Asus Ultrathin Laptop - Good Competition?

[Hellhammer]

Maybe I need to clarify. First Personal Computer.

Kenbak-1 is considered as the first personal computer (PC) and it came 6 years before Apple I.

 

[KnightWRX]

Apple never says anything about Mac updates beforehand. It's possible that MBA is a "one more thing". Moreover, it could be updated after WWDC in late June for instance

Silent update outside of a keynote. Next tuesday, which puts it after the WWDC keynote.

 

[Hueyfreeman]

I think ASUS real downfall with the industry is that uninformed people think they are assoiciated with acer. No one with a brain should buy an acer. Those things single handedly make people think all windows machines are bad. Hell apple should thank acer. Lol. But point is people confuse the two companies and in reality they are on opposite sides of the spectrum.

 

[nefan65]

If someone already answered this, sorry. Didn't see it in any of the posts. However, like one other said; "Is it UNIBODY?"

I suspect, no. There was another laptop floating around on the forums that is supposed to be competition for the MBP. The reviewer stated it was nice, but could feel the "flex" of the keyboard, due to the lack of UNIBODY design.

It may LOOK like an MBP/MBA, but is it built as good? Chances are; no...

 

[Funkymonk]

that is a very very nice laptop. as of right now I'd buy it over the mba any day of the week. hopefully it's competitively priced

 

[Hellhammer]

If someone already answered this, sorry. Didn't see it in any of the posts. However, like one other said; "Is it UNIBODY?"

I suspect, no. There was another laptop floating around on the forums that is supposed to be competition for the MBP. The reviewer stated it was nice, but could feel the "flex" of the keyboard, due to the lack of UNIBODY design.

It may LOOK like an MBP/MBA, but is it built as good? Chances are; no...

 

[crevalic]

If someone already answered this, sorry. Didn't see it in any of the posts. However, like one other said; "Is it UNIBODY?"

I suspect, no. There was another laptop floating around on the forums that is supposed to be competition for the MBP. The reviewer stated it was nice, but could feel the "flex" of the keyboard, due to the lack of UNIBODY design.

It may LOOK like an MBP/MBA, but is it built as good? Chances are; no...

Oh my god...

Did you ever had any 1000€/$+ computer in your hands? Except macbooks of course...

Keyboard flex has nothing to do with unibody design of laptop`s casing. Chicklet keyboard design, on the other hand, does. And yes, UX21 has this design.

Sometimes just reading this forum makes me really annoyed. I like Apple products and I like PCs too. But what I don`t like are stupid fanboys.
I just hate it when I see a thread like this one and hope to find an interesting discussion, but instead I find some reasonoble people and a bunch of Apple worshipers who only have to say "It`s not Apple made so it is not relevant to compete with Airs" or "It doesn`t have OS X. PASS"
It is funny, because these people think that PCs are only 300$ Acers and that is it. They don`t even realise, that there are high-end Sony Vaios and lets say Lenovo Thinkpads which are not even in the same league as Apple is. Because they are few leagues higher.

And Apple does something else, that is completely unseen from a PCs of same price range. It wants money for "extended" warranty. If Apple has so good products and they never break, why doesn`t it give free 3yr warranty with its products. Lenovo does it, sony does it, even HP does it sometimes.

Oh and another funny thing. I love macbook Air. It is awesome. But it is not flaweless. For instance, my wifi becomes almost unusable when bluetooth is turned on. Lame. And OS X is not so different from windows and it actually can froze, just like Windows does. And what is funny is that, that in about 1 yr of using W7 on my main PC, i only had 1 crash and even that was more or less my fault. On Air I had a handfull of them in few months and I had to restart it a few times, because it started to stutter.

So yeah, not really on topic, but I think that this ASUS will be a completely fine computer. It may be a rip-off of some kind but it looks like rip-off done correctly.

 

[nizmoz]

Kenbak-1 is considered as the first personal computer (PC) and it came 6 years before Apple I.

Yea forgot about that one. Maybe because they only sold 40 machines.

 

[coldmack]

It is computers like this that make loose faith in the computer market. There must be a designer or someone out there not working intoxicated, because there is no PC on the market right now that looks remotely attractive(and that's without factoring in the OS and the specs). Yet on the other side of things some of the big name tablets(not that old school convertible crud they have been shilling out for year) look better and it shows effort in their design.

 

[BENJMNS]

It is computers like this that make loose faith in the computer market. There must be a designer or someone out there not working intoxicated, because there is no PC on the market right now that looks remotely attractive(and that's without factoring in the OS and the specs). Yet on the other side of things some of the big name tablets(not that old school convertible crud they have been shilling out for year) look better and it shows effort in their design.

eh disagree.

lenovo is just as good in their own right and style as apple via their thinkpad line-up. the mba is pretty and tidy, no doubt, but it's not as rugged and utilitarian as the rival thinkpad.

