make one model stand out from the others.

All four of the models I tested use Intel’s new low-power Atom processor. All have decent screen resolution — much better than the original Asus. But none can display a full Web page, or even most of a Web page, without scrolling. Each has three USB ports.

Three of the four have good battery life, but getting good power in most models means using a larger battery that adds weight and bulk.

All of my test models ran XP, not Linux, because I believe that’s the better choice for average consumers.

Here are minireviews of these four netbooks.

Acer Aspire One: The $349 blue Acer One weighs a little over two pounds with its standard battery, and has a bright, sharp 8.9-inch screen. It comes with a 120-gigabyte hard disk and 1 gigabyte of memory. It’s a little over an inch thick, and its footprint is much smaller than that of a standard sheet of paper.

As on all the other models, I tried a word processor, either Microsoft Word or Works, and several popular non-Microsoft programs: Adobe Reader, Apple’s iTunes and Mozilla’s Firefox browser. The Acer handled all of them well, though, as with all the other netbooks I tried, its speakers are mediocre.

The Acer’s small keyboard is very nicely done. Its keys are large enough, and separated and sculpted enough, to make typing comfortable and accurate, though I wouldn’t want to write a novel on it.

But the Acer has two big drawbacks. Its battery life is miserable. On my tough battery test, where I turn off all power-saving features, crank up the screen brightness, turn on the Wi-Fi, and play a continuous loop of music, it couldn’t even squeeze out two hours. In normal use, that might mean 2½ hours. To fix that problem, you can spend $50 more on a version with a double-size battery, at the cost of added weight and bulk. This costlier version also boosts the hard disk to 160 gigabytes.

The other problem, which can’t be fixed with any factory options, is that the Acer One has a terrible track pad. It’s too cramped vertically for comfortable use, and the buttons, which are mere slivers, are arranged on the sides instead of below the pad. Moving the cursor or selecting text is awkward and inaccurate.

Lesser problems are that the Acer includes only the older, slower, “G” flavor of Wi-Fi and a low-resolution Webcam.

The Dell Mini 9 has an 8.9-inch screen, is compact and has a big battery, but it lacks a hard disk and offers just 8 gigabytes of flash memory.

Dell Mini 9: Like the less costly Acer, the $399 Dell Mini has an 8.9-inch screen, but it’s a bit narrower horizontally. Its standard battery is larger, making it slightly heavier but still very light.

The Dell is a throwback to the older concept of netbooks. It lacks a hard disk and offers just 8 gigabytes of flash memory, plus 2 gigabytes of free online storage. It has just half a gigabyte of memory. For extra money, you can double the flash storage and memory.

Because of its bigger battery, and its lack of a power-sucking hard disk, the Dell beat the Acer handily in my battery test, getting just under three hours, which means that, in normal use, you would likely see four hours.

The Dell has the same wimpy Wi-Fi and Webcam as the Acer. But its track pad, while small, is much larger vertically and easier to use, with buttons where you expect to find them. It ran all my test software OK.

However, the Dell had by far the worst keyboard in my test group. Because of its compact width, the tab, arrow and other keys are squeezed to a ridiculously narrow size that impedes typing.

MSI Wind U100: This is a $399 machine (after a recent price cut) with a 10-inch screen, and comes from a Taiwan company better known in the U.S. for making computer components than entire computers. The model I tested, with a double-size battery, is $429. My test unit was white, weighed a tad over three pounds, and had 1 gigabyte of memory and a 160-gigabyte hard disk.

Despite the larger screen, the Wind still fits very well on a cramped airline tray, and it has a well-designed keyboard. It comes with a button that can slow down or speed up the processor to save battery life or add oomph. And there’s a function that can magnify portions of text.

It has a standard, decent Webcam and can use the newest “N” flavor of Wi-Fi. It ran all my test software just fine.

With my test model’s bigger battery, which protrudes from the bottom, the Wind did very well on my test at its standard processor speed, lasting three hours and 37 minutes. That suggests you could get four to five hours in normal use. Presumably, the standard model with the smaller battery would get half of that life, though you could stretch it by stepping down the processor speed.

