One thing I find awesome about the light weight of the Toughbook is single-hand handling. I don't *use* the laptop while holding it with one hand, however, I do move the laptop between the couch, coffee table, kitchen counter, and dining table.
During these "movements", I pick up my open laptop with my right hand, holding it by the front right portion. I find the weight very manageable, even natural. It's similar to putting a book or magazine down as you move around the house.
So if I want to replace the Toughbook, I'd like to find a similarly weighed laptop - 3.4 lbs. However, it might not be that simple.
The other day I walked by an Apple dealer, so I looked at the Macbooks. I did the single hand lifting test on them - try to lift the laptop, holding it by the right palmrest area. The Macbook Pro 13"
(4.5 lbs
) is expectedly too heavy. And I expected the Macbook Air 13"
(2.9 lbs
) to be much better. However, the very thin metallic body made it extremely uncomfortable to hold it in that fashion. Even the Air 11"
(2.4 lbs
) did not fair much better for the same reason.
Needless to say I was really surprised at how uncomfortable a Macbook can be in the home. It can only be used at a desk or conference table.
The Toughbook exterior is all plastic. So maybe I'll look at the plastic laptops, hoping that'd make it more comfortable to hold. It looks like the new ASUS U36
(13" no DVD, 3.6 lbs
) is a pretty good one:
http://ca.asus.com/en/Notebooks/Superior_Mobility/U36SD/#specifications
The new one with 2nd gen core i5 has better battery life than the last one with first gen core i5. But as I said before $800+ is not exactly loose change.
On that note, I looked at the MSI X370
(3.8 lbs with 8-cell
), which goes for $630:
http://www.msimobile.com/level3_productpage.aspx?cid=8&id=330
Obviously the AMD E450 is no match for the core i5 and GT520M in the Asus. However I do like details such as the textured palmrest on the MSI.
In any case, compared to the Toughbook, these new laptops are still "downgrades". Mostly just the resolution, which is 1366x768. That's like cutting off the bottom quarter of my screen. And there's no DVD
(which is not crucial, but still a "doh!" when you do need it
). The weight is slightly increased, and dimensions are slightly wider but shorter.
To make sure I'm not being unreasonable with the resolution thing, I made screenshots of 1400x1050 and 1280x768 a while ago for a side-by-side comparison.
(1400x1050 (half).JPG) (1280x768 (half).JPG) Attachments
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1400x1050 (half).JPG (80KB - 1 downloads) 1280x768 (half).JPG (55KB - 0 downloads)