The Dell Mini 9 comes with a small solid state drive, not a massive amount of firepower and running Ubuntu, but for $199 starting you can change all that (and the color) and still get away with an inexpensive and ultra-light system for less than $500. The Mini 12 starts closer to the $400 range, but comes with a lot more features (and weight). Why should this matter much? Well, they’re now on the hackintosh list, meaning you can install 10.5.5 on them. Imagine a less pretty, less flashy MacBook air, 64 GB solid state drive, 2GB of RAM for about $400 (plus Leopard license).
-
-
WiMax Enabled Laptops
Lenovo has released the ThinkPad W700, a WiMax enabled laptop. Sprint is pushing Xohm, their WiMax unit heavily as the next big thing: a mobile broadband network. Not nationwide yet, but Lenovo is hoping it will be, with HP, Dell and Acer quickly following. The network is currently running in Baltimore with plans to expand into Washington and Chicago. Speeds are fast enough for VoIP and the cost is about the same as the cellular broadband service, at $30 per month. Is Xohm the next big thing? We’ll see…