Overall, I liked the MSI Wind a lot. My only real gripe is that the track pad is small and has only a single thin button, which performs a left or right click. This button is too small and sluggish for optimal use.

Asus Eee 1000H: Asus, another Taiwan company known as a component maker, is the king of netbooks. In fact, it has so many different, and frequently changing, netbook models that its product lineup can be a blur. The one I tested has a 10-inch screen and costs $475, making it the costliest netbook in this group. It’s also the heaviest, edging out my test Wind slightly.

Like the Wind, my Eee 1000H had a large battery that protruded from the bottom. It doesn’t come with a smaller battery. Also like the Wind, it has a standard Webcam, the faster “N” Wi-Fi, and a 160-gigabyte hard disk with 1 gigabyte of memory.

The keyboard on the 1000H was the best of this lot, with well-designed keys. It also had the roomiest and most functional track pad, though its buttons — integrated with a metal border around the track pad — took some getting used to.

The Asus, like the Wind, has the capability to tweak the speed of its processor. It also has a button that can change the screen resolution, though I found that the nonstandard resolutions looked distorted.

In my battery test, at its standard processor speed, the 1000H got three hours and 32 minutes, suggesting that in normal use it could deliver between four and five hours — more if you use the lower processor speed.

The Asus handled all my test software well. It comes with a greater variety of built-in programs than the others and offers 20 gigabytes of free online storage.

Bottom line: If you want a machine for light use, a light price and a light weight, a netbook is waiting and is worth a try. Just don’t expect the same experience as on a standard laptop or the convenience of a smart phone.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

Consider Your Needs, Then Use This Guide to Buying a Laptop

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 00:01:00 +0000

For years, I have focused my twice-a-year computer buyer’s guides on desktop PCs, with less-frequent columns focusing on laptops. Now that the latter are outselling the former, though, I am going to center my main buying guides on laptops. Many of the specs I recommend will also apply to desktops.

As always, this is a general guide aimed at mainstream, nontechnical consumers who dwell on common tasks such as email, instant messaging and surfing the Web; managing and lightly editing photos, videos and music; and using basic office applications. It is not intended for heavy gamers, video producers or corporate buyers.

[ See post to watch video ]

There’s a vast variety of laptop models, but this guide is meant to cover the most common types of laptops, those with screens from about 12 inches to 17 inches, and weights ranging from around 2.5 pounds to 7 pounds.

For this column, I’m not including the category of tiny machines now called netbooks, with screens under 10 inches. I am also ignoring the huge, heavy laptops with screens larger than 17 inches that are primarily aimed at gamers.

Even the remaining mainstream machines range wildly in price, from bargain-basement models at $350 to high-end ones that can top $3,000. In my experience, the top brands for technology and reliability are Apple and Lenovo’s ThinkPad line, but various models from Sony, Hewlett-Packard, Toshiba and Dell are also worth investigating.

So, here is a quick guide to the key factors you should consider when buying a laptop.

Size: If you are a constant traveler, think about the subnotebook models, which generally weigh 3 pounds or less. There are two types of these. The classic subnotebook has a small screen, 12 inches or less, and a cramped keyboard. This year, a new type emerged, with a full keyboard and a normal 13.3-inch screen packed into a thin, light body. There are two of these: the MacBook Air from Apple and the Lenovo ThinkPad X300. All subnotebooks are relatively costly, typically ranging from $1,500 to over $3,000.

If your laptop will mostly stay at home, the office, or in class, a 5-7 pound machine with a screen of either 13.3 inches or 15.4 inches is the best bet. A well-equipped model in this class is likely to run you between $800 and $1,200. Typical models in this class are the Dell Inspiron 1525, the HP dv6700 and the Apple MacBook.

Windows vs. Mac: This is the eternal question. In my view, Apple’s Leopard operating system is faster, better and far less prone to malicious software than Microsoft’s Vista operating system. And the Mac laptops also come with better built-in software. The $1,099 MacBook is a solid, fairly priced machine, and the $1,999 MacBook Pro is even better. Both also can run Windows.

