Steve Jobs made headlines earlier this year when he pulled a laptop out of an envelope, but the MacBook Air isn't the only ultrathin laptop we've seen this year.
We're proposing a new unit of measurement, the "Jobs," which indicates the thickness of a laptop that can fit inside of a standard interoffice envelope. The ThinkPad X300 is one Jobs thick--or, if you'd prefer, 0.73 inch, slightly thinner than the thickest part of a MacBook Air.
With a 13.3-inch backlit-LED display and full-size keyboard, Lenovo's ThinkPad X300 represents a significant step forward for the ThinkPad line. Our review unit, stocked with a DVD burner and six-cell extended battery, weighs 3.4 pounds. At its lightest, with a three-cell battery and an empty optical drive bay, the ThinkPad X300 weighs just 2.9 pounds.
The 11.1-inch Lenovo IdeaPad U110 is the most beautiful laptop we've seen in years, and behind those good looks is a well-appointed, fairly priced ultraportable. It measures 0.72 inch thick, which comes in just under the MacBook Air at its thickest point.
The Sony VAIO TZ150N is Sony's trimmest laptop, measuring 0.8 inch at its thinnest edge and 1.2 inches at it thickest. You'll have to put up with much in the way of bloatware, however, along with sluggish performance and a lofty price.
What's not to like about the Asus Eee PC 901? It's small. It's thin. And it's cheap. Sure, we expected better performance from this, our first Intel Atom-based Netbook, and the keyboard will feel cramped to all but the most petite among us, but the Eee PC is what started the ultra-affordable, ultrasmall laptop craze.
