[mduell]

150dpi has been available in laptop screens for years, so I'd like to see 1680x1050 in the 13".

[Simon]

I'm sure there's also somebody who'd like to see 1900x1200 in the 13" screen. But that's not really the issue.

The question is what a majority of people want to buy and what they're willing to pay for it. After all the time it took Apple to offer the HD option on the 17" MBP I seriously doubt they'd use an even higher resolution on a sub-notebook.

[mduell]

I guess it depends how much Apple wants to push the idea that they are a premium brand. With resolution independence in Leopard, offering a higher res screen would look absolutely beautiful.
It would also be good for photographers and other creative types (one of Apple's core markets, no?) who need portability as well as the pixels to view large images.
As far as price, the cost doesn't go up much anymore; other OEMs charge perhaps $75 to go from 100dpi to 150dpi on a 15" screen, so I assume the cost is even lower than that.

[Simon]

Apple is a premium brand regardless of the resolution they chose on the rumored sub-notebook.

Many people are expecting this sub-notebook to come with an X3100. Aperture or Motion are not gonna be much fun on that. So I seriously doubt that a lot of "creative" users would actually be interested in such a device. In my experience creative pros easily do their work on the 1440x900 screen of the 15" MBP, but hardly with the GMA 950 on the MB.

That said I personally don't oppose 1440x900 on a 13" sub-notebook, but if you're expecting 1680x1050 you're setting yourself up for disappointment.

[Frans]

:-) thx!

[Cyril Catt]

Everyone seems to want an all-singing, all dancing notebook that is a bit smaller than the present ones and will make the coffee and wash the dishes as well.

I don't. I would prefer a MUCH SMALLER, palmtop, in the robust clamshell format of the late lamented Psion, HP and similar machines (about 170 x 90 x 24 mm); with a reasonable landscape screen (about 150 x 60 mm); a useable small keyboard (not a thumboard); built-in basic apps (word processor, spreadsheet, database, calendar/diary - AppleWorks would do); able to operate for days or weeks away from a power socket on AA batteries ( so a few pairs of rechargeables would allow work for a month, or at a pinch, any bog-standard AAs could keep it running); able to transfer files by USB and by a standard card slot (preferably two), in standard formats, with Macs or Windows machines.

If such a machine could hit the market at about 500 dollars, I'm sure it would be a boon to a lot of remote area workers, travellers, etc for whom a fully optioned laptop is just heavy, bulky, overkill, and small-screened Palm-style PDAs with thumboards are too finicky for useful data entry or fieldwork use.

[allensis]

oops - sorry!

[mfbernstein]

Thread-hijacking (asking unrelated questions in an existing thread) is generally frowned upon around here. Bad netiquette.

Regarding your Friendlynet 10baseT PCMCIA card, have you verified that the hardware works? Is the link light on your hub/router illuminated when the machine is on?

[slugslugslug]

Can't believe Frans hasn't been back to bump this today. AppleInsider's reporting that the (optical-drive-less) ultraportable is set to arrive at MacWorld 2008. I know this rumor has been around for a while, but it's especially interesting for a few reasons. One of the big rumor sites is finally putting a date on it; an analyst and a CNET blog were just saying the same thing; and Gruber at Daring Fireball is actually buying it.

[Jasoco]

I'm hoping, but I'm not counting on it.

Will be nice. But lowered expectations bring less disappointment. This I have learned on my journey through life. A 13" with a 15" resolution multitouch screen, an external home stored SuperDrive for thinness and lightness, the same ease of HD upgrading (I want to take the HD right out of my MacBook and plop it into the new one with no file transferring.) and RAM replacing, and an attractive aluminum design with anodized color choices (I want red. Or green.) would be my dream. All for the low low price of $1999

I miss colors. I never thought I would miss colors.

And with tools like MacTheRipper and HandBrake, I won't miss having a built-in SuperDrive.

Now if only I could get a portable 1TB HD in a laptop... Is it 2011 yet?

Come on, Apple. Make it true. Big money. Big money. No whammies. STOP!

[crazeazn]

still waiting.

[Nodnarb]

Analysts today aresaying it's coming at MWSF

[f1000]

Originally Posted by slugslugslug 

Can't believe Frans hasn't been back to bump this today. AppleInsider's reporting that the (optical-drive-less) ultraportable is set to arrive at MacWorld 2008. I know this rumor has been around for a while, but it's especially interesting for a few reasons. One of the big rumor sites is finally putting a date on it; an analyst and a CNET blog were just saying the same thing; and Gruber at Daring Fireball is actually buying it.

It really wasn't much of a rumor as it was inevitable that Apple and other manufacturers were eventually going to build such ultralights. I was musing that Apple might add flash cache RAM to its computers almost two years ago, and I know that scientists/engineers have been fantasizing about such applications for at least a decade prior:

Originally Posted by f1000 

I prefer ripping DVDs sans compression onto a 100GB hard drive and doing without cumbersome disks. Besides, optical drives are clunky and noisy.

It'd be cool if Apple could incorporate both Flash RAM and a HD into an ultralight, and then access frequent read but rare write files from the Flash RAM: a sort of hybrid hard drive. I'm for anything that miniaturizes, makes quieter, uses less power, or enhances ruggedness.

A MacTablet, though, would really be something...

Now that Apple's put out an iPhone, I wonder how much longer until the MacTablet appears?

[Cadaver]

Not sure if anyone's mentioned it in this thread yet (didn't read all three pages) but I'd love to see an Apple ultralight similar to the Sony Vaio TZ series.
SonyStyle.com | Sony | VAIO� TZ Series Notebook

Expensive, yes, but 2.6 lbs! Very sharp & bright 11.1" (16:9 1366x768) LED backlit screen with a webcam, DL-DVDRW, up to a 1.2GHz ULV Core 2 Duo, up to 2GB RAM, Intel 950 graphics like the Mac mini and older MacBooks, VGA out, gigabit ethernet, 4-pin Firewire, 2 USB 2.0, ExpressCard/34 slot, bluetooth, a/b/g/n wifi, SD card reader and an internal Sprint WWAN card. Sony claims 4-8.5 hrs on the standard battery; up to 13 hrs on the bigger, partly external battery.

I'm thinking I'll wait until MWSF, then if I'm not super in love with Apple's rumored ultralight, presuming it turns out to be real, I'll buy myself one of these with a solid state drive (they have a 48GB version, or a model with a 64GB SSD and a 200GB HD in place of the optical drive) and attempt to hack in either Tiger or Leopard on to it.

Played with one last week at ChumpUSA. Really slick. 50% the size of a MacBook. The drawback is that obviously it doesn't run the MacOS (maybe with the OSx86 hack?). What I want is a super portable Keynote/PowerPoint machine (and running an exported video off an iPod/iPhone isn't a viable solution for me). Using a Vista machine would force me to use PowerPoint for everything (yuck), though I prefer Keynote. I really hope Apple comes through with a machine that fits my needs.

[Gish]

I feel that the 12" PowerBook is an (almost) perfect median between a full featured laptop and a sub-notebook. It is very small, but still features a full-sized keyboard and an optical drive, plus a nice screen.

[Jasoco]

As long as it's 16:10 widescreened and has a larger resolution than 1024x768.