I actually switched from 2010 Air to X220 after the 2011 Airs came out.
Needed a Windows machine and did not like where Lion was going - with 2011 MBA I would have no choice but to run Lion and Windows with half baked support (AHCI, other minor annoyances)
The X220 fits the bill -
1) Display is good - it's IPS panel with good viewing angles and great brightness (Make sure you opt for Premium HD display)
2) Battery life is great - 6-7 hrs for regular use is no big deal at all with the normal battery. Go with 9 cell for little extra thickness and you are talking 9 hrs.
3) It is fast even with the 7200RPM HDD - resume from sleep is fastest I've seen for a Windows laptop with regular HDD and pre desktop fingerprint authentication saves you more time.
4) Legendary Thinkpad keyboard - love it!
5) Fast regular voltage i5/i7 CPUs - not undervolted ones.
6) Does not get noisy or hot even under full load - the i7 models throttle a bit more but are still great.
7) Can have 8GB RAM - big deal for me as I run VMs. Not an option with the Air.
The only issue really is the tiny trackpad. It gets the job done but is nowhere near the nice big glassy one on the Air. If you were into Linux X220 runs Ubuntu 11.04 great out of box - added benefit.
Are you serious? This doesn't look like anything that may compete with Macbook Air in my book. Not to seem too negative, but the overall design is reminiscent of old laptops from the year 2001. (Typical for PC laptop designers).
The VM/RAM-Problem: We use VMs heavily and have one employee that is really happy with a MacBook AIR with 4GB RAM. On the other hand, we heavily restrict our VMs, so its more usual than not that each only has 512 MB RAM.
In my experience the Macbook Air is the best bang for your buck in terms of weight, battery life and speed. The Samsung Series 9 is really the only one that comes close in those 3 areas, and it's more expensive. Full disclosure: I own the new i5 13" MBA and think it's the best purchase I've made in a long time.
So alright alright, it's not, cheap. It's not in the same ball park as the MBA on the performance side (it annihilates it)
But!
- it's slightly lighter than the MBA
- its just as thin and compact
- it has a gorgeous screen that also doesnt reflects everything instead of showing you content
- it runs linux just fine
- you can plug a lightpeak graphic card if you like
- the SSD's are extremely, extremely fast (750mbyte/s sequential writes, and over the gigbyte/s sequential reads. And no, its not mbit/s)
- standard voltage i7
- bunch of options if you like that sort of stuff (fingerprint reader, 3G card, fullhd screen, etc)
- battery sheet if you like 10-12H battery life for a slightly heavier lappy (long courier flights anyone?)
-actual HDMI out, VGA out, ethernet port, no need to carry adapters.
I have asked this question and done this research a number of times and all the links here are the paths you want to look down.
The Asus lowkey links, the Samsung 9 series (you can get this at Costco), the Sony Vaio Z series and the small end Lenovo ThinkPad's (which some friends have told me are a bit too small cause of the higher res screen).
When I looked the Samsung 9 had some serious touch-pad sensitivity issues. The Sony Vaio Z series is packed and quite expensive if you really load it out.
I would point out that the scrolling/zooming/multi-touch experience in Windows 7 on these other devices is no where near as fluid as the MBA; I don't know how important that is to you, but once I realized how herky-jerky it was going to be that was a turn off for me and how I was using my laptop.
Also the hardware loadout in the MBA compared to some of these other devices actually ends up making the MBA really competitively priced, especially when you add the SSD to the likes of the Sony Vaio Z which got quite expensive.
As always it depends what you want to do with the laptop (gaming? programming? web?) but just know that if OS X/Win isn't an issue the hardware on all these high end ultra lights is within the same ballpark and not night/day different.
Macbook Pro 13" for $999, then add whatever SSD you're willing to spring for.
This way you get
* the unibody
* the magsafe
* the battery of the MBP
* the flexibility to easily use OSX if you ever need to (without doing the sketchy hackintosh approach)
* the resale value of the MBP
And you get a lot more machine for the money than the MBA. The one cost you have to accept is the weight. But that's giving you a very sturdy machine, something you might value.
