BlackFridayDeals 2009. Save hundreds of dollars on the best laptops this season
Processor, Memory, and Motherboard
Hard Drive
Graphics and Display
Ports and Connectivity
Cases and Expandability
[The Samsung Go Netbook weighs 2.8 pounds, features and Intel Atom Processor, a 160 GB hard drive, 1GB of memory, high definition audio, a 1.3 megapixel web camera, simple data sharing connectivity tools and an LED backlit display. The Acer Aspire One weighs 2.2 pounds and is equipped with an Intel Atom processor, a 160 GB hard drive, 1GB of memory, high definition audio support, two built in speakers, three USB 2.0 ports, a video conferencing feature and a built-in webcam.]
Dallas, TX — As gift givers make their lists and check them twice, AT&T* is stocking its shelves with the latest in ultra-portable, ultra-connected devices – two new netbooks that feature built-in access to the nation’s fastest 3G network and the largest Wi-Fi network in the U.S., and include the new Microsoft Windows® 7 operating system.AT&T* today announced its holiday lineup of mobile broadband-enabled netbooks will be available in stores and online at www.att.com/netbooks later this month. The new devices include the Samsung GoTM Netbook and Acer Aspire One, both equipped with Windows 7 Starter from Microsoft, and available for $199 after mail-in rebate via an AT&T Promotion Card and a two-year data service contract.
The netbooks feature 10-inch screens and weigh less than 3 pounds, easily fitting into backpacks, purses and briefcases. The netbook pricing requires the purchase of a new two-year AT&T DataConnect plan – including a 200MB plan option for a newly reduced price of $35 per month or a 5GB plan for $60 per month. AT&T DataConnect plans offer consumer and small business subscribers access to the nation’s fastest 3G network, along with free use of AT&T Wi-Fi service, featuring more than 20,000 hot spots nationwide.
“Demand for netbooks remains strong among consumers, small business customers and those who desire constant access to the Internet while on the go,” said David Haight, vice president, product development, AT&T emerging devices. “Paired with the nation’s fastest 3G network, AT&T Wi-Fi service, and now the value and ease of use of Windows 7, these devices will make very attractive and affordable gifts this holiday season.
Related to Thanksgiving and Christmas
Black Friday is a term for the Friday after Thanksgiving in the United States, which is the beginning of the traditional Christmas shopping season. Because Thanksgiving falls on the fourth Thursday in November in the United States, Black Friday occurs between the 23rd and the 29th of November.
Black Friday is not an official holiday, but many employees have the day off (with the exceptions of those employed in Retailing and Banking), which increases the number of potential shoppers. Retailers often decorate for the Christmas and holiday season weeks beforehand. Many retailers open extremely early, with most of the retailers typically opening at 5AM or even earlier. Some of the larger retailers (depending on the location) such as Sears, Macys and Walmart have been reported to open as early as midnight on the start of Black Friday in localized areas and remain open for 24 hours throughout the day until midnight the following Saturday. Upon opening, retailers offer doorbuster deals and loss leaders to draw people to their stores. Although Black Friday, as the first shopping day after Thanksgiving, has served as the unofficial beginning of the Christmas season at least since the start of the modern Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in 1924, the term “Black Friday” has been traced back only to the 1960s.
The term “Black Friday” originated in Philadelphia in reference to the heavy traffic on that day (see Origin of the name “Black Friday” below). More recently, merchants and the media have used it instead to refer to the beginning of the period in which retailers go from being in the red to being in the black (i.e., turning a profit).
PC makers this fall are trying to get consumers who want small laptops to move up from low-profit netbooks to larger, costlier models called “ultrathin” or “thin and light.” These models are lighter and thinner than many regular laptops, but they have bigger screens and keyboards than most netbooks do.
The slim portables tend to start at around $500 and many fall into the $600 to $900 range. You can easily find bigger, heavier laptops for less. But the manufacturers are hoping mobile consumers will be willing to pay a premium for sleekness and long battery life.
I’ve been testing three examples of the new class: the Toshiba Satellite T135, the Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) Pavilion dm3t and the Lenovo IdeaPad U350. All came equipped with bright 13-inch screens, power-sipping Intel (INTC) processors and Windows 7 Home Premium. The particular configurations lent me by the manufacturers for testing were priced at $600 for the Toshiba, $840 for the HP and $700 for the Lenovo.
