Asus Eee 901 PC Laptop and Apple Macbook Air Laptop Compared
In this Cyber-age, competition among the computer manufacturers has grown to such an extent that new models that are built, give more accurate results at the simple touch of a button. But at the same time, there is also a question of continued existence of a new product in the global market. A product becomes famous and widely used only if it has features that are above par with that of its rivals. A product must also be manufactured with some of the latest technologies to beat the other models those have already proved in the market, their mettle. At the same time, this product must also be able to compete with the new products that would be launched in to the market. This can be achieved with its scope for regular software or hardware updates as well as its advanced technologies-backbone. To become more savvy about any such new products, a comparative study will help any one who is trying to hunt for more information about them.
Comparison of any two products ultimately gives a clear idea about them, thereby reducing confusion at the time of purchase. With a lot of new laptops introduced in to the market, we have taken steps to make a comparative study between different prominent models that are already dominating the market. The products compared here, are Asus Eee PC 901 Laptop and Apple Macbook Air Laptop. Though, these products are dominant in their own way, they are a bit different in other angles.
The screen size of Apple MacBook Air Laptop is 12.1 inches, which gives its user a better viewing experience, while the screen size of Asus Eee ultraportable Notebook PC 901 is 8.9 inch. Though, the thinness of Apple MacBook Air Laptop is just 19mm, its Intel Core 2 Duo processor runs at a speed of 1.6GHz or 1.8GHz. The weight of both the PCs are almost the same with Apple MacBook Air Laptop trailing a bit here, weighing 1.4Kg as against Asus Eee PC 901 Windows XP laptop’s 1.1Kg. Apple MacBook Air Laptop is designed to have a battery life of 5 hours while the battery life of Asus Eee PC 901 Windows XP laptop is 7.8 hours. The hard disk capacity of Apple MacBook Air Laptop is 80GB and it supports Apple MacOS X 10.5 operating system while Asus Eee PC 901 Windows XP laptop is compatible to Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition operating system. Apple MacBook Air Laptop features iSight web-camera and back lit camera. Both the model comes with WiFi and Bluetooth 2.1 as standard features that helps you to access the internet easily.
Features of Apple MacBook Air Laptop:
19mm thinness
Weight: 1.4Kg
5 hours of battery life
80GB hard disk
12.1” display
Asus Eee PC 901 Windows XP laptop is an internet ready portable device that has Intel Mobile 1.6Ghz 
processor. This aspect of the Eee PC keeps its pace more or less, shoulder-to shoulder with the agility of the MacBook Air. Additionally, the Eee PC is capable of performing both the entertainment and business tasks with ease. This portable device scores with a rapid start-up time. Its display resolution comes to 1024 x 600 pixels, Super Hybrid Engine Technology ensures reliability and its connectivity is explained by a remarkable combination of wireless networking 802.11 a/g/n, 10/100 Ethernet port, bluetooth and SD/MMC (SDHC) slot. This machine, further comes with a built-in Solid State Disk (SSD) technology meant for energy saving, quiet operation and shock proof mobility. Asus Eee PC 901 is designed with a handful of built-in devices such as stereo speakers, bluetooth and wireless LAN aerials. Size of this machine is not at all a hindrance when it comes to it its functionality.
Features of Asus Eee PC 901 laptop:
Rapid start up
Designed for simple and ease of use
Compatible to Windows XP and Windows LiveSuite
1.6Ghz processor (Intel Atom mobile processor)
WiFi 802.11 a/g/n
SSD Memory – 12GB
Bluetooth
1024MB RAM
8.9” Display
All the features discussed above provide basic idea about the two ultraportable laptop PCs. Significant features that shine in some products make them world-famous just like an Apple MacBook Air Laptop, being named as one of the world’s thinnest laptops or an Asus Eee PC 901 Laptop being lighter in weight and arguably, more appealing.
