Light and strong

There are many things online apps, netbooks or tablets are enough, but when you need to do multimedia editing, gaming and publishing work while on the go, there are actually not so many alternatives. A thin, light yet powerful laptop computer is something that many professionals develop almost a symbiotic relationship with. I try to keep my eye on the developments on this field, so here are some links (to Finnish publisher pages, for my own convenience mostly) about some of the most important representatives of this species.

• I am using a Sony Vaio Z series laptop as my main workhorse, and the new models have features that continue to improve it – I have yet to find something that really rivals the “Z”: http://www.sony.fi/product/vn-z-series
• Macbook Pros are very pretty devices indeed. Pity they are a bit too heavy for real, ultraportable category (and Macbook Air, on the other hand, does not have the required multimedia and gaming power). OS X is not the optimum for gaming purposes either, but you can always multi-boot. Link: http://www.apple.com/fi/macbookpro/
• Lenovo ThinkPad X301 used to be the business users optimum model in the ultralight category – but I am not sure whether this model is available any more from Lenovo, or what is its current successor?
• Fujitsu LifeBook S760 Premium is an interesting model from a company that usually makes less inspiring devices: http://fi.ts.fujitsu.com/offers/notebooks/lifebook_s760.html
• Others: There are several manufacturers that are not so well represented over here in Finland, but which have competitive models in this category. For example: Toshiba (with their Portégé 700 line), Alienware (which has the interesting ultraportable M11x line) – also Asus, Dell, Samsung and several others have improved their lines, but I have not yet found immediate competitors to the aforementioned. HP has copied much of the Macbook Pro design into their Envy line, while being more budget oriented (one review of Envy 14 is here: http://reviews.cnet.com/hp-envy-14-review).

The best of all? The jury is still out, but personally I have been happy with the Vaio Z series and would probably stick with it, if I’d need to choose a new portable gaming/workstation right now.