Whether you’re buying for a spouse, a parent, a child, or yourself, laptops make great gifts. Even if your recipient already owns a portable notebook, she may need a new one that is faster, lighter, or better at media playback.
We’ve gathered together the 10 notebooks that make the best gifts, based on the user’s needs. From laptops with over 10 hours of battery life and great bargain notebooks to sweet gaming rigs we’ve got you covered.
Just like its 2010-era predecessor, this ultraportable is wonderfully thin (0.11 to 0.68 inches) and light (3 pounds), and it boots in just 17 seconds. But the new Air ups the ante with a backlit keyboard and a faster 1.7-GHz Intel Core i5 processor.
The notebook is also quite versatile, thanks to a higher-res 1440 x 900-pixel display and the new Thunderbolt port for connecting the laptop to a growing number of super high-speed peripherals. The Air still has a spacious 4.1 x 3-inch glass touchpad, and new multitouch gestures let you get the most out of OS X Lion.