But Windows laptops are often less expensive, tend to have a greater variety of ports and slots, and come in more styles and sizes.

Apple’s MacBook

Operating system: If you are buying a Windows laptop, be aware that Vista is slower than Windows XP, in my experience, and still has compatibility issues with add-on hardware and software. If you’d prefer to stick with XP, you will find that many fewer models are available with it. And Microsoft has decreed that after June 30, mainstream, name-brand laptops will no longer come pre-equipped with XP.

Video: I recommend getting an LED-powered screen, which is brighter and saves power. Also, if you are choosing Vista, or if you do a lot of converting video for use on portable devices, consider getting a laptop with a separate video card inside that has its own memory.

Memory: If you’re buying an Apple laptop, two gigabytes of memory is plenty. If you’re using Vista Home Premium, I’d consider three gigabytes for best performance.

Processor: Any dual-core processor will be fine. Don’t pay a penny extra for faster processor speed.

Storage: In a mainstream laptop that will be your main computer, look for a 160-gigabyte hard disk or larger. A new kind of storage, called SSD, or solid state disk, is now available. But it is still way too costly for most users, and at the moment is available only in smaller capacities.

Battery life: Many laptops today rarely spend time away from an electrical outlet. But if yours will, look for a battery life of at least three hours between charges.

Wireless: Make sure your new laptop has the new, faster “N” version of Wi-Fi built in. Many cheaper laptops don’t. You can also get a cellphone modem built in, but they are costly and carry a monthly fee. You can always add an external cellphone modem later.

Other features: A built-in camera and microphone can be quite useful, and so can a feature on some Windows machines that allows you to play music and videos without fully booting up the computer.

Don’t let yourself be swayed by sales pitches, or by fanaticism for or against Windows or the Mac. Think hard about how you use your computer and what your budget will allow, and stick to those priorities.

Email me at mossberg@wsj.com. Find all my columns and videos online, free, at the new All Things Digital Web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

Price May Be Steep, but Thin ThinkPad Has Abundant Features

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 00:01:00 +0000

I am writing these words on a new laptop computer that packs a full-size screen and keyboard into a body that’s quite thin and light. And it has a solid-state drive with no moving parts instead of a hard disk.

But this isn’t the much-touted Apple MacBook Air, introduced last month with all those qualities. Instead, it’s a new ThinkPad from Lenovo, the X300. While the two machines are both impressive products, they are different in key respects.

[ See post to watch video ]

I’ve been testing the ThinkPad X300 and I have found it to be a solid, innovative laptop that will be perfect for many mobile PC users. It isn’t as sexy or inexpensive as the MacBook Air, but it has numerous features the Apple lacks, especially a wide array of ports and connectivity options, a built-in DVD drive and a removable battery.

I can recommend the X300 for road warriors without hesitation, provided they can live with its two biggest downsides: a relatively paltry file-storage capacity and a hefty price tag. This ThinkPad starts at $2,476 for a stripped-down model and at $2,799 for a preconfigured retail version with a half-size battery. The configuration I expect to be the most popular, with a full-size battery and DVD drive, is about $3,000.

The key factor in both of these downsides is the solid-state drive, or SSD, which replaces the hard disk. The SSD is fast and rugged, but today it can hold only a cramped 64 gigabytes of files and is very costly. Apple offers a MacBook Air version with the same solid-state drive for a similar high price. But Apple also has a much more affordable $1,799 model with an 80-gigabyte standard hard disk. Lenovo doesn’t.

Lenovo’s ThinkPad X300

The X300, due to go on sale next week at lenovo.com and at a few retailers, isn’t as thin as the MacBook Air. In fact, at its thinnest point it is almost as thick as the Apple is at its thickest point. And when the new ThinkPad is ordered in what are likely to be its most common configurations, it is heavier than the three-pound Apple and, in fact, fails to make the three-pound cutoff that typically denotes a “subnotebook.” Only one configuration breaks that barrier, at 2.93 pounds, and it is the stripped-down model with just a half-size battery and no DVD drive.

