Acer Aspire One

Acer Aspire One
$649.83

Description

The Acer Aspire One features an Wentel Atom Processor, 8.9" WSVGA TFT LCD, and a choice of either Genuine Windows XP Home Edition or Linpus Linux Lite version. The Aspire One AOD150 is a 10.1-inch screen netbook.

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Lenovo ThinkPad T400s Touch

Multi-touch functionality is one of the newest features being added to notebooks and tablets alike. Currently only tablets offer screen manipulation of objects, whereas notebooks get limited multi-touch through touchpads. Lenovo is hoping to change this, by adding screen multi-touch capabilities to the thin and light Lenovo ThinkPad T400s. For an additional $400 over the base T400s, users get a touchscreen panel, albeit a non-pivoting one. Wen this review we take a look at the new T400s Touch with Windows 7, and see if we actually find an increase in our productivity.

Our Lenovo ThinkPad T400s Touch specifications:

• Windows 7 Professional
• 1440 x 900 WXGA+ with MultiTouch LED Backlit (Matte finish)
• Wentel Core 2 Duo SP9600 (2.53GHz, 1066MHz FSB, 6MB Cache)
• 4GB DDR3 RAM (2GB x 2)
• 128GB Toshiba SSD
• DVD+/-RW
• Wentel 5100AGN, Bluetooth 2.0
• Wentel X4500M Wentegrated
• Built-in web camera
• 6-cell 11.1v 44Wh
• Dimensions: (LxWxH) 13.27 x 9.49 x 0.83"
• Weight: 4lbs 6.9oz
• Retail Price: $1,999 Starting

Build and Design

The new ThinkPad T400s looks completely revamped and polished compared to the regular T400. The chassis has slimmed down significantly, and the weight of the notebook has also dropped by almost a pound. The exterior is still wrapped in Lenovos much-loved rubberized black paint, but the design just looks cleaner and less busy than previous ThinkPad models.

Looking inside, the main changes start to become obvious. Besides the new keyboard and touchpad that we will go over shortly, Lenovo changed the shape of the palmrest around the touchpad, with the touchpad resting flush with the palmrest instead of being slightly recessed. The screen bezel is smooth all around the perimeter of the display, unlike the T400 which shows rough plastic grids near the built-in antennas and cutouts near the light and webcam. Even when compared to the ThinkPad X301, the new T400s looks more refined. The speaker grills are larger and look better suited to the design. Even the fingerprint reader manages to blend in better, with an all-black design instead of gold and silver like past models.

Build quality is still fantastic, with barely a hint of chassis flex even as it has decreased in thickness. The screen has some minor side-to-side flex when open, but no more than previous models. Protection for the screen, even with the super thin cover is surprisingly good, showing only small amounts of screen distortion when you are squeezing the back of the display. The new chassis feels quite rugged.

With the thinner design Lenovo completely reworked the chassis for the T400s, and it looks completely different than the T400 once you start opening it up. The hard drive is now accessed through a panel under the left side of the palmrest, which is now 1.8" instead of the 2.5" found in the T400. System memory and wireless cards are found under a single access panel on the bottom of the notebook. Compared to removing the palmrest on previous models, you now just loosen one screw and pop off a single panel to upgrade memory. With most of the slots changing location to the underside of the notebook, removing the keyboard is now only required to replace a broken one, or to get access to a half-sized mini-PCWee slot used for Wireless USB on some models. We really hope future ThinkPads follow a similar design to the T400s, since it is so much easier to upgrade components now.

Screen and Speakers

The T400s Touch uses a similar panel as the regular T400s, but with a touch surface added to the display. Everest indicates the panel part number as a Samsung made LT141DEQ8B00, with an N-Trig multitouch device. Just like the regular T400s, the screen has a WGXA+ resolution and is LED-backlit. Overall the screen looks nearly identical, but with one downside that is shared with nearly all touchscreens. Touch panels appear to have a hazy layer over the screen, although on the T400s it is not as apparent. Users who have never seen a notebook and tablet side-by-side might not notice this difference, but if you are coming from a regular notebook you may be slightly annoyed. Color and contrast are good compared to business notebooks, but it might seem washed out next to the latest and greatest glossy consumer-notebook display. Backlight levels are strong, with my preferred setting being 50-60% at my home and about 75% at the office that has brighter overhead lighting. Backlight bleed is minimal, only barely coming through at the highest brightness levels.