 

[nefan65]

Oh my god...

Did you ever had any 1000€/$+ computer in your hands? Except macbooks of course...

Keyboard flex has nothing to do with unibody design of laptop`s casing. Chicklet keyboard design, on the other hand, does. And yes, UX21 has this design.

Sometimes just reading this forum makes me really annoyed. I like Apple products and I like PCs too. But what I don`t like are stupid fanboys.
I just hate it when I see a thread like this one and hope to find an interesting discussion, but instead I find some reasonoble people and a bunch of Apple worshipers who only have to say "It`s not Apple made so it is not relevant to compete with Airs" or "It doesn`t have OS X. PASS"
It is funny, because these people think that PCs are only 300$ Acers and that is it. They don`t even realise, that there are high-end Sony Vaios and lets say Lenovo Thinkpads which are not even in the same league as Apple is. Because they are few leagues higher.

And Apple does something else, that is completely unseen from a PCs of same price range. It wants money for "extended" warranty. If Apple has so good products and they never break, why doesn`t it give free 3yr warranty with its products. Lenovo does it, sony does it, even HP does it sometimes.

Oh and another funny thing. I love macbook Air. It is awesome. But it is not flaweless. For instance, my wifi becomes almost unusable when bluetooth is turned on. Lame. And OS X is not so different from windows and it actually can froze, just like Windows does. And what is funny is that, that in about 1 yr of using W7 on my main PC, i only had 1 crash and even that was more or less my fault. On Air I had a handfull of them in few months and I had to restart it a few times, because it started to stutter.

So yeah, not really on topic, but I think that this ASUS will be a completely fine computer. It may be a rip-off of some kind but it looks like rip-off done correctly.

I did see that it does, so there's a chance it will be decent.

To answer your question; yes I have used a $1,000+ Laptop, that wasn't UNIBODY, and there was flex. HP and DELL. So who's stupid now? Chicklet KB has something to do with it, but not all...

Also, when was the last time you bought a Lenovo? Or an HP Elite, or a DELL Latitude? All are corporate business laptops, and guess what. They all charge for extended warranties. You yourself said some do it, sometimes. But not all the time. Also, what's the resale value of your wonderful Vaio after 2 - 3 years? Not good; and that's not my opinion, it's fact. Check forums, CL, et-al. Apple products have the highest resale value in the market. So there's tradeoffs. Don't like it? Don't buy it. Buy a Sony, Acer, whatever and be happy.

Before you spout off as an expert, you should research more.

Thanks...missed that. I was on my phone earlier when I posted, and didn't zoom into it...

 

[coldmack]

eh disagree.

lenovo is just as good in their own right and style as apple via their thinkpad line-up. the mba is pretty and tidy, no doubt, but it's not as rugged and utilitarian as the rival thinkpad.

I would beg to disagree on design with you.

 

[maclaptop]

eh disagree.

lenovo is just as good in their own right and style as apple via their thinkpad line-up. the mba is pretty and tidy, no doubt, but it's not as rugged and utilitarian as the rival thinkpad.

Style is a matter of personal taste. It also reflects the values and priorities of the manufacturer. ThinkPads have always been built to be super capable, cool running laptops. Function over Style is the ThinkPad way.

I have owned many ThinkPads, largely T series, and W (workstation) machines.

They are Business Black, the top of the line models I have are made from a composite material containing carbon fiber composite plastic called CFRP. That is a very high quality, light material that contributes to their resiliency. They have the ability to take a heavy hit and not be dented or damaged like the softer aluminum that makes my MBP so gorgeous looking.

With very well engineered keyboards and drain holes on the bottom of the chassis, one can actually pour a gallon of water right on the computers keyboard and watch it drain out the bottom, no harm done.

ThinkPads are the equivalent of a Mac, inasmuch as they are a premium laptop, but on the PC side obviously.

They also do a much better job of thermal management, since they are willing to give up a bit of style in order to have nice large vents in the sides and dual fans in every model, whereas my new Quad Core MBP only has one fan, and no cooling slots.

Apple counters with the argument that heat is vented out the top of the keyboard and dissipated via the aluminum, which is true. But no where near as effective as the cooling system on a ThinkPad.

That's why MBP's run so much hotter. The temps on my new fully loaded Quad Core Workstation ThinkPad W510 when being pushed hard running very resource demanding software never exceed 41.6 C which is much cooler than my MBP. Also seeing as the ThinkPad is .3" thicker it has room for the type of fan blades that run very quiet, don't have to be spooled up so fast, and the amount of air space for circulation within the chassis is much greater than what Apple allows at less than one inch thin.

