Oct 19
iiView A2 borrows Apple’s panache for a Win 7 netbook
Posted in: kirf, laptop, macbook air, MacbookAir, netbook, notebook, Today's Chili, ultraportable
Manufacturers the world over have given this one some serious thought, and they’ve decided that you want something that feels like a MacBook Air, looks (vaguely) like a MacBook Air, and doesn’t run OS X. Available come October 22, the iiView A2 features an Intel Atom N270 1.6GHz CPU, 2GB DDR2 RAM, 320GB HDD, a 12.1-inch display, and 802.11 a/b/g/n wireless. Shipping for $399 with Windows 7, this guy will look right at home next to your award-winning collection of Air KIRFs — and won’t break the bank in the process. Hit that read link for more info.
[Via ChipChick]
Filed under: Laptops
iiView A2 borrows Apple’s panache for a Win 7 netbook originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 19 Oct 2009 18:14:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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It’s impossible not to be at least a little impressed with the 
First, let’s focus on what the X340 gets right. It’s a 13-inch (16×9, 1366×768) laptop that weighs just 2.86 pounds with its 4-cell battery. It measures .78 inches at its thickest point and .24 inches at its thinnest. (The MacBook Air measures but .76 inches at its thickest point and .16 at its thinnest.) In real life application, the X340 seems a tad bulkier than specs might reveal because the tapering isn’t as dramatic as the Air’s. But it’s still thin.
The keyboard feels dreadful. Not only are the keys…mushy…the center of the keyboard literally bends while you type. It’s frightening to watch and extremely disconcerting as you wonder if they next keypress will greet your fingertips with a charged circuit board.
Molding the trackpad into the case…that was a bad idea. The surface simply doesn’t feel lacquered as a working trackpad. Literally, it feels unfinished, like someone on the assembly line went on break instead of gluing on the proper touch sensitive rectangle.
The X340 is clearly closer to a netbook than the MBA in performance, but that performance gap between netbook and X340 is definitely noticeable in your general day to day experience of loading apps.
Still, MSI claims that the system can handle smooth 1080P playback. Can it? In a word, no. Neither HD web content (like Vimeo) nor 1080P MPEG4 played back smoothly on the system. The Blu-ray quality MPEG4 probably never broke 15fps.
The problem is, I just can’t look at this machine, as thin and light as it may be, and feel good about dropping nearly $1000 to make one mine. If the X340 were much cheaper (unlikely) or sturdier (quite feasible), there’s a good chance I’d be thrilled in this review. I just can’t imagine showing this machine off to a friend, or getting extreme satisfaction when pulling it out of a bag. And if I’ve lost those attributes, I might as well settle for a somewhat thin full-blown laptop for less money, or a very light netbook for even less money.
Extremely light and thin form
Runs Vista adequately
Short battery life
Unreasonably poor build quality
The Dell Adamo is the 
The resulting cacophony of darkness tugs at my heart strings, activating long dormant man-DNA. Add a Batman logo, and I could see the Dark Knight shaping parts of this machine by hand, cave condensation dripping on the keyboard.
And the 13.4-inch, 720p (1366×768) screen is so difficult to fold open that it feels like you’re bending a car door the wrong way. Its picture is quite pretty though—you’ll notice sharpness is better on this screen than on the 
The trackpad feels smaller than it should on a device with this footprint, and its multitouch gesture shortcuts, like pinch zooming, were often activating when I didn’t want them to. (If you find the gestures useless, as I did, you can just disable them.)
The backlit keyboard is alright—the concave keys are a bit soft for my taste but perfectly passable. And the touch controls above the keyboard, while pleasant on the eyes, aren’t really integral enough or pretty enough to justify their existence. Wouldn’t it be neat if Dell used this space for a superfluously beautiful battery gauge or something? Why not? I really don’t need more buttons to skip through my music.
And while the Adamo is athletically trim (a crazy .66 inches), at 4 pounds, it’s half a pound heavier than the Voodoo Envy, and a full pound heavier than the 
So is the Adamo thin? Yes. Light? No.
Still, there are a few points of clever design. Sticking all of the ports in the back of the system is a bit old school, but it also allows for a slimmer side profile. The two USB ports, ethernet jack and DisplayPort aren’t much to speak of, but the inclusion of an eSATA/USB port means that your expansion drives can be just as fast as internals—good news, since there’s no DVD drive. All this junk in the trunk is literally topped off by speakers. (Yup, they’re behind the monitor.)
The only part we were unable to test was the optional integrated HSDPA 3G. You can see, however, that it’s super easy to pop an AT&T SIM into the side of the computer—a solution that’s far more elegant than using a USB stick, and makes use of a larger integrated antenna.
I don’t know that the X4500HD GPU is a complete dealbreaker for the Adamo…actually scratch that, it is a dealbreaker. Because if you’re looking to work on graphics intensive programs or do light gaming, this simply cannot be the system for you. Also, keep in mind that Nvidia’s upcoming Ion platform is pretty much an just Intel Atom processor with a 9400M. In other words, $400 netbooks will soon be outperforming this $2,000+ machine in 3D tasks if Dell doesn’t tweak their platform.
The Adamo is a bit of a strange beast. It’s not as feathery as the 
Unique, stylish design
It’s the heaviest system in its class by a pound
Weak GPU
