One day down, many more to go

School has begun, and this semester is looking to be what's more commonly referred to as a bitch. However, on the lighter side, my Gateway LT3103u is shaping up to be a fantastic school-bag tag-along. It makes my bag feel smaller than my Aspire One used to somehow. Perhaps because it fits the contour of my bag instead of poking out at the bottom. Battery life was impressive. Keep in mind, this is only after one day of school, so things could change.

I reinstalled Windows 7 RC 64 bit again, and somehow I prefer it. It just seems to run better than the 32 bit version. I can't explain how, because I probably have no logical basis to argue on anyway. It just feels faster. What really astounded me is how it handled Visual Studio 2008. Now VS2008 isn't exactly a lightweight piece of kit. To be honest, I expected it to take its time to get going and to do anything like my old Acer Travelmate did with it. But it doesn't. It launches instantly, and opens even decently sized solutions in under 10 seconds. And by decently sized I mean something like a 5 member term project from last semester. And this was on battery!

In addition to work, I also played a bit yesterday. I jumped on WoW quickly, but the school's WiFi failed me as it usually does. Then I surfed for a bit, probably close to an hour total. At the end of my day (12:30 - 8, but I went home at 7) the battery read 80%. That includes pulling the laptop out in every class to read through the syllabus and surf a bit on the side.

That's good news for me, because I didn't have to bring my AC adapter with me to weigh my bag down. With my new fancy mouse and laptop, I barely noticed my bag was any heavier. It will probably come with me from now on as intended.

All's well then? Perhaps.

Have you spied the new Acer 1410, or Timeline 1810? Impressive. That's the Timeline I was waiting for when I bought the Gateway. Then Dell launches its own 11.6 incher with a ULV cpu. And now we have a Windows 7 ION-equipped Lenovo S12 coming soon. Then the Samsung variant. The end of summer is shaping up to be an exciting one. The Summer of the Ultraportable. Beware, consumers, your day is dawning.