But the X300, which will come with either Windows Vista or Windows XP, is still very thin and light. It’s under an inch thick and even at its heaviest is only 3.5 pounds. Yet, like the Apple, it packs in a widescreen 13.3-inch display and a full-width keyboard.

Plus, Lenovo has used that extra thickness to good advantage. While the MacBook Air’s extreme thinness makes it gorgeous, it left no room for an Ethernet jack, a removable battery, a built-in DVD drive or a cellphone modem. The X300 has all these things, either standard or as options, plus three USB ports, compared with just one for the Apple. The Lenovo even offers GPS location-finding, the ability to connect to new wireless USB devices and future support for a forthcoming wireless network standard called WiMax.

The ThinkPad has another advantage: Even though its screen is the same size as the Apple’s, it is higher resolution, so more material can be seen without scrolling. Some people find that higher-resolution screens make text too small to read easily, but I didn’t experience any such problem on the X300.

In my tests, the X300 performed very well, even though it has a relatively slow processor, slower than the MacBook’s.

But the ThinkPad’s battery life was only fair, and was inferior to the Apple’s. In my tough test, where I turn off all power-saving features, set the screen to maximum brightness, turn on Wi-Fi and run a repeating play list of music, the X300 lasted three hours and five minutes. That was 24 minutes less than the comparable MacBook Air. And this was on the $3,000 configuration with a full-size battery and a DVD drive. The more basic models, with a half-size battery, would last only half as long, according to Lenovo.

MacBook Air

In more normal use, the model I tested would likely last under four hours on a charge, and the base models maybe two, compared with about 4.5 hours for the Mac.

I also tested another version of the ThinkPad, which substitutes a second, half-size battery for the DVD drive. It got five hours and 15 minutes, which means you could likely get 6.5 to seven hours in normal usage. That model costs around $2,850.

There are two more factors worth mentioning. I believe that both the Mac operating system and the software that comes with it are superior to the Windows operating system and built-in software offered on the ThinkPad. And the Mac isn’t susceptible to the vast majority of viruses and spyware, and doesn’t require third-party security software.

Also, the ThinkPad’s screen, when opened, stands significantly higher than the Mac’s, so it is less usable in a coach seat on an airplane when the person in front of you reclines.

If you’re happy with Windows, can afford the price tag, and value the many ports and connectivity options Lenovo has packed in, the thin and rugged X300 is a great choice. It’s a notable engineering accomplishment.

Email me at mossberg@wsj.com. Find all my columns and videos online, free, at the new All Things Digital Web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

Solid-State Drives Challenge Hard Drives in Speed, but Not Value

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 00:01:00 +0000

The hard-disk drive is so common that most computer users take it for granted as a natural part of a personal computer. But now, the hard drive has a challenger for its longtime role as the principal storage device in computers. It’s called the solid-state drive, or SSD, and it has begun to show up in some big-name notebook computers.

Hard-disk drives, or HDDs, are mechanical devices. They work by recording data on a spinning magnetic platter or platters. By contrast, solid-state drives are made of chips and have no moving parts. They are close cousins to the so-called flash memory used in digital cameras, cellphones and smaller-capacity music players. They record data to special memory chips that retain their contents even when the device is turned off.

[ See post to watch video ]

Solid-state drives have some key advantages. Because they lack moving parts, they are faster, draw less power, are harder to damage and are quieter than hard drives. Unfortunately, today’s early versions of SSDs for laptops also have two big drawbacks when compared with hard drives: They offer much lower capacity and have much higher prices.

For instance, on the newly announced Apple MacBook Air ultrathin laptop, the HDD version costs $1,799 and stores 80 gigabytes. The SSD version costs $2,798, but actually stores less — just 64 gigabytes. On the Toshiba Portege R500 subnotebook, the basic hard-drive version costs $1,999 and stores 120 gigabytes. The cheapest SSD version is $2,699 and also stores just 64 gigabytes.

