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Samsung takes on the Macbook Air

Walt Mossberg reviews the Samsung Series 9 ultra-thin laptop:

The comparison with the MacBook Air, also a halo-type laptop, is inescapable. Unlike most Windows laptops, but like the Apple, the new Samsung has a large touch pad with no buttons—the entire pad is a button.

Also features a sealed battery, no wired-Ethernet port and no DVD drive. Also thinner than the Macbook Air at the thicker edge (the hinge). So far so good.

Then again, it’s more expensive. $350 more for the mainstream version and $200 more for the upcoming 11-inch version. Of course, that’s because it has better hardware: a new processor, newer USB, more RAM, brighter screen.

And here’s the kicker:

But better specs don’t always translate into a better experience. For instance, in my tests, I found that the Mac was typically ready to work a couple of seconds faster than the Samsung and that, while the Samsung booted up and rebooted very quickly for a Windows PC, the Mac started and restarted in about half the time.

But the biggest difference, in my experience, was battery life. Both companies claim their competing laptops can get up to seven hours of use between charges. But my tests suggest that Samsung falls well short of that claim, while Apple meets or exceeds it.

Throwing money at a problem is just the half of it.