Samsung vows "lighter than air" notebook

Samsung used IFA to claim the limelight with its X360 notebook. The system is consciously pitted against the MacBook Air and is described as "lighter than air," carrying the same 13.3-inch screen as its Apple counterpart but weighing a slightly lighter 2.8 pounds. Samsung reaches the goal by using a slower, ultra-low voltage Core 2 Duo processor which sacrifices performance in return for smaller, cooler components and battery life between six to 10 hours.

The Korea-made portable also concedes a certain amount of thickness, ranging between 0.66 inches and 1.2 inches thick, but in return has features omitted from the Air such as Ethernet, an ExpressCard/34 slot and a multi-format card reader. It also finds room for three USB ports, HDMI and VGA out, and a fingerprint reader. Wireless is currently equal to the MacBook with 802.11n but should have options for 3G cellular and WiMAX data before the end of 2008.

Like Lenovo and its ThinkPad X301, Samsung mandates solid-state drives for storage and will offer a base 1500-Euro ($2,213) model with a 64GB flash drive. Higher-priced models climb as high as 2000 Euros ($2,951) for an edition of the X360 with a 128GB drive. Samsung releases the notebook worldwide in October but doesn't sell its portables in North America.