Laptop Thoughts: News & Reviews on Laptops, Netbooks, Slates, and More.

Samsung's Series 9 laptop (here's my unboxing) presents the most serious challenge to the success of the Macbook Air thus far - as long as you're not one of those people who has to run OS X. As someone who ran Windows 7 on a Macbook Air for two weeks, I can say that while it's workable, there are enough differences with the keyboard that it can be hard to adjust. Given a couple of months, I probably could have made the shift, but when I started using the Series 9, there was no need to adapt: I could type normally (well, except for that ridiculous tiny left shift key) and the size/weight on the Series 9 felt virtually identical to the Macbook Air I had. Read more...

This is a three-part unboxing and first impressions video of the Samsung Series 9 laptop; the 900X3A-A02CA model to be precise. It's on loan to me from Samsung Canada for a couple of weeks, so I'm putting it through its paces. This is a thin and light laptop that goes head to head with the Macbook Air, though it costs a pretty penny doing so. Is it worth the extreme price premium? It's unusual to talk about Apple having a less expensive product than the competition, but you can't escape the numbers: a maxed out Macbook Air 13 in Canada with a 256 GB SSD, 2.13 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4 GB of RAM, and the Ethernet dongle, would cost me $1878. This Series 9 with a 256 GB SSD, a 1.4 Ghz Core i5 second-gen (Sandry Bridge) CPU, 8 GB of RAM, and the Ethernet dongle included, rings in at $2399. That's a 28% price premium. Yes, the Series 9 comes with twice the RAM and a better CPU, but the Air has a better GPU. Read more...

Last week I picked up a Motorola XOOM WiFi edition. The XOOM was announced with much fanfare at CES 2011, and while it was heralded as the best hope for challenging the juggernaut that is the iPad, a few things have soured since then.

First, that when Motorola first shipped the device through Verizon in the USA, it would cost a hefty $800 if you got it without a Verizon contract - but you couldn't use the WiFi on it until you paid for at least one month of Verizon's data service (which was $50 or so, making the price $850). What? Yeah, exactly! Then it was revealed that the XOOM would start to ship without the ability to play back Flash, which was one of the original advantages over the iPad - you can download Flash now of course, but at launch this key element was missing. The first tablet to offer 4G would also only offer it after the user shipped it back to Motorola for a hardware upgrade - oh, and the microSD card slot still doesn't work to this day (a future firmware upgrade will fix that). More than a few negatives!

In Canada the XOOM is $599, Flash is available in the marketplace, and lacks the cellular radio, so there's no need to ship it back. So, other than the non-functional microSD card slot, the XOOM I bought is in slightly better shape right out of the gate than the XOOM people bought from Verizon in February. Read more...

Above is part one of an unboxing and first impressions video of the HP Pavilion dm1z laptop [affiliate]. It was one of the first laptops to ship using the new AMD Fusion APU. It features an AMD Dual-Core Processor E-350 (1.6GHz, 1MB L2 Cache) and an AMD Radeon HD 6310M Discrete-Class Graphics chip for the GPU. This model I purchased from HP came with Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit, 3 GB of RAM, a 320 GB 7200 RPM hard drive, a six-cell battery, an 11.6 inch display (1366 x 768 resolution), a Webcam with integrated microphone, 802.11b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth. It has no internal CD/DVD drive: you need to buy an external, USB-based drive to load CDs or DVDs. Part two after the break.

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"We unboxed the Eee PC 1215T, the first AMD-Powered 12-inch nebook from ASUS and the first to feature the AMD Athlon II Neo K125 1.70GHz processor and ATI Radeon HD 4250 graphic card. This LED-backlit netbook has HDMI-out, is good for up to 6 hours of battery life and weighs just 3.21 lbs."

It's a bit odd to see big companies doing their own unboxings - it's not like we're going to see an unbiased opinion - but if you've got your eye on the new Asus 1215T (I seriously can't keep track of their model numbers), you'll want to watch this video.

What's that? You want an unboxing in a lyrical language that you can't understand about a gadget that you really want? BOOM. Here you go. It's an unboxing of the Samsung Galaxy Tab, and it's in Italian. My Italian is about as good as my Atlantean (as in, non-existent), but boy, that's one nice looking Android tablet!

"Archos has been pumping out portable media players and Android powered tablets for a few years. The Archos 5 Internet Tablet was one of the first Android powered devices to ship without the ability to connect to a 3G network or make phone calls - which makes it one of the cheapest Android powered devices around. The Archos 7 Home Tablet is similar, but it has a bigger screen and slower processor. The Archos 8 Home Tablet, on the other hand, is something completely different. While the Archos 5 and 7 were designed to work a lot like smartphones sans the phone functionality, the Archos 8 Home Tablet is really designed to sit on your desk, table or countertop and stay there."

Oh Archos - how curiously puzzling you are as a company! You make such interesting little tablets, but you can't seem to break past the tiny niche of hardcore geeks that buy your products because of the nice hardware. At least you're now using Android instead of that confusing mish-mash home grown OS you've had for years. Maybe there's hope for you after all...

"You didn't think I'd mention all of that Dell Streak beta-testing business if I didn't actually have one for myself, did you? I already unboxed the UK version of the Streak but since the packaging is so different and could end up being what the retail devices ship in, I had to do another unboxing. There's no evidence on the box that this is a pre-production unit and it doesn't seem feasible for Dell to have made these boxes just for 1,000 beta testers, but there's always a chance that the final units will be packaged differently."

Wow - compare that packaging to the UK version, and you can tell that Dell put a lot more effort into the US experience - maybe this means they'll be sold at retail in a bigger way? Lots of pictures and details over at the link, because this guy is one of 1000 beta testers in the USA, so he has the scoop. Anyone out there getting a Dell Streak? I'm rather intrigued by it myself...I like the idea of a device this size, but it really depends on the software/services that come along with it, and I'm not very familiar with anything running Android.

This is an unboxing and first impressions video of the HP tm2 laptop [affiliate] - also known as a tablet PC because of the touch screen, though it's worth pointing out that HP doesn't use that term anymore. The exact model I'm reviewing is the 1070ca, on loan to me for a few weeks from HP Canada. The exact model and configuration will change depending on where you are in the world, but the basics are the same. Read more...