Sony VAIO UX1 Laptop PC
Sony VAIO UX1 Ultraportable Notebook PC is obviously a fully functioning laptop PC, if you are confused by its sporty and unconventional appearance. The most striking aspect of this laptop has definitely got to be its retractable keyboard that is very much like that of a smartphone’s. This laptop coming in a dark black shade is quite appealing even though, one would just might go through a thought that silver colour should have been more appealing, more or less.
This slim laptop model comes embedded with a 4.5 inches diagonal sized X Black LCD screen that very much complies with widescreen standards with its 16:9 aspect ratio. To the user’s amusement, it is also a touchscreen. This screen puts forth a smooth slide to reveal a user-friendly QWERTY keyboard posted just beneath it. A stylus is also provided here to navigate on the touchscreen of this remarkable device. Another significant provision here is a finger-print reader.
This model is Sony’s first UMPC (Ultra-mobile PC) that runs the business edition of the Windows Vista operating system. To scroll on this operating system, this ultraportable notebook smartly offers a joy-stick pad apart from the regular mouse button. This device then, comes with a couple of cameras one of which, is embedded on the bezel just above its display screen. A macro-mode button is provided here to realise brilliant close-up photography.
Sony VAIO UX1 UMPC is driven by an Intel Core Solo 1.3GHz U1500 processor and its brain is nothing but a solid state hard drive of 32GB capacity with literally no moving parts to make a sound. The RAM memory is 1GB. The connectivity of this device primarily refers a 802.11a/b/g Wi-Fi followed by Bluetooth, Ethernet, FireWire, VGA-out and finally a high speed USB 2.0 port. This notebook PC weighs 532 grams and comes with the dimensions of 150 x 38 x 95 mm.
Toshiba Portege M300 Laptop
Toshiba Portege M300 Ultraportable Laptop PC is Toshiba’s latest addition to its ultraportable line up. This machine is a miniature one that has been made especially with a view to unplugged portability. Its ultra-compact dimensions and sleek design makes it the ideal travel companion to a good number of laptop users. Spend some time on its dimensions and weight those say 286 x 230 x 35mm and 1.7 kg respectively. Even a spendid TFT display screen of 12″ in diagonal size stands tall here to amuse the toughest of the customers. It can cosily fit in a small luggage too.
Widely, when designing such a system, most of the manufactures tend to shed considerable power. Here, Toshiba has clearly made a point by fortifying their newborn with a 1.2 Ghz clock speed, Intel Pentium M 753 ULV processor. A level 2 cache of 2MB capacity actively supports this CPU. This processor of the M300 aids in mobility too, owing to its ultra-low voltage properties that refers to minimal heat output. This machine can be used for long hours without the fear of heating up.
This ultraportable notebook from Toshiba is strengthened by a Hitachi hard drive of 60GB and a 512MB DDR SDRAM. An Intel 855 graphic card is also a smart inclusion in this laptop model. A shared video memory of 64MB qualifies this chipset. The optical drive provided here is a DVD Multi-recorder optical drive meant for DVD creation from Matshita. This supports every DVD formats that can be recorded, including DVD-RAM.
With the Toshiba Portege M300 Notebook PC, networking has been made hassle-free by including a 802.11g Wi-Fi. It works nothing less than wonders in the company of a Base-T Ethernet adaptor of 10/100. This laptop PC comes with an in-built modem as well. Three USB ports are availed in this machine along with one Mini FireWire 1 interface. This laptop further offers a battery life of up to 282 minutes.
A six fold path to enhance the battery life of the Laptop
Battery life is a significant aspect of your laptop computer, perhaps the most important if your premises warrant intensive travelling. Until this day from the day your laptop started accompanying you, you might have experienced myriad power related laptop shut downs. The irony here is that you cannot blame your laptop computer a bit, for this either, for almost all the models of different brands, more or less have identical battery lives. Therefore, following a six-fold path that would considerably reduce your power expenditure sounds reasonable in the circumstances.
The Six-Fold Path
- Keep your laptop display at a brightness level that is low, for brighter the display poorer is the battery life.
- Keep your laptop’s hard drive defragmented to allow your laptop’s hard drive to use them more efficiently by reorganising all the stored files.