Despite these limitations, I believe SSDs are likely to become more common and more popular as their capacities increase and their prices drop. Samsung, which makes the 64-gigabyte SSDs in both the Apple and the Toshiba, has already announced an SSD with twice the capacity that costs much less per gigabyte of storage.

I’ve been testing the SSD models of the Portege R500 and the MacBook Air to see how they measure up to their HDD counterparts. My verdict is that the SSD does deliver on its promises, but, in some cases, just barely.

For the small slice of users who are deeply and constantly worried about hard-disk failures, it may be worth it to pay a huge premium today for an SSD that stores less. Because SSDs aren’t subject to mechanical failures, your data are probably safer on them. But for mainstream users, my conclusion is that it’s too early to take the plunge on SSDs, and the best strategy is to wait for prices to drop sharply and for capacity to rise.

In my tests, I focused solely on comparing the hard-drive and SSD models of each machine, which I had had already reviewed in earlier columns. On the same computer, I wondered, would the SSD make a significant difference in speed and in battery life?

To measure battery life, I conducted my usual harsh test, where I turn off all power-saving software, set screen brightness to maximum, turn on the Wi-Fi and play an endless loop of music.

In this test, the SSD made little difference in the MacBook Air and, in fairness, Apple is making no claims of any significant battery-life gains on its SSD model. The SSD MacBook gave me just five more minutes of battery life. Apple says this is because its hard-drive model already uses a very low-power drive.

On the Portege R500, my first battery test with the SSD model actually yielded significantly less battery life than the hard-drive model. The reason: Toshiba ships the base SSD model with a battery with only half of the capacity of the hard-drive model.

When I swapped in the normal battery, which costs $117 extra, the SSD model gave me an added 1 hour and 21 minutes of battery life, about a 36% increase. That extra battery life likely would translate to nearly 2½ hours in more normal usage. It may be worth the huge price premium for some folks.

On both computers, the SSD was faster than the HDD models. The SSD version of the Apple booted up from a cold start, and rebooted with several programs running, about 40% faster. But the gain isn’t as impressive as it seems because even the hard-drive versions of the MacBook Air booted up in under a minute and rebooted in just a little over a minute.

On the Toshiba, which was running Windows XP, the SSD model knocked about 40 seconds off a cold boot time on the HDD version of 2 minutes and 7 seconds. On my reboot test, starting with several programs running, the SSD model was 80 seconds faster. I imagine that on laptops with the slow-booting Windows Vista, the improvements might be more meaningful.

I also tested launching Microsoft Word and Excel, and opening a couple of hefty PDF files on both machines. The SSD versions were faster. But in most cases, the gains were just a few seconds or even fractions of a second.

All in all, the SSD is a promising improvement over the hard drive, but now is not the time for most users to buy it.

Email me at mossberg@wsj.com. Find all my columns and videos online, free, at the new All Things Digital Web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

Multitouch Interface Is Starting to Spread Among New Devices

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 00:01:00 +0000

We are now witnessing the emergence of a new user interface for digital devices, including laptop computers, advanced cellphones, wireless portable data gadgets and other types of computing products.

This interface is generally called “multitouch,” and it involves using one or more fingers on a screen or touchpad to perform special gestures that manipulate lists or objects on a screen — without moving a mouse, pressing buttons, turning scroll wheels or striking keys.

[ See post to watch video ]

The best-known example of the interface is on Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch devices. It allows you, for example, to rapidly flip through photos, lists of emails or song titles by merely “flicking” a fingertip on its screen, or to resize a photo by “pinching” the image with two fingers. And, this month, Apple moved some of these multitouch features onto a laptop, its new MacBook Air, where fingertip actions are performed on an oversized touchpad rather than on a screen.

Apple didn’t invent the multitouch concept. Academic and commercial researchers, and small, obscure companies, have been working on it for years. Apple is adapting the concept, adding its own ideas and popularizing it — just as it did in the 1980s with the mouse and the graphical user interface, which had also been invented elsewhere.

