I'm sick of the netbook!...

[ameerat42]

Yes, it looks like I've outgrown it. - At least my latest cameras have. It just CANNOT process large files in anything short of a week.
So I have been looking at a larger and later machine:
ASUS Zenbook UX32VD-DH71...

It's an ultra-thin Ultrabook and... among other things it has a Core I7-3517U processor running at 1.9GHz (clockable to 3 GHZ?).

Well, who's heard of it? Who knows of it? Who has any comments?

Ta, Am.

[arthurking83]

I looked at these zenbooks too myself, but it was a while back now.
(actually not for me, my kids).

Just a touch too small for everyday PCing, me thinks, but if you don't mind smallness then they'll be ideal.

The zenbooks had a very sturdy fit and finish too, compared to what I did end up getting.
Felt snappy in terms of computing power, but then again they all do when they're freshly installed. It's only over time as you add your own garbage that the PC slows down a bit.

FWIW: the two reasons I didn't get the zenbook for my son, was price and as said before size. I ended up getting him a std laptop .. 15", etc, etc ...

performance wise tho, I think you will be pretty satisfied even with an i5 model, let alone an i7.

[ameerat42]

Ta, AK. It would end up being some 3 inches (/) wider than the netbook, but with a 1920x1080 screen, as opposed to the significantly small-res one I have.
That would take care of its travel portability, and its weight is mm~mm, in the same ballpark. It's the computational capacity I am hoping it will shine in.
No kidding! At present the netbook takes several minutes just to load FFox. Some more minutes to load a single raw image into the raw editor, and then ages of "progress bar"
going nowhere.
Am(still wondering about it though, at some $1300).

[nardes]

Hi Am

I picked up a Samsung N9000 i7, 8GB RAM Ultrabook (128 GB SSD only) and I love that it boots so quickly from the SSD; just a few seconds. I use it mainly in the field for astronomy and it is a joy to use, vis-à-vis:

1600x900 screen
Win 7 Pro stability
8-10 hour battery life
Lightweight
Reasonably tough given its lightweight construction.

It is very responsive although of the 128 GB SSD, you only see some 90 GB due to Samsung Utils, Restore, Windows bloat etc. so you can soon run out of drive space, although one can easily add an external USB3 HDD.

If you don’t require extreme portability, or longish battery life, I would settle for a more traditional Notebook which generally includes more I/O options, expansion options, Optical Drive, etc.

If you can afford it, I would definitely recommend an internal SSD for the OS as they boot so quickly. You will benefit from an internal HDD for your data as I understand that SSDs are “better” as read only and their life may be reduced by lots of writes.

Cheers

Dennis