source: businessweek
When Intel asked designers to build a better laptop, its instructions were simple, really. The machine has to be fashionable, able to connect to all manner of wireless networks, and full of the latest, fastest computing capabilities. Oh yes, and make it as thin as Motorola’s Razr. Its own engineers in conjunction with Ziba Design in Portland, Ore., rose to the challenge.
The result, code-named Intel mobile Metro notebook, is less than 0.7 inches thick—about one-quarter of an inch thicker than Motorola’s (MOT) iconic cell phone, making it the world’s thinnest notebook. And at 2.25 pounds, it’s also one of the lightest small-sized portable computers. Other features include always-on Internet connectivity via various wireless technologies:
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This looks nice and cool. The only thing that I noticed is that a display model of this machine has Windows Vista installed. I think this makes it looks 4 times less as cool, as it could have looked with Ubuntu logo..
Common Intel, clean your “interior” design. 
hey, I want one! Right now!
It’s ok for Intel to make laptops, even notebooks are fine.
But why the heck they installed Vista on the display model!? I don’t get it.
Yea, man – Ubuntu on that baby! All the way!
Oddly enough, its not even the most up date version of Vista… if it is Vista at all… Looks like an old beta from back in the Long Horn Days. (Could even be XP themed to be the old vista…. who knows?)
Now, for the laptop itself, its looks pretty slick. Although, I could pass on the red text color for the keyboard. The question is though, ifs the smalls, and one of the lightest laptops, will it be really expensive? And, will it have enough computer power packed in that little spot to be worth the extra cost of a thin laptop.
i am running ubuntu right now and love it
Now THATS a think laptop! very cool looking, but it looks fragile too. Wonder how well it would hold up for the average road warrior? Also I bet all the drives are external (CD/DVD/Floppy etc). That accessorial crap gets heavy. I bet it has spare batteries too.
Agreed on points against Vista.
Eric
That’s not Windows Vista, it’s XP with a Vista theme pack installed. The start button is not the Vista circle, and the user image on the start menu is on the wrong side.
Bye the way that was a 3D model in max or maya or something like that no the real one.. and the creator put the skin wrong
Maybe it’s a Vista with the XP-theme “Vista All Wrong”?
It looks like XP with the menu customized so there are small icons and a color change to it’s background, not too hard to manage really.
Why would they install Windows? It’s not like the billions of people who use Windows would make a good market, they’re better off targeting the fifteen thousand Ubuntu users. That would make sense!
Yeah it’s preposterous, they’d never install windows on that! It’d lose money!
I don’t want one, I won’t buy one, and I won’t accept one as a gift. O.K. maybe I would accept one as a gift. But without Vists or Windows, please. And change those horrible red keys, for god’s sake.
the guy who just wrote on here is a nob they look kool and if he reads this
YOUR A NOB!!!!!!!
Ubuntu is ultra SHIT!!!
I AGREE WITH SIROJ
BECAUSE IT IS
“Why would they install Windows? It’s not like the billions of people who use Windows would make a good market, they’re better off targeting the fifteen thousand Ubuntu users. That would make sense!”
Sure it would, let me see, I want to sell my product to the end users, but I want the largest share in the market… Hmmmmmmmm, wow tough problem… 15,000 Ubuntu users, or 30 million world wide users, you are correct this is such a difficult decision….
ok… Point one, I am sick to death of which OS is best, who cares?, run what you like, just don’t preach to me. Point 2.The reason windows is installed is because Micky soft is in bed with Intel, any one who can read past 3rd grade level knows this. They blackmailed a lot of OEM’s from day one… If they did not install windows… blah blah blah… Point 3. most pc’s come loaded with a bundle of software that is useless, or no one likes. One of the most famous ones is Norton anti… (absolute POS), and then try to force you to PAY them to upgrade to the real version.
My beef is it all slows down the system. and I teach seniors about their pc’s, they don’t even understand what it does. I delete it and install open source. It works , and it’s free. They are happy.
Hey, why not get the note book, delete the OS and install what you want? WOW, what a concept! As for the red keys…. No Idea, could be for visibility, but I doubt it. maybe the engineers hate you and made it red to piss you off.
But hey what do I know?
I like the red. Also,i was gonna say what bobb with two bs said. Just install a different OS. To be honest I would take just about any kind of hardware. Toshiba Sats so far took the most work for me get everything working on Linux. The harder the better. I like the challenge. It really isnt that hard, though.
Nice…
They’ve put Vista on it because it’s the most advanced OS in present…and also the most stable one
Thats the problem, a lot of Linux users just have too much free time and enjoy dinking around in a new OS like their doing something new. I don’t want that, I want something that works now. And makes logical sense in filenames. There is nothing wrong with Windows XP/Vista for a normal user. Many of these XP/Vista bashing articles/pictures/comments I’ve seen are the result of stupid users not a stupid OS. So stop trying to make me try Linux again. The OS sucks and takes to much freetime to get working normally with all my equiptment.
Anyway, This laptop looks really slick. I wouldn’t mind the red keys it’s nice to get away from the standard white and modded blue.
Don’t group “linux users” and “ubuntu users” all together. There’s something about ubuntu users that just pisses me off. It’s not even that great of a distro. Personally, I think openSuse is by far the greates distro, but really…who cares? And I won’t even give my opinion about microsoft, because it just doesn’t matter. As far as the laptop, it is pretty cool, but I’m curious how durable something like this would be. This is a pretty crappy article anyway. How can anyone have a valid opinion on a laptop when they don’t say anything about the hardware specs? Something this small probably has 100% proprietary hardware…from the hard drive to the memory. I’ll take a slightly larger, more durable, and much cheaper laptop myself.
