Samsung unwraps MacBook Air beater
Thin'n'light... and very stylish
IFA Samsung promised its X360 "premium" laptop would be "lighter than Air" - it isn't, but it's a smartly spec'd thin'n'light notebook nonetheless.
Based on Intel's Centrino 2 technology, the 16.7-30.9mm-thick X360 will come with a range of Core 2 Duo ultra-low voltage processors, one to four gigs of Ram and integrated graphics.
Samsung's X360: no relation to the Xbox 360
The Air/Sony-esque lozenge-style keyboard's coated with an anti-bacterial coating in case you lend it to someone with personal hygeine issues. It's not backlit, though.
The X360 sports a 13.3in, 1280 x 800 LED-backlit glossy wide display and ports a-plenty: ExpressCard 34, seven-in-one card reader, three USB, VGA, HDMI, Gigabit Ethernet and analogue audio. But it's also dockable for extra portage. Handy, that, because there's no built-in optical drive.
802.11n Wi-Fi comes as standard. So does Bluetooth 2.0+EDR. And Samsung promised WiMax and HSDPA connectivity in new models that will ship toward the end of the year.
The whole thing weighs 1.27kg when it's fitted with a 64GB or 128GB SSD and the standard six-cell battery. Samsung touted a headline battery life of over ten hours, though executives admitted that falls to just over six hours' "real world usage".
The X360 will ship with Windows Vista in October aound Europe and the world. Pricing will range from €1500 to €2000.
Samsung X360 Photo Gallery here
IFA 2008 complete coverage
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COMMENTS
Air beater....?
Hmm... should the baseline of thin laptops be soemthing else than the air?
Is the Sony Vaio X505, not the thinnest, lightest laptop... and it has a functioning OS, no?
No cells please, we're...
...engineers, or at least some of us are supposed to vaguely comprehend engineering type things. The number of cells in a laptop's battery has zero relation to its capacity in Wh or more importantly to how long the machine will actually last you between recharges. Why do you bother to quote these bits of pointless jargon off the press release, which just makes it look (incorrectly, I'm sure) like you don't really understand what you're copying and pasting?
Oh, the Samsung thingy: erm, (a) it's fatter, (b) it runs Windows. Next contestant please.
@Watashi
I am a decadent Westerner, but I work for Samsung. We do make great laptops, as you say, but they are unfortunately hampered by the OS produced by that "inward-looking cultural ecosystem of Anglo-Saxon US" company - Microsoft.
I bought my daughter a Samsung laptop with Vista. It's a great laptop, but Vista makes it run like a snail. Now it's got a strange bug where Windows Update cannot update itself. When I Google the error codes that are emitted by the updater, all I find are a handful of desperate "fixes" that don't work and the plaintive cries of thousands of lost souls with the same problems.
That's why I have a Mac and why my kids are saving up for their own Macs. It'll teach them that value and price are not the same thing. I might even donate some money myself, in anticipation of my reduced home IT support role.
It reminds me of the old joke: you are trapped in a lift (elevator, for US people) with Hitler, Saddam Hussein and Bill Gates. You have a gun, but only 2 bullets. Who do you shoot?
The answer is Bill Gates, twice, just to make sure.
Pavlov's Laptops
Pure class Philip, and amply demonstrated by the rest of you.
Best comment I've seen in months.
@James Prior
"A real world test that The Gadget Show (Five) did just proves that and the Lenovo is a great performer in comparison."
My goodness, "real world test" and "Gadget Show" in the same sentence.