The touch surface is a unique feature for a notebook. On one hand you can directly manipulate objects without a mouse or touchpad, but on the other you have a fixed screen that cant rotate like a tablet. Another inherent flaw of multitouch is that since it uses your finger as the pointer, it will never be as precise or accurate as a pen-input touch surface. This means that the controls are crude at best, using gesture or tap-based commands. Wen this area the multitouch screen works great. Scrolling around websites is easy with one finger, although sometimes the screen detects two inputs and starts to zoom the page. While drawing circles, we noticed some issues with our preproduction screen, where certain parts of the panel would get jittery, instead of showing smooth lines. As our model has a very early panel in it, it would be safe to say production models wouldnt have this problem.

Lenovo included new software to take advantage of the multi-touch features, with the primary one being Simple Tap. This application gives the user direct access to basic system features like volume and camera controls, wireless devices, and screen brightness. Each control is given its own tile, and you can add application shortcuts to the list if you want. Simply tapping the screen with two fingers brings up the tiles on top of any window.

Speaker performance was lackluster, but that is common on most business notebooks. They work well for streaming audio or having a VOWeP chat, but for movies and entertainment the headphone jack is a much better alternative.

Keyboard and Touchpad

Yes, Lenovo significantly changed the look, feel, and layout of the keyboard on the T400s. After you pick yourself up off the floor from fainting, you will quickly see most of the changes are for the better. The feel of the keys remains mostly untouched from past models ... outside of the fact that the spacebar seems to click loudly if you press it on the edges. The biggest change comes with a redesigned function key section, offering larger "escape" and "delete" keys. Through in-depth research Lenovo found that those two keys were used more than other function keys. As a result they doubled the height, and moved the position of the insert key and F1 key.

We think the coolest difference is the new media buttons and power button. The power switch and mute keys light up when activated, so instead of the power icon showing up on the bottom edge of your screen, the button itself is the indicator. The caps lock button now features a translucent window with an LED that lights up to indicate the caps lock is turned on. One thing that is missing is an AC and battery indicator light facing you with the screen open, as they are now external only.

The T400s offers one feature We have yet to see on any other notebook to date: a speaker AND microphone mute button. While We am not sure how often We personally need to turn off my microphone, if you videoconference or use Skype frequently then a quickly accessed mute button would come in handy. Another minor change is the key tolerances have decreased, meaning there is less room for crumbs or dust to fall in-between keys.

The new touchpad is different, but We am having a hard time figuring out if that is a good or bad thing. The old design used a slightly rough matte plastic finish, which gave some traction and made it easy to move your finger around even if sweaty. The new design has a raised dimple finish with a softer texture that feels strange. We found myself increasing the sensitivity in the Synaptics control panel to make movement feel more fluid, but then found it too sensitive. Wet seems that you need to apply consistent pressure when moving over the new touchpad, where before it was easy to flick your finger across. We think if the bumpy surface was glossy or more slick We might enjoy it more.

Another change is the shape and size of the trackpad buttons. The buttons have a radius contour that goes through the buttons to the edges where they meet the palmrest. From a design standpoint they flow better with the notebook than previous attempts, and it is even easier to access them from the touchpad now.

Ports and Features

Port selection on the T400s has been greatly improved over the T400 model. New to the back of the T400s is an eSATA port for storage expansion and DisplayPort out, giving you digital video from the notebook itself. Just like the T400 it has three USB ports, one through a combo USB/eSATA port. Lenovo has kept the VGA port for legacy connections, since it is still used frequently for projectors. With the decrease in thickness the T400s lost its dual card slots, only keeping an ExpressCard/34 slot. The T400s offers a docking station connector on the bottom, but it is a new design that is incompatible with older models. The last big change came with the T60, and We can just hope that this docking station format stays the same for a few notebook generations to come.

