[Ian]

After 5 years of my trusty old Dell X1 laptop, I've finally upgraded to something with a little more power. I've been looking for a reasonably powerful, reasonably cheap ultra-portable laptop for some time.

With family dotted all over the UK, we seem to be forever travelling around, so I've been after a light laptop to stick in a rucksack and be able to work from when we're away. I've been considering a 10" netbook, but the Atom processor isn't powerful enough for multitasking and isn't ideal for any extended period of typing.

After much googling, I decided to take a punt on the Packard Bell Dot U laptop - it's basically a slight upgrade from the Acer 1810tz - and a little cheaper. It's got a 12" screen, 3GB RAM and a Intel Pentium U5400 CPU (a cut down i3). Plenty for basic multitasking, but I'm not going to be video editing or gaming on it . The main selling point by far for me was that it weighs only 1.3kg - easy enough to carry around in a rucksack without noticing it.

I've not been a fan of Acer/PB in the past, so I took a bit of a risk with this one - but it was far cheaper than any alternatives in the same spec bracket (£425).

It should arrive in a few days time, so I'll post here and let you know what it's like when I get it . It's not going to be a mainstream laptop, as it's primarily built as a cheap ultra-light machine - so if you want power there are much better buys available (and probably cheaper).

Fingers crossed

[floppybootstomp]

Bit of a pricey risk eh?

But things evolve, change, goalposts move and yesterday's bad boy can become today's wunderkid.

Always an open mind.

Good luck and I look forward to hearing what you think of it.

[Quadophile]

Look forward to hearing the good news, will keep the fingers crossed.

If you can spare 10GB of disk space you should install Ubuntu 10.10 on it. Its a wonderful operating system and comes in many variations to suit everyone. If you want to just surf the web at times you are better off with Linux than Windoze from security point of view.

[Quadophile]

Is this what you got?

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/lapto...ard-bell-dot-u

[muckshifter]

aye, Acer own PB, but what the heck, it's usually "customer support" that lets a lot of these companies down, if something does go wrong, they are adverse to helping you.

enjoy!!

[crazylegs]

Be interesting to see how it performs in the real world!

Battery at 6 and a half hours will probably equate to more like 4 hours normal use, looks like a good cheap lappy though so will wait for your comments Ian ..

[EvanDavis]

Originally Posted by muckshifter

it's usually "customer support" that lets a lot of these companies down,

Aye. Get rid of Acer support and that stupid bl**dy Acer Empowering Technology that's installed on them, and there's nowt wrong with Acer. I have had a couple f Acer laptops and once the Empowering Tech software was removed they were OK. They have only been retired cause of age

[Ian]

Yep, it's a bit of a risk - but the alternatives cost around £700+ and still don't get quite as light as this. I'd have to spend a lot more (over £1000) on something like a high end Sony or Dell to get close to this power/weight ratio - which isn't going to happen . Fingers crossed! As long as the build quality is good and it matches the specs, then I'll be happy - hopefully I won't need to get in touch with CS about anything (or I may regret it!).

Quad, I'm going to turn my old Laptop in to an Ubuntu 10.10 machine for a while and use it as a test bed. I keep dipping in and out of Linux, mainly as a Virtual Machine, so it will be interesting to see how it works on a low-powered laptop.

The PC Pro link is the one and the same laptop . It gets the thumbs up there, so I'm hoping that it is indeed good!

As long as it does 4+ hours under normal load, I'll be happy. My current one lasts around 50 mins!

Evan, I'm going to get a clean W7 x64 install on the laptop to de-clutter all of the bundled software.

[Quadophile]

Originally Posted by Ian Cunningham

Quad, I'm going to turn my old Laptop in to an Ubuntu 10.10 machine for a while and use it as a test bed. I keep dipping in and out of Linux, mainly as a Virtual Machine, so it will be interesting to see how it works on a low-powered laptop.

When you say low powered laptop what are the actual specs on the machine like, CPU, HD and RAM to say the least.

My laptop on which I have the Ubuntu 10.10 is having 1.6GHz Pentium M processor, 40 GB HD and 2 GB RAM, it is a whole lot quicker than the other OS Windows XP I have on it. I am sure your old laptop beats mine in specs and if so you will love the Ubuntu 10.10 a lot. However, I would want you to test it out on your new machine which will actually give you the real feel of the OS.

[Ian]

It's an old 1.1Ghz (perhaps 1.3) Pentium M, 1.5GB Ram and 30GB hard drive - but it's lasted well for 5 years . I'll make another thread on this once I'm ready to give Ubuntu a shot . I'm sure I'll end up dual-booting with it on the new one too, once I've had a chance to tinker.

I've just got the tracking number for the laptop delivery, so I'm hoping it will be here tomorrow