Just heard about the Gateway LT3103u - hope to see a review!
The spec sheet looks good for a $400USD "netbook+".
i.e. 3lbs, 11.6" 1366 x 768 LED backlight, AMD64 1.2GHz (single core), 2GB RAM, ATI X1270 graphics (dx9b), ~5 hr battery, 250GB HD.
Unfortunately (for some), as MS doesn't offer XP Home to this category, it comes with Vista Basic.
http://www.gateway.com/systems/product/529668268.php

Battery life chart for movie playback has the Eee PC and NC20 labels or bar colors switched from the web surfing chart right before this. I'm assuming this wasn't intentional, and that the labels are correct.

someday in the future, everyone should just be allowed to built their own laptop completely from scratch. it will cost $3K in parts, but then everyone will get exactly what they want, unequivocally.

I expect we'll see more of this sort of form factor. I've heard it called TLC -- thin, light, cheap.

And this one was looking pretty good until we got to the screen and keyboard. 16:9 is a no (at least when the 9 is just 768) and bad keyboard is a hell, no. And that's even before we get to the touchpad. I guess that's where the "cheap" comes in. It's too bad. But on such failures are the eventual successes built.

The X340 asserts its performance dominance over the other laptops in the 7-Zip decompression test, but it falls to the middle of the pack with decompression.

Page 6.

FYI, MSI uses the same Sentelic (note, not Sentilec) branded touchpads on newer Wind U100 netbooks as well. (Maybe the U115 and U120 as well, though I can't say for sure.) That's one of the gripes Wind users have -- no multitouch.

(I have an Advent 4211c that, like older Wind U100s, uses a Synaptics v6.5 touchpad. This also lacks multitouch unlike "v6.2" touchpads as found on some other netbooks, but apparently it's better at tracking a finger.)

This system strikes a compelling of balance portability and capability at its $799 price point.

I'd either get the real deal from Apple ($1500), or I'd get a conventional 15" laptop with proper performance. A bunch of obsolete parts packed into a small form factor does not make a compelling product. In my opinion.

The lack of swipe to scroll doesn't bother me. Is the keyboard WORSE than a Wind U100? Thats what I use every day now, and wouldn't mind upgrading to this machine. The U100's keyboard is fine for me though.

Great review. I am very curious about upgrading my asus 1000h.

Two questions

1. What is (performance) difference between the U2x00 and the SU3X00? From the intel website I can see that they are all rated at 5.5W and the price difference is negligible and (45nm vs. 65nm) . Researching on the web says that intel is selling the lower end chips (U2X00) for A HUGE discount $65/chip.

2. I have an ASUS 1000h and love it. Except for flash and sometimes sluggish response overall, I love it. When are more CULV chips coming (particulary the $65 CULV U2X00 Chips)? Prefer a 11" with discrete or AMD/NVIDIA chipsets.

Great review, Sco!

This is getting there. A 16:10 panel and more attention to the input devices make this a winner. My only concern is that with such little power, things like HDMI -- while awesome to have -- might be wasted.

I don't doubt Scott's technical prowess, but I cannot get over the results of the 1080p H.264 playback test.

When I play a 1080p H.264 trailer in Quicktime on an Athlon X2 2.5 GHz I get some stuttering with both cores basically pegged at 100% utilization. Yet somehow in this test the single-core 1.4 GHz Core 2 Solo manages similar performance with acceleration is disabled! I realize that Scott used PowerDVD with DXVA disabled so the results cannot be directly compared, but still, the gap is huge.

I'm curious, what kind of performance have others experienced when playing 1080p H.264 files? Is there in fact a massive difference between AMD and Intel CPUs because of SSE4 etc. performance?

Nice review Scott, as always.

MSI - very close, but as Dr. Evil would say this is like the Diet Coke of evil, just one calorie, not quite evil enough.

Now, do this, bump up the price, and mini-me will sell well:

- swap out the core2 solo for a ulv core2 duo or ulv pentium dual-core; give us dual-core even with a little less power.

- swap out the 4500 chipset for a proper GeForce 9400M.

- replace that keyboard with something people can actually use.

- replace that touch/scroll-pad with something people can actually use.

Yes, that sounds like a lot of asks... but think about it: you should be able to do all of that without changing anything else.

Great review, Scott Sco!

It's a shame about that keyboard/trackpad. This thing otherwise would really put the MBa to shame. (although that's not exactly setting the bar that high)

Interesting product. Any word on the battery life?

I just don't understand the appeal of these things.

Are small laptops really that heavy and large?

A 13inch laptop is plenty small for travel.

So really the complaint could be weight. I fail to see how utterly butchering the hardware is worth losing ~1.5-2 pounds.

I mean seriously, every review I see of these netbooks or ultraportables there are glaring issues but surely the perfect one is around the corner. Why bother, just buy a small laptop that can handle the tasks you want to perform and call it a day.

Don't get me wrong, I would love a paper thin portable device that could game and play HD video and have awesome battery life but call me crazy if you must because I buy based on function in the real world.

Acer Timeline reviews seem like their new ultraslim is far superior to the msi x340, especially since they offer core 2 duo's as an upgrade, and have substantially longer battery life when comparing the core 2 solo models. not to mention a decent keyboard and trackpad. and subjectively, i think they look better.

Adobe really needs add DXVA to Flash. It's totally unacceptable that a system that can easily play 1080p video can't play 480p video in Flash.

I thought this was the system guide for june and I got all excited, and then I realized it was a review.

Its like trading gold for silverish gold, please release the system guide soon!

Great review as always guys. It has certainly peaked my interest into the ultra portable segment.

Question: Were you making sure AMD's cool 'n quiet technology was working on the dv2? I only ask because I recently built an AMD system for my brother using a 5050e and noticed CnQ wasn't working. After doing some reading I read that in XP you have to set the power saving options to at least "Minimum Savings" for the down-volting/clocking to occur. Then I read this on notebookreview.com:

Under normal use, backlight at 50 percent and using wireless for web browsing and Vista set to "Power Saver" mode, the 6-cell battery managed to deliver four hours and 12 minutes of battery life...If you switch to the "High Performance" mode in Windows Vista and boost the screen brightness to maximum then the battery life of the HP Pavilion dv2 drops to a modest two hours and 24 minutes.

I'm wondering if the reason you're getting such shoddy battery life is because CnQ isn't working correctly. I ask this question in this review because I just recently thought of it. Anyway, no biggie if you can't get around to answering it.

Definately more appealing then an Atom based system. Video playback is a requirement for my usage patterns.