Rival companies are scrambling to add multitouch features to laptops and other digital gadgets. Synaptics, a leading supplier of touchpads for laptop makers who compete with Apple, has announced that shortly it will incorporate several multitouch features into its touchpads. Microsoft is producing a coffee-table-size computer called the Surface, meant for hotels, casinos and retail stores, that uses multitouch finger gestures to move around digital objects such as photos, play games and browse through product options. Hewlett-Packard developed a prototype of a similar multitouch coffee-table computer for home use.

Rotating a photo on Apple’s MacBook Air

And, in the back rooms of this month’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, various cellphone makers, seeking to emulate the iPhone, were showing off their own unannounced efforts at multitouch. One prominent cellphone maker, Taiwan-based HTC, has already built a phone, called the Touch, which slaps a rudimentary multitouch interface on Microsoft’s Windows Mobile operating system.

The basic touch screen, of course, is an old and familiar thing. People use them every day to get money from ATMs or to check into flights at airport kiosks. Microsoft’s Tablet computers and Palm’s Treo cellphones, among others, use touch screens that employ styluses or fingers to move cursors, select icons and other items, and even to write on the screen.

But multitouch interfaces are potentially much more versatile. They allow you to use your fingers to manipulate virtual objects on a screen as if they were real, sort of the way Tom Cruise’s character did in the 2002 Steven Spielberg science-fiction film, “Minority Report.” For example, Microsoft’s Surface allows users to rearrange groups of digital photos by just dragging them around on the table top as if they were actual paper prints.

Unlike the touch screens on, say, ATMs, multitouch devices are able to distinguish between the press of a single finger and the press of multiple fingers, and to interpret the motions or gestures you make. They take different actions depending on how many fingers they detect and which gestures a user performs.

On Apple’s MacBook Air, the touchpad still allows you to use one finger to move the cursor and click like a mouse can. But, optionally, it can do much more using multitouch gestures.

You can rotate photos by just touching two fingers to the touchpad and moving the images on the screen as you wish. You can quickly move back and forth through a series of Web pages or photos by “swiping,” or placing three fingers on the touchpad and moving them rapidly sideways. And you can shrink or expand a photo, or zoom in and out on a Web page, by pinching the image.

All recent Mac laptops, not just the new Air, have the optional ability to scroll through a screen without using any button or special zone on the touchpad. You just place two fingers, instead of one, anywhere on the touchpad and drag them across its surface.

In addition to pinching, the new Synaptics touchpads have a feature called “ChiralMotion,” which achieves rapid scrolling by moving two fingers in a circle anywhere on the touchpad. Another Synaptics feature, called Momentum, lets you emulate a trackball by flicking a single finger across the touchpad. This gesture can move an object on screen, like a virtual bowling ball in a game, with the illusion of inertia.

It’s too early to know if the new multitouch approach will ever be as big as the mouse-driven graphical user interface. But it’s already evident that it offers real advantages on devices where a mouse isn’t possible or convenient to use, or the decades-old interface of menus and folders is too cumbersome.

Email me at mossberg@wsj.com. Find all my columns and videos online, free, at the new All Things Digital Web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

Apple's MacBook Air Is Beautiful and Thin, but Omits Features

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 00:01:00 +0000

Apple finally has entered the subnotebook market, introducing a lightweight laptop meant to please road warriors. But, typical of Apple, the company took a different approach from its competitors. The result is a beautiful, amazingly thin computer, but one whose unusual trade-offs may turn off some frequent travelers.

The new aluminum-clad MacBook Air, which I’ve been testing for several days, is billed as the world’s thinnest notebook computer. Its thickest point measures just three-quarters of an inch, which is slimmer than the thinnest point on some other subnotebooks. And it employs some innovative software features, such as fingertip gestures for its touchpad that are similar to those on Apple’s iPhone.

