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Lightweight notebooks
Lightweights are all-around notebooks are designed for people who want a display they don’t have to squint at but also a system they can easily take From the living room to the bedroom, From home to work and back again, or on the occasional flight.
Very good performance is offered by a lightweight equipped with both Intel's Pentium M and AMD's Athlon XP-M . They generally range From 1.5 to 2 GHz, and . in these systems varies From 256MB to 512MB. If you want 4 hours or more of on a charge, however, Pentium M is the way to go.
Most lightweights sport 14-inch , which is good enough for viewing everything From e-mail and Web pages to Word and Excel documents. The good news is that an increasing number of lightweight laptop systems feature 15- or 15.4-inch widescreens for those who want more space for everything, From DVD playback to video editing.
While only some ultraportable notebooks feature an , all lightweight laptops come with a combo DVD/CD-RW optical drive. You will have to pay $150 to $200 more for the ability to burn DVDs.
In this class of laptops is pretty much expected so users can connect to wireless networks at home, on the road or at work. Today, 802.11g is standard, but 802.11a/g is available on some laptops for those who want to be able to connect at faster speeds on the more privileged 5GHz band.
Obviously, you will not find in a lightweight laptop as many as in desktop replacements, but three or four USB 2.0 ports can often be encountered, for connecting all sorts of peripherals and in many cases a FireWire port, which is great for importing video From a digital camcorder.
Video support is better in these systems than in ultraportables. Intel's Extreme Graphics chip, which is found often in this category, delivers fine movie playback but only decent gameplay.
The pros:
• fine performance without the bulk
• extended battery life
• light enough for the road
• full-sized keyboards
The cons:
• not as powerful as desktop replacements
• 14-inch screens may prove too small for some
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