Deal of the Day: Save $250 on HP Folio 13

Looking for a sturdy Ultrabook with long battery life for all your business needs? Look no further. HP’s Folio 13 is a business Ultrabook that’s $250 off today. Normally $1,050, the HP Folio 13 is $800 today plus free shipping through a deal with LogicBUY.

When we reviewed the Ultrabook, we praised its sturdy design, great sounds, long battery life, comfortable backlit keyboard and fast boot and resume from sleep times. We thought HP could’ve improved its stiff clickpad, relatively dim screen, warm bottom and general bulkiness for an Ultrabook, but it still earned four out of five stars in our rating.

Base specs: 13.3? LED display, up to 9.25 hours battery life, 128GB SSD, HD webcam, multi-gesture touchpad, USB 3.0 ports, CoolSense technology, Dolby Advanced Audio, backlit keyboard, HDMI, 2-in-1 card reader, Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth

HP Folio 13 Core i5 1.6-GHz Ultrabook w/128GB SSD and backlit keyboard for $800 through LogicBUY

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Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet Keyboard Folio Case: Amazing Keys, Lots of Bulk

Lenovo’s ThinkPad keyboards get raves for good reason: The key travel, feedback, and spacing make for the most comfortable typing available on a mobile device. When I saw the island-style keys on the Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet Keyboard Folio Case ($100 as of March 7, 2012), I thought there was no way the company could replicate that amazing typing feel with those keys. I was wrong.

It's all in the shape of the keys. Whereas most island-style keyboards have flat, square keys, the ThinkPad keys are concave, allowing your fingers to settle more easily into the middle of each key. The spacebar is just the opposite: It's rounded out, making it very easy to find with the sides of your thumbs. Key presses are deep and responsive. Even though the spacing is no wider than on other attachable keyboard docks, it feels roomier and more like typing on a laptop.

Since this device is an Android keyboard, the function keys on the top row are all Android-related. Across the top are volume controls, a home button, brightness controls, settings, lock, zoom in and out, and playback controls. Also of note are the actual, separate Page Up and Page Down keys accompanying the arrow keys. That's right--these are not secondary functions of the arrow keys, but dedicated keys, a pleasing find.

In the middle of the keyboard is what looks like an old-school ThinkPad eraserhead pointing stick--but it’s really oh-so-much better. It's an optical mouse that you don't have to push at all: Just glide your finger over it, and the cursor moves around the screen. By placing it in the middle of the keyboard, Lenovo keeps the main benefit of the pointing stick, since you don't have to shift your hands from the keyboard to move the cursor around the screen.

The keyboard connects by USB, but it is enclosed in the folio case in such a way that the Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet is the only thing that can fit the plug. That means the keyboard gets its power from the tablet’s sole USB port, so you don't need to worry about batteries or charging (though you do give up the ability to sideload something to the tablet via USB). The keyboard itself has three grooves along the back that the tablet slots into, providing three different angles; unfortunately, all three angles tipped the tablet a little too far back for my taste. All of the tablet's ports and buttons, as well as its pen, remain accessible when you have the tablet in the folio case, and you can easily slip the tablet in and out. The leather wrapping of the folio case gives it a premium feel.

I found some drawbacks, however. The Keyboard Folio Case is bulky, and adds a lot of weight. The ThinkPad Tablet is already one of the chunkier tablets on the market, and the extra bulk of the Keyboard Folio Case makes it rather unwieldy from a portability standpoint. On top of that, the dock offers no additional ports, and no extra battery. I might be more inclined to tolerate the bulk if this dock added running time, as the Asus Transformer TF101 Mobile Docking Station does. No matter how nice a keyboard is, if it makes you hesitate to add it to your bag because it's so big and heavy, the add-on is defeating the purpose of the tablet.

From PCWorld. Visit Amazon Computer and Notebook Center here

HP Folio 13 Review: An Ultrabook for the Masses

HP's Folio 13, the first of a new product line designed to appeal to both mainstream and business users, isn't the thinnest or lightest Ultrabook around. But unless you're a fanatic about such things, it will probably fill your needs better than its thinner and lighter competitors. It offers excellent performance and battery life, a fetchingly minimalist design, and a typing experience that thinner units can't match.

Our $899 (as of February 20, 2012) consumer configuration of the Folio 13 revolves around an Intel Core i5-2467M, 4GB of 1333 MHz DDR3, and a performance-enhancing 128GB Samsung solid-state drive. The display is flawlessly backlit and crisp, at 13.3 inches with a resolution of 1366 by 768. The $999 business version adds features such as a TPM (Trusted Platform Module) for security, a cleaner software image, and Windows 7 Professional rather than Windows 7 Home Premium.

The Folio 13's WorldBench 6 score of 118 is good for a Core i5-based machine, and in informal use the unit feels quite snappy. The integrated Intel HD 3000 graphics contribute to weak gaming frame rates, which top out in the low 30s at 800 by 600 resolution with low quality settings. Video, on the other hand, is smooth as silk, even when playing 1080p files. The battery lasts a healthy 6 hours, 46 minutes. If you need more time, though, you'll need to locate a power plug: The Folio 13 doesn't have a user-replaceable battery.

The Folio 13 comes with one USB 2.0 port and one USB 3.0 port. Though both are black, the USB 3.0 port is marked underneath with the SuperSpeed USB logo. A single HDMI port is available to accommodate external displays, and there's an SD slot for loading photos and such. A mobile-device-style mini-jack that combines headphones and mic into a single plug handles audio input and output. The microphone next to the 1280-by-1024-resolution webcam also accepts audio input. Connectivity is top-notch with gigabit ethernet, 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth 3.0 on board.

The Folio 13's keyboard has a nice feel, primarily because the keys can travel farther than on ultrathin laptops, but there's little flex to the unit as a whole, which contributes to a more stable typing platform. The single-piece touchpad is appealing, too, but resistance--to dragging and to clicking--is a tad greater than on most laptops. The Folio 13 travels at 4 pounds including the AC adapter, as against an average of 3.7 pounds for the Ultrabooks PCWorld has reviewed.

HP displays a pull-quote (from another publication) on the Folio 13's Web page that calls the Folio 13's sound "fantastic". Listening through the headphones, one might conceivably make that argument. But the speakers? No way. Audio through them is loud but more than a tad muddy. Superlatives such as "fantastic" should be reserved for laptops such as the Toshiba Qosmio X775 3D, which has a subwoofer that can reproduce bass tones sans the headphones. Still, the Folio 13's audio is a cut above the horrible sound you get from the speakers on most Ultrabooks.

In stark contrast to the Folio 13's minimalist outward design is the busy Windows 7 Home Premium desktop you encounter when you first boot up. Shortcuts to eBay, HP Games (Wild Tangent), RaRa music, Zya music, and HP downloads--as well as a number of more staid HP utilities and Microsoft Office 2010 Starter Edition--look gaudy in contrast to the elegant externals. HP's background images don't match the unit's appearance particularly well either.

The Folio 13 is a solid effort from HP that, instead of blindly shedding features and usability in the name of thin-and-light, strikes a reasonable balance. It's probably a tad pricey for some shoppers, but including a solid-state drive always drives up a laptop's price. This model should definitely be on your short list of Ultrabooks to consider.

From PCWorld. Visit Amazon Computer and Notebook Center here