The video performance on this generation of 13" MBP is the one weak spot, but it will suffice if you don't need to be on the bleeding edge.
The Air screen is WAY less reflective than the one on MBP 13", to the point of being usable. If you, like me, cannot bear to see your reflection in the LCD :) then the Air is the only alternative to the WAY more expensive (and weighty) MBP 15" (with the BTO opaque LCD).
I haven't found any non-Apple laptop with a trackpad that's even close. Everything I've tried on the Windows/Linux side has been bad enough to be a deal-breaker.
This was a major reason I got an MBA. It is honestly the first laptop I've used where I feel absolutely no need to plug a USB mouse in. The trackpad is one of the most fundamental ways to interact from a UI perspective, -it's a big deal to have it done right.
X220, replacing the stock HDD with a SDD. Clean install of Arch.
Points to note: when it first came out, I had to come up with a patch of tp smapi to get it to work. Not sure if that's still the case. You'll get inferior battery life in Linux, even worse than in Windows 7. I'm typically getting 5-6 hours on wireless doing not particularly intense stuff. Also some oddities with the special ThinkPad keys that's simply a matter of not caring enough to fix. Touchpad a bit funky.
It's a solid alternative, though I think I mostly chose it for a superior GUI, not the system itself.
I just looked at the link to Samsung 9 series and the googled for the Sony Viao Z series.
The Samsung 9 in the link is 1600EUR. I checked the German Apple site. The top end Air is 1499EUR. The low end 13" with a 128GB SSD like in the link is 1249EUR.
I looked up the Viao Z series on the Sony German site and this is a bit confusing. It says that it starts at 1754EUR which seems like a really good deal. But at the bottom where there are preconfigured models with more detailed specs that you can compare, it really starts at 2299EUR (so what are you getting for 1754EUR?).
Dunno how you got your prices but the MBA starts at around 1000E and ends at around 2000+EUR
The Z starts at around 1700 and ends at around 4500EUR
Not sure about the samsung.
Of course, you don't get the same between a MBA and a Z.
The MBA is a pretty nice machine in fact, if you're an OSX user and don't need the best-of-the-best (aka the Z, so far, its so much faster than the MBA it's not even funny)
if you're looking for a good-specced ultralight, the main contenders are the lenovo x220, hp 2560p, panasonic s10, and sony z something-or-other (i don't think anyone else has mentioned the s10 which is why i am adding this post - see http://www.engadget.com/2011/08/10/panasonic-outs-toughbook-... for example).
if you're considering a macbook air then i suspect the s10 or sony are closest to what you want. personally, i'd go for one of the other two...
IMO, the most important feature in a laptop is resolution. The presence of an ssd is a distant second.
Sony Vaios are ridiculously expensive; that being said, they offer 1920x1080 in a 13.1" form factor. This completely destroys everyone else, in my mind.
X201s, a previous model to the X220 (along with the non "s" X201) has a higher resolution display (1440x900 same res as Mac Air 13) than the X220 (1366x766) and weighs about 1/2 lb less than the X220. Loaded with SSD and 8 GB RAM it is my preference over the X220. If a 12.5" screen vs. the Mac Air 13.3" screen works for needs then you might consider this machine. The Thinkpad Trackpoint is great once you get used to it (probably a few hours/days at most).
For long trips the replaceable batteries of the Thinkpad have an advantage over the Air.
The X201s , X220 are extremely durable machines (I've had Thinkpads since 1999) and have like Apple (and unlike Sony and some others) outstanding warranty service. Thinkpads (on certain models) and Apple both have international warranty.
If you want the larger screen of the Mac Air over the X201s or X220 then I don't see an alternative to the "Air" today.
It's not obvious from your question which aspects of the MBA are unsatisfactory, and which ones you would like the alternative to have. Can you say more about your needs?
I believe Intel is coming out with a new motherboard spec soon (or already did?) to build Windows computers that basically imitate the Air. So wait 6 months and you should have some good choices. Couldn't find link, sorry.