[ See post to watch video ]

Apple refused to make the most common compromise computer makers employ to create their littlest laptops. Other subnotebooks — a category generally defined as weighing three pounds or less — have screens of just 10 to 12 inches and compressed keyboards. The three-pound MacBook Air, by contrast, features a 13.3-inch display and a full-size keyboard.

It’s impossible to convey in words just how pleasing and surprising this computer feels in the hand. It’s so svelte when closed that it’s a real shock to discover the big screen and keyboard inside.

But there’s a price for this laptop’s daring design: Apple had to give up some features road warriors consider standard in a subnotebook, and certain of these omissions are radical. Chief among them is the lack of a removable battery. So, while the MacBook Air will be a perfect choice for some travelers, I can’t recommend it for all. It really depends on your style of working on the road and what features you value most.

The MacBook Air, which will be available next week, costs $1,800 with an 80-gigabyte hard drive and a generous two gigabytes of memory. A second model, with a faster, cutting-edge, 64-gigabyte, solid-state drive and a slightly speedier processor, costs a whopping $3,100. The $1,800 price for the main model isn’t unusual in subnotebooks, which can easily top $2,000, although some competitors cost less.

In my tests, the MacBook Air’s screen and keyboard were a pleasure to use. The machine felt speedy, even with multiple programs running. And the laptop has the same Leopard operating system, superior built-in software, and paucity of viruses and spyware that I believe generally give the Mac an edge. I was able to install and run Windows XP using the third-party Parallels software.

But then there are those trade-offs. The sealed-in battery means you can’t carry a spare in case you run out of juice, and you have to bring it to a dealer when you need a new one. There’s no built-in DVD drive. The thin case can’t accommodate a larger internal hard disk. And the machine omits many common ports and connectors.

The MacBook Air

There’s no Ethernet jack for wired broadband Internet connections and no dedicated slot for the most common types of external cellphone modems. That means that out of the box, the MacBook Air has only one way to get on the Internet — through its fast, built-in Wi-Fi connection. If you’re out of Wi-Fi range, you’re out of luck, unless you buy an optional, $30 add-on Ethernet connector or a cellphone modem that connects via USB.

In fact, the MacBook Air has only three connectors: a headphone jack, a single USB port and a port for connecting an external monitor.

That single USB port is a problem, because so many peripherals use USB. You can buy a tiny, cheap USB hub that adds three more ports, but that’s yet another item to carry.

The lack of a DVD drive is partly solved by some clever software Apple included that lets you “borrow” the DVD drive on any other Mac or Windows PC on your network, so you can transfer files or install new software from a CD or DVD. This worked fine in my tests, in which I installed several new programs from CDs on remote computers, but it requires disabling third-party firewalls on Windows machines. It also doesn’t work for installing Windows on your Mac, for watching DVDs, or for playing or importing music. For those tasks, you need an external DVD drive. Apple sells one for $99.

In my standard battery test, where I disable all power-saving features, set the screen brightness at maximum, turn on the Wi-Fi and play an endless loop of music, the MacBook Air’s battery lasted 3 hours, 24 minutes. That means you could likely get 4.5 hours in a normal work pattern, almost the five hours Apple claims.

But the MacBook Air has another downside: its screen height. Because of the larger screen, the lid stands higher when opened than on most other subnotebooks. So it isn’t as usable as some competitors when the seat in front of you in coach on a plane is reclined.

If you value thinness, and a large screen and keyboard in a subnotebook, and don’t watch DVDs on planes or require spare batteries, the MacBook Air might be just the ticket. But if you rely on spare batteries, expect the usual array of ports, or like to play DVDs on planes, this isn’t the computer to buy.

Email me at mossberg@wsj.com. Find all my columns and videos online, free, at the new All Things Digital Web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

Asus Offers Travelers Small, Mobile Eee PC, but It's Too Cramped

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 23:59:00 +0000

The computer industry has been trying for years to come up with a portable PC smaller than the smallest standard laptops. The idea is to create a highly mobile device, larger than a smart phone, for frequent travelers, students and others who would love the size and weight savings.