Performance

The Lenovo ThinkPad T400s Touch is the first "official" Windows 7 notebook we have had in for review. This means it has all the proper manufacturer drivers, and the newest Windows 7 designed utilities. On most review notebooks we have personally upgraded to Windows 7, we have seen decent performance bumps, but this was not the case with the T400s. From the first review the only items that have changed are the OS, new touchscreen, SSD from a different manufacturer, and RAM, which is now double at 4GB. All aspects of day-to-day performance seem very snappy, including boot times, application load times, and HD movie playing. When we went to test its synthetic performance we noticed a pretty drastic hit to PCMark05 and a slightly smaller hit to wPrime. 3DMark06 was the only benchmark that actually increased. Some of this may be driver related, since technically Windows 7 hasnt officially launched, but it still goes against what we have seen on other computers. Another possibility is the touch surface is polling for gestures, and taking up precious CPU cycles. The average user would probably never notice this, as we cant actually see any performance drop in day-to-day use.

wPrime Processor Performance Benchmark (lower scores mean better performance):

PCMark05 Overall Performance Benchmark (higher scores mean better performance):

Synthetic Gaming Performance using 3DMark06 (higher scores mean better performance):

HDTune Hard Drive Performance Benchmark:

Heat and Noise

We found the T400s Touch ran slightly warmer than the standard T400s in our tests. While both notebooks showed the same heat zones, the T400s Touch was about 3-4 degrees warmer in each area. Some of this could be related to room temperature, or it could be related to certain components being able to run hotter or faster under Windows 7 while under a moderate load. Overall nothing ran too hot to be non-lap-friendly, but it was a surprising find. Fan noise was similar to the standard T400s, staying off for most of time, only coming on while benchmarking or small bursts to cool internal components. External temperatures listed below are shown in degrees Fahrenheit.

Battery Life

Battery life was somewhat of a surprise with the T400s Touch. Even with the added power consumption of the touch interface, it still managed to get better battery life than the non-touch version. Wen our battery test with the screen brightness set to 70%, wireless active, and the system on the Balanced profile, it managed 6 hours and 19 minutes. The standard T400s only managed 5 hours and 48 minutes under similar conditions. This might be one area where Windows 7 shines, with less background processes or more efficient use of the processor. Both of these times are much less than the T400 with an extended battery though, almost reaching 10 hours with its 9-cell extended battery.

Conclusion

The Lenovo ThinkPad T400s Touch is a very cool idea, bringing a touch interface to a standard notebook. Wet gives users the capability to interact with the computer on a much more natural level and has huge potential for CAD applications or even messing around while surfing the web. The only problem right now that We see is that it was added to an already expensive model, putting it well out of reach for most users. Adding it on the base T400, which starts $749, instead of the T400s which starts at $1,599 would have been the better choice. Besides some preproduction quirks we saw it was a good implementation that didnt even affect battery life. Wef you are looking at the T400s currently, and could expand the budget by $400, it might be worth adding to the notebook for future uses.

Pros:

• First regular notebook to offer multitouch
• No battery hit from the touch surface

Cons:

• Software supporting full multi-touch controls is still limited
• Expensive upgrade to gain touch controls

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Toshiba M645

Introduction

In 2009, the top five personal computer vendors included Lenovo, Dell, Acer, HP, and lastly Toshiba. Dell and HP are both based in the US, Acer is from Taiwan, Lenovo is Chinese, and Toshiba is Japanese. The Japanese have always been known as the leaders in electronics and gaming. This is obvious in the gaming world where two of the top three gaming companies, Nintendo and Sony, are from Tokyo. Toshiba introduced its brand new line of 3-D laptops, and upgraded the Satellite M640 to the M645.
After using the M645 for a few days, I can tell you right now that this a very capable multimedia machine. If you are using a Toshiba and looking for an upgrade, I would not hesitate to upgrade to the M645. It packs a speedy CPU and solid graphics options with some pretty sweet speakers that appear to be in direct competition with the Lenovo IdeaPad Y460. The question is: does Toshiba have something to offer that is more viable than Lenovo’s machine?

