Need a ~12" laptop within a fortnight

[neit]

I currently have a HP DV 2116wm that's a little over 3 years old and has started crashing sporadically on me since I've installed windows 7 (I'm guessing no good video card drivers). It crashed on me during my exams in December and I don't want to risk it for mid terms coming up.

I've been eyeballing ion netbooks (specifically asus 1201n) but wasn't sure if I was just getting tunnelvision. Here are my needs and wants:

windows 7
play 1080p videos via hdmi
webcam, sd card, plenty of usb ports
some gaming ability - to the extent of WoW and EvE online at playable quality

Majority of usage is office/web/outlook, i would like to get a realistic 4 hours use of that when on the battery. I'm not as into tech as much as i used to be, so I have no spec targets that need hitting, just performance desires.

Any other laptops recommended that fit the bill? I really want enough flexibility to be able to play wow when the new expansion hits. I have access to both costco and sam's club, with a price ceiling of $500 total (shipping/tax/upgrades).

Edit: Forgot to add a friend has a 10" netbook and that seemed too small, I would also like the whole thing to be light, <4lbs if possible.

 

[CurseTheSky]

ASUS UL30VT-A1. Integrated Intel Graphics + Switchable Nvidia G210M, CULV processor, 4GB DDR3, etc. It's 13.3" but very thin and light, and looks great. The Nvidia GPU should play movies no problem (though the screen res is only 1376x768), and the CULV processor is much faster than an Atom processor, plus it's dual core for multi-tasking.

Best of all, the battery life is ~10 hours for light use, and 6-8 hours for anything intensive.

 

[F1shF4t]

Acer 1810tz is another nice 11.6" ULV laptop. Battery will probably be 6 hours real use, 8+ light browsing. The intel gfx card is not ideal for games but plays 1080p fine.

 

[mooseracing]

Lenovo x200 and x200s are nice, and have full width keyboards. I carry mine alot but also have it speced to the gills for performance.

 

[maniac5999]

If you move to 13" you can get pretty much everything with the UL30vt, (battery life, CPU and graphics power, and a bigger price) however I feel like that extra inch does quite a lot with how large the laptop feels. To me 12" still feels compact like a netbook. 13" feels like a laptop. If you stick with 12" you have to compromise, and there are pretty much three options(all around $500):

*Ion Netbook. The Ion brings the best graphics power in the class, but gets combined with wimpy dual core Atom processors. 4 threads are nice, but remember, it's a wimpy in order processor, so it's going to run each of those threads VERY slowly (WoW is actually CPU limited on this), and the battery life will stink compared to a single core Atom and intel graphics.

*AMD Neo x2 Ultraportable. ex: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834114801 Well, it's not a very common choice, but if you don't mind the worst battery life (4 hours reported) it might be the best for you. It has a ATi 3200 IGP, which isn't anywhere near as fast as an ION but can run rings around an Intel GMA4500 (25-50% slower than an Ion, roughly 100% faster than a 4500) For a processor this platform uses a 1.6ghz K8 x2. Now, the K8 is the granddaddy of all the architectures listed in this class, since it was released in 2003, but it's a champ, it was the fastest architecture out there until Core 2 came out. It's about 30% slower clock for clock than the intel CULV chips, but it's clocked higher, so it's got close to the same processing power as the 1.2ghz intels below.

*Intel CULV: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834115736 Probably the best processor of the bunch, definately the fastest clock for clock, and despite the 400mhz lower clock speed probably slightly faster than the Neo. It also has the best battery life, with people reporting 5-6 hours while surfing the web. HOWEVER, it has the intel GMA4500, which is definately the weakest IGP of the bunch.

My opinion? well, I don't know. I've never played EVE, but I do play WoW on my old laptop when traveling, It's a 2.31ghz single core K8 with an ATi 200m graphics chip. The graphics are barely one step up from the GMA3100 in a standard netbook, and definately worse than anything here. I have to set everything to low but WoW is playable, even if I only get 8-9fps in Dalaran. Personally, I have the benefit of time, so I'm waiting for AMD's next gen. ultraportable to hit in Q2. It's rumored to have a die shrink to 45nm, and an upgrade to the newer K10.5 arch. and possibly even double the shaders in the IGP.

 

[Decembermouse]

My opinion? well, I don't know. I've never played EVE, but I do play WoW on my old laptop when traveling, It's a 2.31ghz single core K8 with an ATi 200m graphics chip. The graphics are barely one step up from the GMA3100 in a standard netbook, and definately worse than anything here. I have to set everything to low but WoW is playable, even if I only get 8-9fps in Dalaran. Personally, I have the benefit of time, so I'm waiting for AMD's next gen. ultraportable to hit in Q2. It's rumored to have a die shrink to 45nm, and an upgrade to the newer K10.5 arch. and possibly even double the shaders in the IGP.

The 200m is super old. I am still not surprised that it surpasses GMA X3100 though!

Yes, you're right on the money with the upcoming ultraportable. I'm waiting for either that, or Danube (dual, tri, or quad-core with Radeon 4290). They'll both be 45nm, and based on the same K10.5 technology that powers current Athlon II and Turion II laptop processors, which are derived from the Phenom II generation tech. They're already competitive with nicer Core 2 Duos, for hundreds less usually. And the graphics... NO contest. With Intel GMA's still losing to the Radeon Express 200m, they will be easily and completely thrashed by ATi graphics that are... what, 6 generations newer?

mobility 200m
mobility 9000 series (I had the Mobility Radeon 9700, it was GREAT for Half Life 2, Doom 3... try doing those at 1680x1050, which was the laptop's resolution, on Intel GMA chips today lol)
X800 series
X1600 stuff
2600 (first with programmable shaders, DX10)
3870 generation (lost to Nvidia's GeForce 8000 series pretty badly)
4000 generation (current)

Aaanyway, if current Athlon II and Turion II laptops, which aren't exactly designed to give 'superior battery life' or whatever, can get 3.5 hours (4.0 hours with Windows tweaking and undervolting), then I can't wait for their next-gen ultraportables! Because even though I know laptops aren't truly gaming machines, I like to have graphics I CAN trust to occasionally run some decent stuff, whether it be a big fancy webpage in Flash, a game, dual-stream video decoding, or upscaling to a 2560x1600 external monitor. I see no reason to sacrifice those capabilities if I don't have to

 

[neit]

Hey guys, just following up with what I ended up with. It seems like if I wanted to use this as my primary computer all around I'd needed to go a little bigger. I started digging more after you guys suggested the CULVs and they made a lot more sense. A couple days of research had me sold on the ul30vt, but I made the decision to go with the ul80vt because the warranty was 2 years instead of 1.

Over all I didn't want to spend this much more money, but I'm glad I did. I tried out torchlight demo off steam (as a side, anyone have any extra gifts of older games they want to send me ) and it runs great. I installed eve but didn't reactivate my old account/get a trial just yet, I want to get over exams before I let that suck me in.

There was a lot of crapware installed and it's tricky sifting through it all to see what I needed to keep for the card swapping and other tools vs upselling stuff. It was relatively painless removing it, unlike the vongo software that came with my old HP.

Thanks again for everyones' tips, they helped me reassess the field and I think I came out with the right choice for me.

 

[CurseTheSky]

No problem - enjoy!