I would like to buy a second laptop to run Ubuntu, but I want something with incredible build quality. I'm an Apple user, so clearly I don't mind paying a premium (ta-dum tss).
The closest I've found is Lenovo, but their product still comes in a fully plastic enclosure containing a hundred screws and as many tacked on plastic panels as a Pontiac Aztek. I've read about their "roll cage", and I think that's a pretty cool idea, but it still doesn't hold up to Apple's unibody designs. I owned a T41 back around 2005 (best guestimate), so I'm not speaking entirely from ignorance of the product. I really don't feel it matches my MacBook Pro.
Now, you might say that I'm being unreasonable, but I have the money, and I'm willing to spend it. If anyone has a lead on a well-built laptop with the design simplicity of an Apple MacBook, I'm interested to hear about it.
I'm looking for:
Something in the 13" range. I don't need anything super-powerful (C2D and 2 GB of RAM should be fine). I do care about build quality. The primary use-case is sysadmin duty. I want something small and light to take on the road that still has a bash shell. I want to go Ubuntu, rather than a 13" MBP because I've been very impressed with the work coming out of the Ubuntu community lately, and I don't like to limit my world to Apple alone. All of our VPSs run Debian, which is similar enough to Ubuntu that I can bring over a lot of my dot-files and customizations.
Only when you compare unlike with like. As soon as you look at similar spec, design and build quality it is a different story.
Like the Dell Adamo "Macbook Air killer":
All the talk about screen size and HDMI and ports is noise in the final price. You need to look at what Motorola is paying for things like flash, processor fab, and Gorilla Glass to understand why the price is so high.
"Digitimes reported Wednesday that Apple recently placed an order of 50 million 8Gb flash chips that it plans to use for that iPhone thing you might have heard about, and therefore the rest of Samsung's customers will have to wait for their chips."
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-9983117-37.html
So if you're scrounging for NAND on the open market, you're gonna get screwed on price. It's not just Moto that's feeling the pressure.
I don’t think that $800 tablets with extravagant specs will help Android corner the tablet market. Specs luckily don’t matter much anymore.
Specs obviously still matter when it comes to the price but they don’t matter to consumers. They want a snappy device, that’s all.
EDIT: I've found one bit of news that suggests there'll be a wifi only Xoom: http://androidcommunity.com/motorola-xoom-wifi-clears-fcc-20...
If you have any doubts about Motorola’s intent to compete with Apple head on, here is their Super Bowl commercial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09vmRWeNZSM
This video from Motorola makes their intent even clearer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vRgesYJHKo
They don’t want to target the higher end of the market, they want to obsolete the iPad. They shouldn’t be surprised when they get then criticized harshly for not delivering.
I do believe that only good quality tablets can compete head on with the iPad but I do also think that the price point is important. Apple has shown that it is possible to make a high quality $500 tablet.