- Running one program at a time considerably relieves your laptop battery of extra pressure.
- Maintain your laptop battery unexposed to excess sunlight as well as extreme temperatures.
- Engage hibernate mode instead of stand-by mode because stand-by mode uses some power, where hibernate mode smartly switches off the power after saving your system settings.
- Instead of running the disc drive of your laptop, save the relevant data to the hard drive of your laptop to run it from there.
Taken these steps, your laptop’s battery life is more likely to last longer and you know well, its significance. That, all the technological niceties of your laptop would be reduced to mere dissipation if its battery life proves nominal.
Dell Mini Inspiron Notebook PC
The US based manufacturers of Dell Mini Inspiron Laptop PC has decided to launch it in the market with an evident tag of the EEE killer. Now, the word has spread like forest fire. Dell has gone a bit more ahead to pitch it as the suiting machine for the billions of internet users, upcoming. The first word that leaked out was that Dell was about to launch a miniature form-factor laptop, which would enhance a person’s digital experience. Dell has given this idea about their upcoming challenge to the likes of Asus EEE, Apple MacBook Air, Sony Vaio G11, MSI Wind and HP Mini Note with the view of a bloody battle already on the cards. Obviously, the laptop world is of the dog eat dog sort.
The laptop computer that stresses on ultra mobility is also called Dell E Laptop PC. This device is expected to be of low cost widely. This 12.1-inch thick (or thin) device will have a display of 8.9 diagonal inches has its main attraction. The driving force behind this sleek model is an Atom Processor (Diamondville) of 1.6GHz speed. The base model of this series will definitely provide a thumping 4GB of flash memory and 512 MB of DDR2 memory. This miniature laptop model from Dell would carry the provision for a couple of smart operating systems, namely Windows XP and Linux. Of the two stalwarts, Linux would be the first option, as it comes in the form of a Black Top OS, a bit like the Splash Top. Windows XP here is expected to play the second fiddle.
Dell E MIni Inspiron Notebook PC proudly presents a solid-state hard drive, three USB slots, an integrated web camera and Wi-Fi networking. The 1024 x 600 pixels resolution of this machine’s display is also something worth putting here. Lastly, but definitely not the least, this device weighs just about 2.2 pounds.
Linux Operating System for your laptop
Did you know that a happy-go-lucky whiz kid created the Linux operating system that is of much hype in the cyber market of the day? Yes, the Linux Operating System owes its existence to Linus Torwalds who was doing his studies at the University of Helsinki in Finland when he accomplished this feat. He was very much amused by a small UNIX system called Minix, prior to paying serious interest in software development. Starting his renditions in 1991, marked by a smart release of Version 0.02, which was followed by a three-year’s perseverance that culminated into the release of the Linux Kernel Version 1.0. The Kernel’s source code is available to anyone mainly for its development under the General Public Licence of GNU and being the soul of the Linux systems. Today a great number of companies and individuals have developed their own versions of the original concept based on the Linux Kernel. This process is far from being over even today as its development continuous in an increased pace with the latest entry being Version 2.6 that was released in 2003.
If you find Linux as the perfect alternative for Microsoft operating systems and proprietary Unix that must be for the former’s hardiness, flexibility and functionality. Its free availability is an added advantage. Today, Linux has been embraced by a number of cyber giants in the world like Hewlett-Packard and IBM. Today Linux OS is increasingly used in devices and appliances via its incorporation straight into microchips by means of a unique method called embedding. Moreover, it has been widely adopted as server platform all over the world. This is obviously a remarkable achievement considering this product was dismissed as a hobbyist’s adventure through out the nineties by technological geniuses.
A striking aspect of this operating system is its friendliness to beginners. A number of applications supported by Linux are found tractable for even beginners and all thanks to those desktop management systems designers like GNOME and KDE as well as Mozilla web browser project and OpenOffice.org office suit project. You can well rate the capabilities of Linux by downloading ‘Knoppix’, a live CD version of the same that comprehensively accommodates the information with which you can carry out all your routine computer tasks. This CD version requires no installing either for a smart run. Moreover, you can access the Linux user group of your vicinity to learn more about the concept. A cute penguin called Tux chosen by Mr Torwalds himself stands the official mascot of Linux.
