LG chisels wedge-shaped Ultrabook
Air-spirational?
LG has revealed its first Ultrabook offering: the Xnote Z330, a 13.3in, 1366 × 768 machine with a MacBook Air-esque wedge design.
There's a 1.6GHz Core i5-2467M processor on board the 1.2kg laptop - you can pick one with a 1.7GHz Core i7-2637M instead - and 120GB or 256GB of 6Gb/s Sata solid-state storage. There's 4GB of Ram.
Graphics come courtesy of Intel's in-the-CPU GMA 3000 core. Since the Z330 has an Intel 150Mb/s 2.4GHz 802.11n Wi-Fi card, it'll do WiDi wireless display tech too. There's also an HDMI port for wired links to tellies, and a USB 3.0 port too. It has a Micro SD card slot.
There's no word on UK pricing or availability, but prices start at $1500 (£960) in the US. ®
COMMENTS
Why all the hate?
The Air is recognised as a pretty thing, even though it doesn't relate to the way it functions. Unlike a car, where airflow plays a large part in the function. Yes, its going to be aluminium unibody - at these thicknesses its pretty much an engineering requisite for cooling and strength.
If you are going for something very thin you will pretty much need the wedge shape - that is the shape of a keyboard device all the way back to manual typewriters. Its called a tilting keyboard.
So it copies the look of the mba. Big deal. How many black boxes around 1.5 inches thick have we seen with rounded corners. That is the form which follows the function for that class of device. I'm not sure we can grant apple a patent on thin wedge shaped computers. MBP's aren't wedgy - do they get a patent on non-wedgy computers too?
Lots of ports on the edge, no discernible trackpad. Different keyboard layout and logo inside. Clearly not a mac, even if the marketing is cheeky.
Still a bit of Meh! too. So it has extra ports over the mba. That isn't enough to buy an LG device over a mac at those prices and with that screen. I wouldn't want to try to drive a 27" screen from it either...
Display
Why the poor res?
One of the reasons I went with the MBA 13" was the higher res.
What a complete rip-off from the Macbook Air - I actually had to double-take as it's so similar.
What next they just happen to have an illuminated Apple symbol on the back.
Can you imagine the fuss if someone ripped off (almost perfectly) the design of a BMW or Porsche - but they think it's ok for a laptop / phone.
yeah but still that might deter some people. i'm technical and it deterred me actually (i'm very busy).
at home we completely switched to apple. just the alienware and the windows phone still exist, but i'm about to use the one only privately soon and the other will be sold - i'm switching to apple to always be able to work on xcode, to have out of the box icloud integration. just don't want to buy parallels nor windows so i'm trying to find replacements or compatibles with macos. hardware quality of apple is simply breathtaking.
