Acer Aspire Timeline 1810TZ
The 1810TZ was, for a long while, Reg Hardware's choice of 11.6in notebook, offering a level of performance in excess of rival machines thanks to its dual-core Pentium SU4100 CPU and their single-core offerings. But it's long in the tooth now, and soon to be replaced - though it's widely available, especially in its pricey Special Edition form. I'd give it consideration, however, if you're after a long battery life. It managed well over four hours in the Reg Hardware test, which means more than eight hours in the real world - and when I've disabled Wi-Fi and dimmed the screen, I've seen Windows 7 report more than 11 hours' runtime available.
Reg Rating 70%
Price £429
More Info Acer
Asus Eee PC 1215N
Asus' sub-notebook is unique among those gathered here for a number of reasons. It has a 12.1in screen - only slightly larger than the average - and an Atom processor: the 1.8GHz D525. It also incorporates Nvidia's Ion 2 chipset, enabling it to support HDMI output and the customary 1366 x 768 display. It also has a pair of USB 3.0 ports, and Bluetooth 3.0.
If the features list doesn't impress, its graphics performance will. It's well ahead of anything else here, graphically, though its dual-core CPU won't match AMD or Intel's notebook-class chips. And, in this class of machine, CPU is more important than GPU.
Reg Rating 80%
Price £429
More Info Asus
Next page: Dell Inspiron M101z
COMMENTS
Nostalgia
Anyone else miss the old 12" 4:3 sized machines. Especially the old 12" G4 Powerbook. Not everything has to be wide screen, for web browsing and general work I'd rather have the relative screen hight.
believe it or not...
...the entire world doesn't revolve around Apple. Mac.
Thinkpads all the way.
I'd rather splash out £200 on an IBM X61s off ebay, pretty much the same spec and I can spend any left over cash on a decent SSD and more RAM. Honestly, you only need to use a proper Thinkpad (not the e100 jobby) once to be converted.
11 inch
Thank you for this. I have been looking forward to an article on 11 inch machines. They seem to be quite out of fashion. I have contended for a while now that 11inch is an ideal compromise between portability and functionality. I have started at 15 inch, went down to 14, then to 11, then to 10. I had to go back to 11 inch, as the resolution on 10 inch makes so many things a pain, or completely unusable.
In respect to processor, personally I prefer a fairly slow single or dual core part, balanced by the longest possible battery life. I have been using full time a Philips Freevents 11NB5000 (a Twinhead F11Y in reality) 11 inch sub-laptop for 3.5 years - and it has been an excellent work companion. However, I need quite often the optical drive - and the Packard Bell seems to be the only choice with one at 11" in the entire market.
I know they have been out of production for years - but a word of respect for the Sony TT/TZ/TX lines of yonder. All 11 inch machines, amazing build quality, some of them 9 hours of battery at the time, optical drive integrated (some of them BluRay writer!), even optional integrated 3G. Expensive but what a feat of engineering. Long gone now, I'm afraid. Those were the days. Sigh.