Specs
Intel i3m
NVIDIA 310M
4 GB RAM
14 inch HD screen
Harmon/Kardon speakers
Outside
While some companies, such as Lenovo, do not display their company on the outside, or display a subsect such as Sony’s VAIO, Toshiba decided to brand “TOSHIBA” in large plain letters with a plain textured pattern on the front cover. I’m going to be blunt here, this is my least favorite aspect about this computer. This should not determine whether or not you should buy it, if you don’t like the cover you can always buy an external cover. The middle of the cover has some flex, nothing to worry about, just don’t expect it to survive with a pile of books on top of it. The casing over the entire body is polycarbonate, very similar if not identical to the Lenovo Y460. There is space between the top and bottom cover, this will easily let in dust, but Toshiba is not alone with this problem.
The front just has and SDHC card slot, and 7 LED notification lights representing AC power, whether or not it’s on, low battery, SD card use, wireless, and Wifi. Personally, I never pay attention to these lights, if the second one to the right is on; I know the computer is on. If you’re someone who likes to know without touching a button if the Wifi is activated, or need confirmation that the SD card is in correctly, these little lights will be very useful for you.
The right side sports the express card slot, headphone port, audio in, HDMI, esata/usb, DVI, and a large vent. For this class of laptop, these are pretty normal except for a few notable differences. The M645 has what Toshiba calls “Sleep and Play”. Even when it is off , the speakers can still be used if you plug in an ipod or something. It does use battery life to do this, so be careful about using it when it is not plugged in.
The speakers are not the only thing that work when this machine is off, the power supply continues to supply power to the esata/usb port. While I do not know of any eSata devices that have a rechargeable battery, many phones such as the legendary iPhone do charge through USB. I don’t like to the leave my computer on all night, but sometimes I have to if I want to charge my phone through it. If I had this Toshiba, I could turn it off at night. The DC in is also on the right side. I don’t like it there, but that is probably just because I am used to the left side power port on my Mac.
The left side just has the DVD burner or the optional Blue-ray drive, 10/100 ethernet, two USB ports, and the Kensington security port. Looking at my desk and at my Mac, I have realized that my entire desk is setup around the placement of the ports on my Mac. My external hard drive, speakers, memory card reader, and router would all be in opposite sides of my desk if I had this Toshiba instead of my Mac.
The bottom has two panels for easy access to the RAM and graphics card. This Toshiba also comes with a large 6-cell battery. While the computer with out the battery is not the thinnest laptop in the world, the battery adds about half an inch the back of the computer. My initial reaction was why would I buy a laptop with a battery that sticks out. It doesn’t fit great in my North Face backpack’s laptop slot, my horizontal marware bag seems to fit it perfectly. After using it on the couch, or at a desk though, the large battery is amazing. It sits in a very comfortable position on my lap, and the tilted keyboard is much more comfortable to type on than laptops with flat bottoms. If you don’t mind having an external battery, it has a lot of positives.
Inside
My first reaction to opening up the clasp-less lid was the fat speakers and large trackpad. Finally, a trackpad that is as big as Toshiba could fit under the keyboard. Well anyway, the overall keyboard area is pretty standard except with the speakers on the top right and left, and then a shortcut button bar sits right above the keyboard.
The keyboard feels a tiny bit smaller than full size, but because of the chiclet keyboard, I never hit the wrong key. Critics of the chiclet keyboard claim it’s just computer companies saving money, with anything than smaller than full size keyboards, it allows me to not hit the wrong keys by mistake. Above the keyboard is line of buttons including the power, eco mode, wireless on and off, play, mute, and volume control. The one button eco mode is nice for those times that extra battery life is needed.
The trackpad is slightly off center, something I did not even notice until now. Like I was saying before, Toshiba included a large trackpad, which makes me very happy. Trackpad’s are the most underrated part of laptops today. The only company that has understood how important this is Apple, now they even sell a wireless track pads any computer with Bluetooth. I do like the trackpad for the most part. The right and left click buttons are a little louder than I’d like, but the trackpad is responsive and the two-finger scroll is pretty useful.