Actually its not Vi$ta at all its Royale Noir theme in either windows XP or its Win XP MCE But the laptop pictured above will likely never be released to the public as is the same as the so called 300Ghz cpu IBM claims to be cooking up
why wont my girlfriend believe that thinner is better??
ts: “This is a pretty crappy article anyway. How can anyone have a valid opinion on a laptop when they don’t say anything about the hardware specs?”
Hey ts, the fact that you are pissed at Ubuntu users (which I am) should not cloud your mind with useless sentences. I have not given ANY opinion about the laptop, just wanted to share with the crowd that this cool looking thing is out.
Starfox, you are right I just noticed that this is not Vista (at least it might not be) due to the long green start button – thank you
Great…looks cool….like a black apple mac book pro…
bookmarked @ livbit
http://www.livbit.com
I disagree with the “vista makes it uglier” comment; if it’s able to run vista we know it will at least have ten gig ram and be able to compute pi.
Ubuntu is gay. Get Mandriva or openSUSE on that thing.
Hey, it looks slick but what about heat? Will it run cool or burn a hole in my lap?
I bet you’d like that. Bow Chicka Bow Wow.
Where does the number of 15000 Ubuntu users come from? The number of Linux installations on desktops around the world is estimated at roughly 40-60 million. And Ubuntu has only 0.03% of that? LOL.
BTW, I agree that Ubuntu sucks, but mainly in only one way – its default desktop environment (GNOME). But there is still KDE-based Kubuntu for people that want great usability.
Well, whatever your distribution, you are still much better off than with that over-hyped Windows stuff in many, many ways.
@ehh: Mandriva even sounds gay.
Ubuntu sounds retarted. And openSUSE sounds like food. mmmm suse.
It looks amazing, and also I think Vista is not that bad – I am not anti – microsoft, but not pro either yeah ubuntu would look good and I like the colour of the keys.
It is the unreleased official Royale Noir theme for xp that they are using on that – it isn’t vista at all (http://www.istartedsomething.com/20061029/royale-noir/)
Royal-Noir has to be one of the most blan themes for Windows. Vista has it’s ups and downs, more downs than ups. This laptop is like Vista it to has it’s ups and downs. And I agree with most here get rid of the red keys, how about puke green or pepto pink?
great looking laptop, but no specs.
also, why is noone mentioning fedora?
fedora is awsum.
I like the red keys but who cares? (If you could backlight change the colours, that’d be cool)
I use Ubuntu (have used SUSE, Fedora/Red Hat, and a few others) but who cares?
Some people prefer Windows or OSX but who cares?
I theme my computer but who cares?
I just need a computer that works!! That’s ALL I care about.
BTW. Eric asked if peripheral drives like Floppies will fit. What the hell is a Floppy? And CD/DVD drives might be like mature dinosaurs too – not sure though.
I want one, its slick
Now THATS a think laptop! very cool looking, but it looks fragile too. Wonder how well it would hold up for the average road warrior? Also I bet all the drives are external (CD/DVD/Floppy etc). That accessorial crap gets heavy. I bet it has spare batteries too.
Agreed on points against Vista.
That version of windows isn’t a skinned XP, or royale noir. I have both, and it’s vista, but a very early version. I believe beta one looked like that, (Yea I was a beta tester) with the white windows logo on the start button. You can also look in the lower right hand corner of the desktop that it has some white text. This is the build number of the beta release. They could have used it for a few reasons. For example, they may have used it because they got an early screenshot from microsoft, or they wanted something that looked like XP and vista to appeal to people from both audiences.
And yea, ubuntu does look cooler, but you gotta admit vista doesn’t look too shabby, and it is much smarter from a marketing perspective to have it show vista on it, as the majority of the population would complain and ask, why doesn’t my computer look like that? When they unpack it after ordering vista because its new, and “the operating system they should use nowadays”
Intel 2 Recommendations. One, stick with back lit key colors that make sense with the Intel name (blue). And, two, since that appears to be a picture of the first Vista beta PSed onto the laptop, please, please, please consider making Vista a paid for choice and cutting the price by 80 or so by sending it out the door with Ubuntu. Other than that it looks awesome and clean, and I want one!!!
That’s not Vista, it’s Windows XP with the Royale Noir theme installed. They did use the Vista like background, however. Huge fail.
Ubuntu FTW!
I just read Miles’s comment and he’s right. It’s the beta of Vista but at a glance it looks like XP. Notice the desktop and systray icons. Not that I care so much that I was wrong. Who uses Microsoft products these days? Cavemen perhaps?
Linux sucks. Same with Macs. Its funny that they have to emulate windows in every way just so they are usable… But Windows sucks, right? lol
well then go out and get ubuntu if you guys hate vista, no one says that you can’t buy ubuntu or that you have to use vista. im currently running vista and its not as bad as everyone says.
The problem is that it brings the cost of the laptop up. Were talking up to 150 or more. I have Vista. I use XP and Ubuntu. I don’t ever wanna pay for Vista again. And BTW, the best part about Ubuntu is that I don’t have to “go out and get” it.
Oh, and I guess all this really doesn’t matter since Apple just announced the MacBook Air.
http://www.t3.com/news/hands-on-with-apples-macbook-air?=35087
Oh, and I guess all this really doesn’t matter since Apple just announced the MacBook Air. Visibly thinner than this to say the least.
mac air is thinnr
haha however at a whopping 1799 dollars i’d rather spend that much less for this lol
that is a “hidden” theme for xp not a vista pack, it is called royale noir.
is a black version of the media centre edition theme
im to poor to buy this =(