Unfortunately, every attempt at this concept has included too many compromises to justify their often surprisingly high prices. I’ve been testing the latest effort at such a device, the Eee PC, from a Taiwan-based laptop maker called Asus. It does better than some of the earlier contenders in certain respects, such as text entry and price. But it still is likely to prove unsatisfying for many road warriors.

[ See post to watch video ]

Asus doesn’t even call the Eee a computer, referring to it as a “mobile Internet gadget.” Instead of using Microsoft Windows as its operating system, the Eee uses a specially designed version of the open Linux operating system, and comes preloaded with a variety of open-source programs for Web browsing, performing office tasks, playing music and videos, running games and managing photos.

The Eee has a much smaller footprint than even the subnotebook category of laptop, such as the much-publicized MacBook Air unveiled by Apple this week (which I’ll review after I have thoroughly tested it), or subnotebooks from Sony and Lenovo. It weighs a mere two pounds, is just under 9 inches wide and just over 6 inches deep. It is thicker than the new Apple and some other subnotebooks, ranging from 0.79 inches at its thinnest point to 1.26 inches at its thickest. The overall effect is small, but stubby.

The Eee’s price is only a fraction of what typical subnotebooks cost — from $300 to $500, depending on configuration. The model I tested, called the Surf, is the base $300 entry. With its pastel blue lid, and tiny size, it looks like something Barbie might use. But it can perform real work, even though it comes with only 512 megabytes of memory and a scant two gigabytes of storage space.

One reason the device costs and weighs so little is that there is no hard disk. Files are stored on memory chips. It is possible to add storage by popping in a flash memory card or by connecting a USB drive to one of the three USB ports.

Unlike some computers in its category, the Eee isn’t a tablet. It takes the clamshell form of a traditional laptop and, when opened, reveals a full, if very cramped, keyboard. By including a real keyboard and charging so little, Asus has overcome two of the problems that plagued Samsung’s Q1 ultramobile computer awhile back.

Asus Eee PC

The user interface on the Eee is simple and clear. It consists of tabs labeled Internet, Work, Learn, Play, Settings and Favorites. Each tab contains large, colorful icons. For instance, the Work tab includes icons for Documents, Spreadsheets and Presentations. These tabs lead to various modules of the free OpenOffice suite, a competitor to Microsoft Office.

The Internet tab has various icons, such as Web Mail, Web and Wikipedia, that open the Firefox Web browser. You get to this tabbed screen by just pressing a Home button.

In my tests of the Eee, I was able to use all manner of Web sites, send and receive Web-based email, compose and open Microsoft Word documents from other computers, play music, and view photos.

So, with a low price, a small size, a real keyboard, and a clean user interface, what’s not to like about the Eee?

Well, for starters, its tiny 7-inch display is just too stingy for serious work. You can make up for a small screen size with high resolution, but the 800 by 480 resolution on the Eee — which can’t be changed — is so wimpy that very few lines of text can be seen at any one time. This means you’ll have to do so much scrolling, it’s likely to drive you crazy.

Also, the lack of a hard disk, and the relative paucity of truly simple Linux software, means that most nontechie users will be stuck with the included programs, which can’t be removed and which don’t include a calendar or contacts program, or even an email program. You can only use Web-based email.

And just below the Eee’s simplified user interface lurks the complicated terminology and software design characteristic of Linux. Some error messages I saw were indecipherable.

Beyond that, many of the Linux programs included were far cruder and harder to figure out than, say, Microsoft’s Photo Gallery or Apple’s iTunes. The Eee wouldn’t automatically reconnect to a known wireless network, and it wouldn’t recognize my Kodak digital camera.

Some of these problems can be solved if you install Microsoft Windows XP on the Eee. Asus includes instructions on doing so. But you have to supply your own copy of Windows.

The Eee is a valiant effort, but it still has too many compromises to pry most travelers away from their larger laptops.

Email me at mossberg@wsj.com. Find all my columns and videos online, free, at the new All Things Digital Web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.