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Price wise this particular spec of Flybook will set you back £1399 including VAT. Now, it’s a fair rule of thumb that the smaller and lighter a notebook is, the more it costs. To be fair though, the Flybook doesn’t appear to be excessively expensive, but you have to remember that the spec is pretty modest compared to other ultra-portable notebooks, and you’re not getting an optical drive in the bargain.

On the surface the Flybook looks like a very attractive ultra-portable notebook with more wireless connection options than you could shake a stick at. But dig a little deeper and the Flybook doesn’t stand up so well to the competition. Yes, the Flybook only weighs 1.23kg, but then the Sony VAIO TX2XP only weighs 1.25kg – then consider that the Sony will give you over seven hours of battery life, while the Flybook can only muster around a third of that.

But what about the Flybook’s integrated wireless WAN feature? I hear you say. The problem here is that a whole host of notebook manufacturers have announced models with integrated 3G support – that means that even the forthcoming revised Flybook with EDGE support won’t be able to keep up. Add to this the fact that this new breed of 3G enabled notebooks will make use of the new high-speed HSDPA standard, and the Flybook starts to look rather under specified.

Verdict

Perhaps if I had reviewed the Flybook when it first hit the streets I may have been more impressed, but things have moved on a great deal since then. There are dual core mobile processors, integrated 3G modules and some killer designs on offer, all of which add up to make life very hard for the Flybook. I’m keen to see whether Dialogue will rise to this challenge and evolve the Flybook accordingly, but as things stand it looks like this little notebook may be swept aside with the wave of new technology.

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