netbooks

The best 11-inch ultraportable laptops

When the history of laptops in 2011 is written, it will be said that this was the year of the ultraportable (not to be confused with the Ultrabook). We've seen more 11.6-inch laptops than ever before, along with a handful of 12.1-inch and 12.5-inch alternatives.

Below you'll find a quick roundup of some of the best ultraportables of this year, along with a few high-profile near-misses. In the coming months, keep an eye out for more high-end models, such as the 11-inch Asus Zenbook UX21, which will start at $999. … Read more

Why you can't buy the most popular laptop on CNET

While many of our most-read laptop reviews are of household name systems such as Apple's MacBook or HP's Envy, the single most-read laptop review on CNET right now is the Toshiba Portege R835. It may not be as popular on college campuses or coffee shops, but we absolutely loved this 13-inch laptop's near-perfect mix of design, components, and most importantly, price.

Even better, retailer Best Buy has an exclusive configuration that includes an Intel Core i5 CPU, 640GB HDD, 4GB of RAM, Intel Wireless Display, and even a WiMax antenna, all for $729. That version, the Toshiba Portege R835-P70, was easy to recommend as a great budget alternative to Apple's 13-inch MacBook Pro, or any number of other more expensive 13-inch laptops. … Read more

Acer Aspire S3 review: The first of the Ultrabooks

Call us skeptical (please do, we like it), but the Ultrabook concept always struck us as being a bit suspect.

Intel has been pushing for several months the idea of a new class of laptops that are slim and powerful with excellent battery life, but simply putting out a list of suggested specs and coining a name isn't the same thing as creating an entire new top-level category that can stand alongside ultraportable or desktop-replacement laptops.

On paper, the Ultrabook concept seemed like just a way to pitch Windows-based versions of Apple's popular MacBook Air, but now that … Read more

Hands-on with the Asus Zenbook UX Ultrabook

The first wave of Ultrabooks has arrived.

At a press event in New York today, Asus Chairman Jonney Shih presented the final version of the UX Zenbook, the company's entry into the growing Ultrabook field. The two models are the 11.6-inch UX21 and the 13.3-inch UX31.

If these two slim laptops look familiar, it's because they, like other Ultrabooks from Acer, Toshiba, and Lenovo, are essentially Windows versions of the popular MacBook Air. Some, like the Acer Aspire S3, are pitched as MacBook Air-style devices that cost a few hundred dollars less, while the Asus (and Lenovo) versions are around the same price as an Air, but offer more features and options. … Read more

Sony offers a few minor laptop updates, finally puts the Vaio SE on sale

It's a rare occurrence, but we do occasionally get our hands on a review sample for a product without knowing its final for-sale date. Such was the case with the 15.5-inch Sony Vaio SE, an upscale midsize laptop with both a discrete GPU and IT-friendly components (a TPM chip, for example), that impressed us when we reviewed it during the first week of September. At the time, we said of it: "At $999, the Vaio SE is playing in pretty crowded territory, and we'd put it in the same league as the Dell XPS 15z or … Read more

Stereoscopic shootout: Rounding up the latest 3D laptops

There has been much talk over the past two years about 3D televisions, 3D movies, and even handheld 3D game consoles. Less widely discussed is one of the easiest and most versatile ways to get into stereoscopic 3D: the 3D laptop. After seeing a handful of 3D systems in each of the previous few years, 2011 has become the year of the 3D laptop, with half a dozen crossing our desks so far this year.

Most of them follow a similar hardware path, pairing a set of active-shutter 3D glasses with a compatible 120Hz display and a supported video card … Read more

Rounding up the latest 14-inch laptops

This may come as a surprise, but laptop shoppers don't always take our advice to heart. For example, we've strongly suggested that people in the market for a midsize laptop (generally one with a 14-, 15-, or 16-inch display) focus their attention on the 14-inch end of that spectrum rather than the more common 15-inch size.

Why? Sure, you're trading away a little bit of screen size (though usually not any screen resolution), but 14-inch midsize laptops offer better overall industrial design, largely because the standard laptop keyboard fits much better in a 14-inch chassis than a 15-inch one, leaving much less dead space on either side.

But despite our protestations, 15-inch models still outsell 14-inch ones, even though they're significantly less portable in most cases. So if you're in the market for a midsize laptop, and want to shave off a little size and weight while keeping the same CPU power and screen resolution, check out our handy list of recent 14-inch laptops below.

Toshiba Qosmio F755 review: Can glasses-free 3D work on a laptop?

Many of the unique demo units and prototypes seen at the annual CES show don't make it onto store shelves in the near term, if at all. Then there's the Toshiba Qosmio F755, which we saw as a 15-inch glasses-free 3D prototype at CES in January, and which is now officially for sale in a single fixed-configuration model. Like the CES prototype, the final version of the $1,699 Qosmio F755 has a 15.6-inch display that uses special eye-tracking software to track the viewer's head movements via the built-in Webcam and adjusts the stereoscopic image accordingly.

The Toshiba Qosmio F755 is a bit of a one-trick pony, but when it works right, it's a pretty good trick. The 3D display doesn't work for video games or streaming-video content yet, only 3D Blu-ray and 3D video files you're able to download and play in Toshiba's custom media player application, which is a shame, as 3D gaming would be a killer app. … Read more

Hands-on with HP's updated Pavilion dm1 ultraportable laptop

One of our favorite laptops is getting a welcome update. The HP Pavilion dm1 is keeping its name, but adding some new design and component features to better compete with the streak of 11-inch ultraportables that seem to be flooding the shelves these days.

We recently checked out the new Pavilion dm1 and its slightly updated look. The preview version we saw several weeks ago had a rubberized finish that HP calls its Soft-Touch Imprint technology. Subtle graphics patterns can be inlayed directly into the rubber, rather than simply printed on top, for added durability. Just before this announcement, HP … Read more

Ultrabooks: The first wave

Amid all the laptop news this week, much of it coming out of the IFA show, there were a few announcements that especially stood out: two major PC makers unveiled their entries in the new (and untested) Ultrabook category. Even better, we got a change to get our hands on working demo units of both models, the Lenovo IdeaPad U300s and the Toshiba Portege Z830. Those two new models join previously announced Ultrabooks such as the Asus UX21.

The Toshiba Portege Z830 has a strong lineage as a successor of sorts to the very popular Portege R835, which is one … Read more