Asus S101 Laptop
If anyone would experience a few sleepless nights for the Asus’s launching of their latest ultraportable notebook will certainly be Apple for this one has been already prophesied as the Apple MacBook Air killer. A debate has already been triggered along the European markets on whether this machine called Asus S101 Ultraportable Laptop PC, could be a polished version of the EEE PC that has been a huge hit by now.
This laptop that predominantly lays stress on unblemished portability, even while securing its power factors intact. This sleek gizmo from the Asus backyard that weighs just under a kilogram, comes driven by an Intel Atom Processor of 1.6GHz clock speed. This machine, like Apple’s MacBook Air, has a 64GB SSD for silent yet sturdy functioning. The remarkable processor of this laptop when coupled with a 945GME chipset delivers goods exceptionally well.
This laptop further, proudly exhibits an LCD widescreen of 16:9 aspect ratio, which is 10.2 inch long, diagonally. The remarkable display screen of this machine is illuminated by a LED backlight that is predominantly a power saving feature. A lesser version of the same model is also on the cards with a lesser hard drive of 32GB.
Asus S101 Notebook PC that is just about 16mm thick (or thin) at its thinnest part comes clad in either a dazzling white or a glossy brown shade. This ultraportable computing machine that is qualified by a solid state drive of no moving parts yields a battery life of up to four to five hours.
Do I go for USB 2.0 or FireWire
You know well that USB, in information technology, is an interface to devices, of the serial bus standard. It refers to an interface socket of the single standardized type, used to connect many peripherals as well as to the enhancement of the plug and play capabilities engaging hot swapping of the computer. Hot Swapping is all about the connection and disconnection of devices without the computer being rebooted. Computer peripherals like key board, mouse, PDAs, scanners, printers, digital cameras, flash drives, etc use this concept for a smart connection.
You might also know that USB 2.0 that was released in April 2000 to compensate the sluggish nature of the previous editions like USB 1.0 and 1.1. Due to its augmented maximum speed of 480 Mbit/s it is also called Hi-Speed USB 2.0. Meanwhile, FireWire, originally the IEEE 1394 interface also refers to a serial bus interface standard that not only facilitates high speed communication but also effectuates live data transfer. FireWire is a brand name given to this interface by Apple as Sony calls it i.LINK.
A comparison between the two just might culminate into a stalemate for their technical characteristics are alike and both the concepts have their own peculiarities, advantages and disadvantages. Hi-speed USB 2.0 is obviously a bit faster than the IEEE 1394 1995 version with its 480 Mbit/s data transfer rates as against the latter’s 400 Mbit/s data transfer rate. However, the latest augmentation of it, the IEEE 1394c-2006 provides far increased speeds (800 Mbit/s) than the USB 2.0 Hi-Speed. In the mean time, against the FireWire 1394, USB 2.0 holds a few advantages like supporting up to 127 devices as against 63 devices supported by FireWire and a comprehensive compatibility with USB 1.1 devices. However, USB 2.0 Hi-Speed’s Master-Slave architecture that entitles the computer to handle all the arbitration functions as well as data-flow dictation between the attached peripherals lets it a bit down with a sluggish data flow control. FireWire, meanwhile employs an architecture called Peer to Peer where, peripherals negotiate bus conflicts with intuition to choose the device that has the most efficient control over data transfer.
On the whole, you can conclude that FireWire is definitely quicker than USB 2.0 in sustained throughput, despite Hi-Speed USB 2.0’s 480 Mbit/s data transfer rate against FireWire’s 400 Mbit/s. If your eyebrows are raised, console yourselves with the fact that sustained throughput is greatly influenced by the architecture variations of the two interfaces.
If another question sprouts in your mind like ‘which device would suit which interface the most?’, you have a pretty neat solution that the devices themselves would choose their best suited interface. To be more precise, a FireWire external hard drive would suit best for sustained throughput as an external hard drive of the USB 2.0 kind would be the ideal selection for compatibility among multiple computers. Above all, the best choice would obviously be going for combo products that can connect to your system using either interface types.