These are both great machines, just different. Working in a cross platform environment, these two are the perfect combo for me.

 

[eXistance360]

This will be cheaper then the Macbook Air

There's no word on pricing yet, but when I asked one of the PR reps if the Asus UX21 will be less expensive than the MacBook Air 11-inch, the answer was a resounding yes.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2386149,00.asp

I will probably pick up one of these.

 

[NurJahan]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

Author GLoria Sin of ZDNet has a news article out that suggests this notebook will be out for 2011 holiday season...that's too far away! I'll have my SB MBA by then

 

[MacHamster68]

Windows 8 is still 1.5+ years away, not really what Most would call around the corner.

we have 2011 and 2012 is just a couple month away and windows* will be in the shelf's roughly a couple month after apple released OSX Lion
like it was in 2009 :
Snow Leopard was publicly unveiled on June 8, 2009 at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference. On August 28, 2009, it was released worldwide,

Windows 7 was released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009 and reached general retail availability on October 22, 2009

and believe me that was not a coincidence

 

[Hueyfreeman]

Nah M$ is going to release 8 next year. 7 was released after two years of the beautiful mess known as vista. Vista was a ****** up and M$ needed to clean up that mess.

 

[2IS]

Me too. Amazing. I hope the reviews for it are good.

However, no company out there can beat either physics, or the limitations on current/existing technology. The battery life will be rubbish. Even if used only as a stylish typewriter, it won't make it past the 4 hour mark. The 11" MBA can last over 6 hours. Not only do laptops that run Windows last 20-30% shorter in battery life (all else being equal), but it uses more power.

Windows 7 is quite efficient. With Aero turned off my run time in windows 7 is maybe 20 minutes less than it is in OSX on my MBA.

Secondly, you're assuming Apple has already achieved the maximum the laws of physics will allow. I hardly think this is the case.

 

[gcans]

Silent update outside of a keynote. Next tuesday, which puts it after the WWDC keynote.

How do you know????? Resources??

 

[Les Kern]

Wow! This is the real deal.

With Apples massive appetite for tax dodging whilst the disabled and vets are left out in the cold and inhumanely regimented workers earning next to nothing through Foxconn, this changes the game.

Vitriolic but essentially correct.

 

[coldmack]

Is this what happens when a Macbook Pro and a 12in Powerbook mate and make an illegitimate child(you can thank MS and Intel for that)? I don't see why more people don't copy the MBP, or better yet the 12in Powerbook design but thinned up for their MBA competitor. But this comes close. Now only if had different innards and was able to legally run OSX.
http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/01/lg-p220-ultraportable-hands-on-at-computex-2011-video/

 

[Scottsdale]

The metal keys are my favorite part. I have long hoped Apple would switch to aluminum keys. The plastic of the MBA's keys are the only cheap part of the MBA. I could also envision glass keys with LCDs underneath them. That way they could still get the feedback from a real keyboard but could have virtual keys underneath to allow dynamic input like an iPhone's keypad. I imagine switching through the keys with a toggle key and could have an instant numbers keypad, miscellaneous keys, and even self designated alignment of keys for your personal use.

Back to the Asus, too bad it doesn't run OS X Lion nor have a real GPU. Otherwise looks great.

 

[2IS]

How about an OLED keyboard?

http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/optimus/

It'll only cost you a cool $2145

 

[Blues003]

I typed yesterday on a MBP and hated the keyboard. The keys felt too plasticky and fragile. They would bend whenever I stroke too hard. The metal keys on this ASUS surely are an awesome improvement on that.

 

[CHSeifert]

Agreed. Mac Rumors is slowly becoming Engadget.



I have to disagree with this. Many of us have workflows specific to one OS. The best thing I ever did was switching my workflow from Windows to Mac. It was expensive but its great to be able to do things like handle very large amounts of data without worrying about crashes. I won't ever go back to Windows (even though I work with it daily since I'm in IT).

If I wasn't on Mac my workflow would be on Linux since thats where most of the programs I use come out for first. Windows would be a last resort.



You completely missed what I was saying. MRoogle "Competition is good" and you will see tons of threads where people for some reason think its a clever thing to say. There is even a thread making fun of the people who after everytime a product is released they say "Yay competition!" or "Competition is good for us" as if they are adding something useful to the conversation.

May I ask which win machines you use with what programs that makes chrashes the norm ?

I run the Adobe Master collection with 16 gb ram and an i7 2600 on my win 7 PC and honestly haven't had a chrash for an entire year.
Win 7 is as stable as OSx or even more stable IMHO !!!

Of course if you render 3D or something - things may look different.