I've this laptop. I quite like it, the screen can go very bright so you can use it outdoors.
The downsides: super sharp edges make it uncomfortable to rest on oneself, the power socket is flimsy and the charger easily damaged, awful drivers for the Broadcom WiFi chip.
I tend to give laptops a rough treatment lugging them around (my ThinkPad was continually damaged and had bits shattered off it on a regular basis). My last laptop was a Toughbook which bravely survived years though a few screws came out of it. The Samsung has done very well and the only damage is to the charger and the screen getting bright patches from being squashed in transit.
The SSD is very fast, maybe faster than the Intel X25M I had before, and I'm generally pleased with it. I use Ubuntu without major issues.
I have been using a Series 9 since the week it was released. It is an awesome computer. I run Windows 7 on it and use Ubuntu in VirtualBox for *nix development work. My only reservation is the SSD is only 128GB, but there's apparently a newer iteration that has 256GB: http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-NP900X3A-B02-13-3-Inch-Noteboo...
That said, I find the OP a bit unclear. If you need a computer that runs Mac OSX, your choices are clear, though fairly limited. The discussion in that case is about what form-factor you prefer (ultra-mobile, portable, desktop).
If you don't care about operating system, but are looking for a computer with a similar design aesthetic and form factor, there are several choices. The Samsung Series 9 is the closest match, in my opinion, for being metal, thin, light, and lacking a optical drive. With an optical drive, I would suggest the Toshiba Portege (R835) or so, which runs Ubuntu well.
I have one of these. If you plan to run Windows on it, it's fine. Linux (Ubuntu) is ok and fairly usable, but not 100% working. For example, some of the special Fn keys don't work, and it forgets my dual-monitor configuration when I disconnect and connect my external monitor.
Im very much into light and small notebooks and I love the Lenovo X301. The big advantage over the air is that it has a matte screen. I run linux on it which works perfectly.
Some are very Linuxey. My Acer netbook is fast enough for me and, for the price of an MBA, I could buy 4 of them. It's been reported Toshibas and Sony's have some issues. The i5-based Dell I got issued at work also works very well and seems to be built like a tank.
If you want Windows, well... There are small computers, some of them well built that can run Windows at Windows functionality levels.
I'll second this. If you're looking for a cheap, light notebook with mid-range features, look elsewhere; however, if you want a fast, portable machine for development/design, I don't know of anything better. I've had one for about a year (typing on it now), and it's probably the best development laptop I've ever used (maybe even best development machine, period).
The only drawbacks I've seen are the price (it's quite expensive) and Sony isn't very good about keeping their drivers up-to-date, so anything custom/customized in the machine (like the graphics card) is kind of annoying to get new drivers for.
Disagree. Everyone in my office got VAIO Z's. They were great machines for about 9 months, then started having SSD, overheating, and graphics problems. I used to be a huge fan of the VAIO, but not any more.
[+] [-] blinkingled|14 years ago|reply
Needed a Windows machine and did not like where Lion was going - with 2011 MBA I would have no choice but to run Lion and Windows with half baked support (AHCI, other minor annoyances)
The X220 fits the bill -
1) Display is good - it's IPS panel with good viewing angles and great brightness (Make sure you opt for Premium HD display)
2) Battery life is great - 6-7 hrs for regular use is no big deal at all with the normal battery. Go with 9 cell for little extra thickness and you are talking 9 hrs.
3) It is fast even with the 7200RPM HDD - resume from sleep is fastest I've seen for a Windows laptop with regular HDD and pre desktop fingerprint authentication saves you more time.
4) Legendary Thinkpad keyboard - love it!
5) Fast regular voltage i5/i7 CPUs - not undervolted ones.
6) Does not get noisy or hot even under full load - the i7 models throttle a bit more but are still great.
7) Can have 8GB RAM - big deal for me as I run VMs. Not an option with the Air.
The only issue really is the tiny trackpad. It gets the job done but is nowhere near the nice big glassy one on the Air. If you were into Linux X220 runs Ubuntu 11.04 great out of box - added benefit.
