Best affordable lightweight (ultra) portable?

Coffin

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Hi..I donated my Seashell Asus netbook to my sister over the weekend. It was the better model with 2Gb, faster Atom and 11.6" screen. T'was a fine machine..but not good enough.

I'm after a notebook now (as I believe a netbook won't cut it) which has:

* Core 2 Duo or i3/5 processor
* 2~4Gb ram (I will upgrade it later to 4/8Gb)
* Screen size no larger than 14"
* Optical drive is not required
* Native HDMI
* Win 7 64bit (Home or Pro)
* Storage is minor, anything above 160Gb would do it

I can get my hands on a Toshiba U500 but it's quite costly at £800+ and I don't really need the storage or optical drive or the fancy chassis

Does anyone own anything similar or recommend a product? Thanks! :)
 
I use a HP dm3 (Athlon Neo x2) and am generally happy with it. I chose this over the Intel version because of the better graphics. Intel integrated graphics at the Dual Core level are next to useless if you want to do anything more than office/day to day tasks though the HP's ATI, although more powerful is still no game machine but at least you can do some photo processing and gaming.

The i3 integrated graphics are better and I'd probably check out Acer's new timeline range. The 4820T is available for around £600 and has an i3. The next one up, the 4820TG uses an i5 and much better graphics though I'm not sure if it is available yet and it will be expensive, around the £800 mark.

I think Asus also do a 12" netbook with Atom Dual Core plus Nvidia Ion switchable graphics. Another take on the scheme depending what you want your laptop to do. Better graphics in this case than the HP but processor power suffers.
 
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Thanks for the replies. The first Asus one looks intersesting but I'm not sure about the Celeron processor.

My netbook really used to struggle with HD video be that from Youtube or iPlayer etc. It also struggled horribly with other imbedded flash based video often found on many websites, most of which have banners and adverts all over the place. I kinda knew that would be the case, being Atom based and capped at 2Gb memory of course, so would like to avoid that happening again

The Portege R600 would do it...powerful, stupidly light with a big-ish screen...for big bucks!
 
Agree. My HP with Athlon 1.6 x2 sometimes struggles with HD streaming from both iPlayer and Tube. In addition it struggles to play HD even when downloaded ?? (I start a separate thread on this issue).

I think a minimum CPU 2ghz or faster is necessary to stream HD content smoothly from flash based players. The latest Flash 10.1 supports hardware acceleration which in theory should take some of the load of the CPU but to be honest, I did'nt find much difference.

If HD streaming is important to you I'd probably consider one of the newer icore netbooks.
 

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