The Wife is going to be based in Jakarta for 3 months for work. She needs a decent laptop for her non-work related stuff. She had a Acer Aspire 5584 WXMI. Its harddisk gave up and gave the click of death. Which means we have to look for a replacement laptop.
Her requirements are quite straightforward:
1) she likes the new touchscreen feature of Windows 8.
2) has to have MS Office. This has to bought separately.
3) internet connectivity.
4) screen size of 14" or less
5) not to heavy
It was up to me to look for such a laptop, based on her requirements. I scouted at the recent March IT Show 2013, read numerous reviews, asked around shops and friends. Finally, we decided on the Asus S400CA CA041P Ultrabook, which meets her needs.
According to Asus website, the specs are as follows:
Specifications
| Processor | Intel® Core™ i7 3517U Processor |
| Operating System | Windows 8 |
| Chipset | Intel® Chief River Chipset HM76 |
| Memory | DDR3 1600 MHz SDRAM, OnBoard Memory 4 GB , 1x DIMM socket *1 |
| Display | 14.0" 16:9 HD (1366x768) LED Backlight Glare panel |
| Graphic | Integrated Intel® HD Graphics 4000 *2 |
| Storage | 2.5" SATA 500GB 5400 RPM |
| Card Reader | card reader ( SD ) |
| Camera | HD Web Camera |
| Networking | Integrated 802.11 b/g/n Built-in Bluetooth™ V4.0 10/100/1000 Base T |
| Interface | 1 x COMBO audio jack 1 x VGA port/Mini D-sub 15-pin for external monitor 1 x USB 3.0 port(s) 2 x USB 2.0 port(s) 1 x RJ45 LAN Jack for LAN insert 1 x HDMI |
| Audio | Built-in Speakers And Microphone |
| Battery | 44 Whrs Polymer Battery |
| Power Adapter | Output : 19 V DC, 3.42 A, 65 W Input : 100 -240 V AC, 50/60 Hz universal |
| Dimensions | 33.9 x 23.9 x 2.1 cm (WxDxH) |
| Weight | 1.8 kg (with Polymer Battery) |
| Warranty | 2-years international warranty 1-year battery pack warranty On-line problem resolution through web interface (BIOS, Driver update) OS (Windows® 8 ) install/uninstall consultation Bundled software install/uninstall consultation ASUS software supporting |
| Note | *1:OnBoard Memory 4GB+ 1x DIMM socket up to 12G *2:Integrated Intel® HD Graphics 4000 (i5-3317/i7-3517) |
The place that we bought this laptop, Harvey Norman, upgraded the memory to 8GB and gave a portable harddisk drive of another 500GB. It uses a solid state drive and that is why it boots up very fast.
The laptop.
The manual.
The paraphernalia.
Dust cover removed.
The keyboard.
First start-up.
According to one of the marketing sticker, the Ultrabook is inspired by Intel.
Apparently, there are certain specs that has to be met by Intel before
a laptop can be an Ultrabook. Intel has a website for this here.
To me, its an excuse to copy Apple Macbook Air.
The Windows 8 desktop needs getting used to. The touchscreen
feature is very cool.
The sleek clean lines on the left hand side and...
..the right. Again, I smell Apple here.
It even tries to taper off. Another Apple rip-off is the laptop does
not have any DVD drive. So we bought one from Samsung which
was quite affordable.
Despite the similarities with Apple Macbook, I have to say that the Asus laptop is quite good. I like the keyboard and I can see myself typing documents on it.
The booting up is quite fast. It is light. Has credible sound coming from a laptop.
It was a good buy.
Most importantly, The Wife loves it.
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