[+] [-] sgt|14 years ago|reply
http://www.laptopmag.com/review/laptops/lenovo-thinkpad-x220...
Are you serious? This doesn't look like anything that may compete with Macbook Air in my book. Not to seem too negative, but the overall design is reminiscent of old laptops from the year 2001. (Typical for PC laptop designers).
[+] [-] bergie|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eschulte|14 years ago|reply
8) The nipple mouse in the middle of the keyboard means you never have to take your hands away from home row.
[+] [-] Argorak|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] f1shrman|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sushi|14 years ago|reply
Would you say it's good enough for someone who wants to do Django, python dev, Photoshop, Illustrator and some basic video editing?
[+] [-] zobzu|14 years ago|reply
So alright alright, it's not, cheap. It's not in the same ball park as the MBA on the performance side (it annihilates it)
But!
- it's slightly lighter than the MBA
- its just as thin and compact
- it has a gorgeous screen that also doesnt reflects everything instead of showing you content
- it runs linux just fine
- you can plug a lightpeak graphic card if you like
- the SSD's are extremely, extremely fast (750mbyte/s sequential writes, and over the gigbyte/s sequential reads. And no, its not mbit/s) - standard voltage i7
- bunch of options if you like that sort of stuff (fingerprint reader, 3G card, fullhd screen, etc)
- battery sheet if you like 10-12H battery life for a slightly heavier lappy (long courier flights anyone?)
-actual HDMI out, VGA out, ethernet port, no need to carry adapters.
-it still looks pretty cool
[+] [-] catch23|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sorenbs|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] phamilton|14 years ago|reply
6 gbps SATA with 8/10 encoding (standard SATA) means the bus is saturated at 600MB/s.
[+] [-] rkalla|14 years ago|reply
The Asus lowkey links, the Samsung 9 series (you can get this at Costco), the Sony Vaio Z series and the small end Lenovo ThinkPad's (which some friends have told me are a bit too small cause of the higher res screen).
When I looked the Samsung 9 had some serious touch-pad sensitivity issues. The Sony Vaio Z series is packed and quite expensive if you really load it out.
I would point out that the scrolling/zooming/multi-touch experience in Windows 7 on these other devices is no where near as fluid as the MBA; I don't know how important that is to you, but once I realized how herky-jerky it was going to be that was a turn off for me and how I was using my laptop.
Also the hardware loadout in the MBA compared to some of these other devices actually ends up making the MBA really competitively priced, especially when you add the SSD to the likes of the Sony Vaio Z which got quite expensive.
As always it depends what you want to do with the laptop (gaming? programming? web?) but just know that if OS X/Win isn't an issue the hardware on all these high end ultra lights is within the same ballpark and not night/day different.
[+] [-] natch|14 years ago|reply
This way you get
* the unibody
* the magsafe
* the battery of the MBP
* the flexibility to easily use OSX if you ever need to (without doing the sketchy hackintosh approach)
* the resale value of the MBP
And you get a lot more machine for the money than the MBA. The one cost you have to accept is the weight. But that's giving you a very sturdy machine, something you might value.
The video performance on this generation of 13" MBP is the one weak spot, but it will suffice if you don't need to be on the bleeding edge.
[+] [-] gtufano|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mahyarm|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cageface|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eitland|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] haecib|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nickpp|14 years ago|reply
Similar weight as the Air but much thicker. Little more powerful CPU to which I added 8GB ram and a 240GB OCZ Vertex 3 SSD.
12-13" IPS display, is the crappiest IPS I ever saw, still better than a TN though.
Battery life is around 5h, OK I guess.
Keyboard is great but touchpad is horrible. Mac os x is not an option, but Win 7 runs pretty great on it.
[+] [-] scarmig|14 years ago|reply
Points to note: when it first came out, I had to come up with a patch of tp smapi to get it to work. Not sure if that's still the case. You'll get inferior battery life in Linux, even worse than in Windows 7. I'm typically getting 5-6 hours on wireless doing not particularly intense stuff. Also some oddities with the special ThinkPad keys that's simply a matter of not caring enough to fix. Touchpad a bit funky.
