Digital Journal — I use my laptop everyday, probably far more than necessary. But I love it. That is until I have to travel. It’s huge, heavy and cumbersome to carry. It’s awkward to secure a laptop to a suitcase, inevitably leaning to one side and making my suitcase impossible to pull behind me. To make things worse, there is always at least one person that shakes his or her head disapprovingly at me, the fanatical-looking woman with a bag the size of a party-size pizza. And to think, I bought this notebook to replace my big clunky desktop PC.
Until more recently, I thought I was the only traveller that carried a gigantic portable computer. But with fashionistas beginning to influence the tech industry more and more, things are changing and people are beginning to realize big and powerful notebooks are entirely impractical for business professionals — the market to which they’re mostly geared. It’s a small change that works, making laptops smaller and lighter. It’s also a natural evolution in every gadget sector (remember when cellphones shrank from 13-inch Zack Morris car phones to a simple flip phone, and then eventually, an even smaller one?)
Without a doubt, Apple is one of the leaders in creating tiny devices that are easy to use and look just as good. The MacBook and MacBook Pro are two fine pieces of laptop gold. Just one inch thin, each element inside has been condensed into the tightest places. As Apple proclaims, each one “defies reason — and probably several laws of physics.”
Equipped with a 2GHz Intel Core Duo processor, the MacBook is available in black or white with a 13.3-inch widescreen display. Cool features include an iSight camera and Front Row (where you gain instant access to iTunes music or playlists).
The computing power is great, but it’s still not the best part for me. My fave feature: It weighs only 5.2 pounds and retails for only $1,200 (CAN). Its sister laptop, the MacBook Pro, is even sweeter; powered by a 2.0 or 2.16 GHz dual-core Intel engine, it’s available in 15- and 17-inch models starting at $2,250 (CAN).
Apple was one of the early adopters of the lighter-is-better philosophy, but the company still makes some hefty PCs that are not practical for travel.
And that is where Flybook comes in. To put it simply, this Taiwanese company makes laptops that are tiny, tiny, tiny. Measuring 9.25 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches total, the display is only 8.9 inches and the whole thing weighs less than three pounds. The Flybook has exceptional performance capacity and is so portable and small it can practically fit into a handbag. It comes equipped with 80GB of hard disk space, an Intel Pentium 1.1GHz processor and Windows XP Home edition.
This sleek computer has swanky features as well: In an innovation not seen in other notebooks yet, Flybooks let you take your SIM card out of your mobile and plug directly into your PC, turning it into a cellphone. When you click a taskbar icon, a cellphone appears on the screen and you dial numbers just as you would on any phone. The benefit: Rather than having to cradle your tiny cellphone on your shoulder while trying to work, take notes or surf the web, everything you need is right in front of you.
Another cool feature with the Flybook is its screen that rotates perfectly back onto its keyboard, transforming it into a tablet PC. According to Flybook, the touch-sensitive screen can be managed with a stylus pen, allowing you to write on the screen and the Flybook will automatically convert handwriting into text. The new V33i is available in red and black and retails for $3,350 CAN.
Ok, so it’s not exactly cheap, but with such a small footprint and stunning design, it’s worth the price for anyone who wants a portable laptop computer to actually be portable.
www.flybook.biz
