Time for a New Laptop

For months, I have been looking at different laptops but none fit the bill (a small, light, fast laptop for a developer – yes, I want it all!!). Every time I found a potential laptop candidate , it would have a lousy screen resolution (i.e. 1366×768). My kids suggested (many times) that I get a MacBook Air. A perfect laptop except I cannot do MQ development on Mac OS X, I need either Windows or Linux laptop. Yes, I could dual-boot it but then I have purchase Win7 and I would lose hard drive space to both operating systems.

Back in early October, I read a review about a new ASUS ZenBook that is a MacBook Air clone. The specifics for the ASUS ZenBook looked great, in particular, I really liked UX31E-DH72 model but nobody had it. The Canadian retailers web sites listed as it being available at the end of November. 🙁

Being Canadian, the US Thankgiving/Black Friday is meaningless to us but it is a great excuse to travel to the US, have a vacation and do some shopping. 🙂 One of the places I like to go to when I am in Michigan, is Micro Center in Madison Heights. While looking around in Micro Center, I decided to ask if they had any ASUS ZenBook in stock, in particular the UX31E-DH72 model, and the sales rep said yes. He went and retrieved it from the back, opened it and handed it to me. It was awesome. 🙂 And it never left my hands. Sadly, it was not on sale, so I had to pay $1449.00.

ASUS UX31E-DH72 is small, light and fast. Here are the specs:
– 13.3-inch display (1600×900 pixels)
– Intel Core i7-2677M
– 4GB RAM
– 256GB SSD
– Bluetooth 4.0
– USB 3.0 port
– Wireless 802.11bgn
– Includes an USB to Ethernet dongle
– Multi-Touch mouse pad
– Weight is 1.29 kilograms (2.86 pounds)

I have only had the laptop for a few days, but so far, 2 great big thumbs up from me. 🙂

Regards,
Roger Lacroix
Capitalware Inc.