It's a solid alternative, though I think I mostly chose it for a superior GUI, not the system itself.
[+] [-] lowkey|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] edtechdev|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] puredemo|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Goladus|14 years ago|reply
Here's a review: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1610568
[+] [-] diziet|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hogu|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 2muchcoffeeman|14 years ago|reply
The Samsung 9 in the link is 1600EUR. I checked the German Apple site. The top end Air is 1499EUR. The low end 13" with a 128GB SSD like in the link is 1249EUR.
I looked up the Viao Z series on the Sony German site and this is a bit confusing. It says that it starts at 1754EUR which seems like a really good deal. But at the bottom where there are preconfigured models with more detailed specs that you can compare, it really starts at 2299EUR (so what are you getting for 1754EUR?).
The Air is the cheapest option???
[+] [-] zobzu|14 years ago|reply
Of course, you don't get the same between a MBA and a Z.
The MBA is a pretty nice machine in fact, if you're an OSX user and don't need the best-of-the-best (aka the Z, so far, its so much faster than the MBA it's not even funny)
[+] [-] andrewcooke|14 years ago|reply
if you're considering a macbook air then i suspect the s10 or sony are closest to what you want. personally, i'd go for one of the other two...
[+] [-] nordsieck|14 years ago|reply
Sony Vaios are ridiculously expensive; that being said, they offer 1920x1080 in a 13.1" form factor. This completely destroys everyone else, in my mind.
[+] [-] dvdhsu|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] davidf18|14 years ago|reply
The X201s , X220 are extremely durable machines (I've had Thinkpads since 1999) and have like Apple (and unlike Sony and some others) outstanding warranty service. Thinkpads (on certain models) and Apple both have international warranty.
If you want the larger screen of the Mac Air over the X201s or X220 then I don't see an alternative to the "Air" today.
[+] [-] natch|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] petervandijck|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dstein64|14 years ago|reply
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-20067411-64.html
[+] [-] frzn|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vii|14 years ago|reply
The downsides: super sharp edges make it uncomfortable to rest on oneself, the power socket is flimsy and the charger easily damaged, awful drivers for the Broadcom WiFi chip.
I tend to give laptops a rough treatment lugging them around (my ThinkPad was continually damaged and had bits shattered off it on a regular basis). My last laptop was a Toughbook which bravely survived years though a few screws came out of it. The Samsung has done very well and the only damage is to the charger and the screen getting bright patches from being squashed in transit.
The SSD is very fast, maybe faster than the Intel X25M I had before, and I'm generally pleased with it. I use Ubuntu without major issues.
[+] [-] clebio|14 years ago|reply
That said, I find the OP a bit unclear. If you need a computer that runs Mac OSX, your choices are clear, though fairly limited. The discussion in that case is about what form-factor you prefer (ultra-mobile, portable, desktop).
If you don't care about operating system, but are looking for a computer with a similar design aesthetic and form factor, there are several choices. The Samsung Series 9 is the closest match, in my opinion, for being metal, thin, light, and lacking a optical drive. With an optical drive, I would suggest the Toshiba Portege (R835) or so, which runs Ubuntu well.
[+] [-] ArchD|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] some|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] realize|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rbanffy|14 years ago|reply
Some are very Linuxey. My Acer netbook is fast enough for me and, for the price of an MBA, I could buy 4 of them. It's been reported Toshibas and Sony's have some issues. The i5-based Dell I got issued at work also works very well and seems to be built like a tank.
If you want Windows, well... There are small computers, some of them well built that can run Windows at Windows functionality levels.
[+] [-] sid0|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drKarl|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] profquail|14 years ago|reply
The only drawbacks I've seen are the price (it's quite expensive) and Sony isn't very good about keeping their drivers up-to-date, so anything custom/customized in the machine (like the graphics card) is kind of annoying to get new drivers for.
[+] [-] lannydayinhull|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cema|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CamperBob|14 years ago|reply