HP 2133 Mini Note Laptop PC
HP 2133 Mini Ultra Portable Notebook PC stresses primarily on attractiveness, durability and of course portability. This model also comes packed with an array of functionality features. This laptop computer is packed in an aluminium casing that proves to be sleek yet sturdy. Its curved edges gives it increased user-friendliness rather than the evident aesthetic appeal. This machine is indeed a light weight one weighing just about 1.27 kilograms and the one inch thickness of it further qualifies its portability. This model comes as two versions based on speed and storage capacities.
This ultra portable notebook PC is driven by a VIA C7 M ULV processor of 1.2 Ghz speed.DDR2 speed of this machine is 667 Mhz and two versions of this model comes with 1024MB and 2048MB apiece. The hard drive of this laptop is a serial ATA type of 5400 rpm that comes with a couple of options for the two versions; 120 and 160 Gigabytes. The chipsets also are different here, one being a VN896NB and the other, an 8237S SB. The memory of the machines are upgradable to a maximum of 2048MB. A glitch that can be found here, is the lack of any provision for an optical drive.
The display features also varies among the two versions. One comes with an 8.9” WXGA resolution (1280 x 768 pixels) as the other one is provided with a lesser resolution of 1024 x 600 pixels (WSVGA), though the 8.9” display size remains the same. The operating systems that come handy for the two version are; FreeDOS, a Genuine Windows Vista Business OS of 32-bits and SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop that may vary between countries. These systems are also subject to smart compatibility with a 32-bit Windows Vista Home Basic OS.
HP 2133 Mini Laptop PC comes with a galaxy of software, pre-installed, like MS Office Ready 2007, Roxio Creator, Recovery Manager, Symantec Norton Intenet Security, HP back up, etc. A 92 percent full sized keyboard is another attraction of this model coupled by a touchpad with scroll zone. In addition to these, a couple of stereo speakers, a microphone-in and stereo headphones-out qualify the high definition audio aspect of this ultraportable PC. Wi-Fi is the best connectivity option here, supported by a couple of Hi-Speed USB ports. This system is powered by a Lithium Ion Battery.
Samsung Q70 Laptop
Samsung Q70 Business Class Laptop, according to its manufacturer, judiciously maintains the balance between premium performance and mobility. Samsung further promises that this model of theirs would increase the productivity of the most exacting customer. The dimensions of this model that amounts to 312 x 220.7 x 39.2 mm along with its condonable weight of 2.03 kg refers to its portability. This smart aspect of portability here is well qualified by a 13.3 inches Ultra Sharp display of widescreen properties. This LCD display holds a resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels that makes it capable of receiving even high-definition images.
Back bone of the System
This portable notebook from Samsung proudly exhibits the agility of the latest sensation platform from Intel; Intel Centrino Duo Processor. A RAM memory of 1GB explains the speed of this system. Hard drive of this laptop PC is a S-ATA HDD of 160GB storage capacity. The principal chipset of this system is the Mobile Intel 965PM chipset. This laptop also presents a NVIDIA GeForce G Dedicate graphic chipset apart from 2 slot SODIMM’s memory banks.
Multimedia Advantage
This notebook PC also excels in the multimedia sector with the main attraction being a couple of embedded stereo speakers of 2W each. This portable laptop system is more than capable of conceiving high definition audio with its HD digital 7.1 channel audio. Apart from this, the sound ports in this system is materialised by three ports such as a built in mono mic, a head phone out and a microphone in port.
Input devices and Power Features
Samsung Q70 Portable Notebook, comes with an eighty three keys supported keyboard that is shrouded by one of the most advanced technology relevant, called Silver Nano Anti-Bacteria technology. Apart from this, this portable laptop pc also presents a scroll scope touchpad. This notebook draws its power from a 6-cell 2400 mAh/cell Li-ion battery that gives it a single charge life of over 6.5 hours.