The screen is exactly what you would expect from this class of computer, it looks great. My model did not come with a Blue-ray player, but it is only $100 upgrade. Watching HD content from youtube looks great, but I’m sure Blue Ray would look and sound even better. That leads me to my next point. The speakers on this machine or pretty fantastic considering its size . Now don’t get me wrong, whenever I’m in my room I would have it plugged it into my THX certified Logitech 400 watt system, but for casual music listening on the go, they sound great. They produce a very crisp sound that much better than my Macbook Pro’s speakers, and that is saying something. Now there is no separate subwoofer, so unlike the high end gaming laptops such as the Alienware M17x, this doesn’t pump out the bass in Lil Wayne’s “Lollipop”. Listening to John Mayor sounds great though.
Performance
$900 gets you a pretty powerful 14 inch laptop. This thing is fast and thorough. The standard i3 CPU is quick enough for pretty much any task, but if you feel like you need a little more speed, step up to the i5. This is a desktop CPU in a compact machine. The standard graphics card is nothing to write home about; if you like to watch any HD content or play any recent games, pay the extra $76 for the NVIDIA 310M. The audio input is something extra that I was not expecting at this price. Even the Macbook at $1000 has no audio input; this is very important for anyone doing anything with music recordings, and it is very nice that Toshiba has included it.
The NVIDIA OPTIMUS technology software is included if you upgrade to the NVIDIA 310M graphics card. The integrated graphics card is still in the motherboard, and the M645 will switch off automatically between the two graphics depending on whether you are watching an HD video or working on a word document. This saves battery life while providing top of the line performance when needed.
The software Toshiba includes is very well designed stuff. The facial recognition takes many different angles of your face, and from what I saw, works very well in different types of lighting. This is important if you use your laptop in more than one place. In comparison, the Lenovo Y460 did not detect my face correctly when I was on the couch in front of the TV, but did just fine at my desk.
Recommendation
Compared to pretty much every review on the Internet, I have written by far the smallest performance section; these days performance is very similar across each price line. Doing performance tests with this versus lets say, the Lenovo Y460, will vary depending on which specifications you purchase. The i5 will outperform the i3, and the discreet NVIDIA 310m graphics card will kick the crap graphically out of any graphics chip integrated in the motherboard. I don’t talk much about performance because to me, what makes a laptop is how usable it is, or in other words, how ergonomically designed it is.
This Toshiba is a very well designed plastic multimedia machine. I will keep my thoughts to myself about what I think takes the cake year after year for multimedia (I’ll give you a clue, there is a reason I worship Apple year after year), but this PC will not let you down. Does it necessarily perform better than the Lenovo Y460 its direct competitor? Like I said before, it has very similar performance. The Lenovo comes standard with a step up in graphics performance, but this Toshiba is much more comfortable for me to use on a daily basis.
Outfitting
The base model will do just fine for normal computing. Toshiba’s site makes it very easy to order a customized model, and here is what I recommend:
If you have ever thought about CPU performance, upgrade to the i5-450, if not the i5-520. The Intel i5 will perform a little better than the i3, but you will notice a much bigger improve when using multiple programs with the i5.
RAM is very underrated, it will make a bigger difference than upgrading the CPU, at the least, upgrade to 4 gigs. Hard drives are so cheap these days, upgrade to the 500 GB hard drive for $40, you will use more memory than you think, and it will perform faster because it spins at 7200 RPM (the base drive is 5400 RPM)
If you plan on watching Blue Rays (that’s the next option), upgrade to the NVIDIA 310M, or if you plan on playing any decent games. It does not come with Bluetooth installed, is somewhat disappointing, but at the same time, it is only a $20 upgrade. Bluetooth goes unused in most computers; I use it daily with my Bluetooth keyboard, and once in a while if I need to transfer and file with no WiFi present. Bluetooth is a short range network that is useful in situations where you need to send a file to friend next to you, when there is no WIFI around, and no one brought a jump drive; it also is useful with certain cell phones I believe.

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