I found the trio a mixed bag, with notable pros and cons for each. These trade-offs left me unable to declare a clear winner. The one you’d like best would depend on your own weighting of various qualities, like the feel of a keyboard or touchpad.
Nevertheless, I found that all three were capable, easy-to-carry laptops. In my tests, each easily handled common consumer tasks at acceptable speeds. The three weighed between 3.5 and 4.2 pounds. All were about an inch thick, or a bit less, at their thinnest points.
I ran all three through my tough battery test, where I turn off all power-saving features, set the screen to maximum brightness, leave Wi-Fi on and play a continuous loop of music.
The Toshiba Satellite T135
The Toshiba and the HP turned in excellent results in this battery test, while the Lenovo was disappointing, mainly because it comes with a smaller standard battery. In a re-test, with a $50 optional larger battery, the Lenovo also did very well, but at the cost of added weight and thickness.
In normal use, with power-saving turned on, the Toshiba and HP could easily last for a full work day of typical activities, and the Lenovo could, too, with the optional battery.
This is a sleek, glossy machine that starts at around 3.9 pounds for the 13-inch models. It got the best battery life of the three with a standard battery: five hours and 38 minutes, which I estimate would easily translate into more than seven hours in normal use. It also cost the least, at $600, of the three I tried. My test model came with three gigabytes of memory and a 250-gigabyte hard disk. It was very fast at resuming from sleep, but took more than two minutes to perform a restart with just three common programs running, and nearly two minutes to start up cold.
My main beef with the Toshiba is its keyboard and touchpad buttons. The keyboard felt too rubbery and flexible, and the buttons under the touchpad were in the form of a single, slippery, hard-to-use bar.
This laptop, the most expensive of my test models by far, at $840, was also the heaviest, at 4.2 pounds. The chassis is metal, instead of plastic. Its battery life clocked in at five hours and two minutes in my test, which means you could easily exceed six hours in normal use. My test model came with 3 GB of memory and a huge 500 GB hard disk.
The keyboard felt solid, but the fatal flaw of the dm3 for me was its metallic touchpad, which made the cursor move slowly and even stop at times. Like the Toshiba, the HP took a long time to get going: almost 2.5 minutes for a restart and about two minutes for a cold start.
The HP dm3 also is available for about $100 less when equipped with AMD (AMD) processors, though HP says those have weaker battery life.
In many ways, I liked the U350 best. It was sturdy, but thinner overall than the others because it lacked a bulging battery. The keyboard is firm and well designed, and the touchpad and buttons are comfortable and easy to use. It came with 4 GB of memory and a 320 GB hard disk for its $700 price. It was the only one of the three to restart in under two minutes. It also weighed the least, about 3.5 pounds.
But the IdeaPad’s downfall is its small, flat battery, which offered only two hours and 38 minutes of life, or maybe 3.5 to four hours in normal use. With the optional $50 battery, the battery life in my test zoomed up to nearly six hours, which means maybe 7.5 or eight hours in normal use. But that extra battery brought the computer’s weight to four pounds and made it thicker.
These thin, light, machines perform adequately and can last a long time unplugged. But I urge you to test them personally before choosing one, to make sure you’re comfortable with their designs.
Intel’s CULV Laptops: Thin, Light & Cheap
11.04.09
Laptops equipped with the Intel’s new consumer ultra-low voltage (CULV) processors are lightweight and promise big screens, long battery life, and amazingly thin profiles.
It’s like the geeked-out version of West Side story. You have netbooks, which simply took the world by storm, bullying bigger laptops into rethinking their game, slashing prices, and taunting others about long battery life. Then CULV laptops rolled into town, snapping their fingers and bragging about how their bigger screens and batteries make them the ones to beat. And somehow, these two groups are rivaling each other and are now running the entire ultraportable scene. Well, that’s how I’m portraying it.
- Asus facial recognition login. Didn’t think that I would care, but it’s nice to have the computer log in, without touch, when I’m sitting in front of it.
- Asus FastBoot (not the BIOS fast boot). This lets you configure which programs load during startup and which load after. Speeds up the boot quite a bit.
- Decent speakers. Not ear-destroying, but suitable for the size. Much better than most netbooks.
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