Lenovo - 12.5" IdeaPad Notebook - 4 GB Memory - 320 GB Hard Drive - Brown

I confess that I owned a MacBook Air after 30+ years of IBM, Microsoft, and Windows. I tried desperately to use it in the classroom for a year only to discover that despite Office and PowerPoint, it did not behave like a windows machine when it froze or did something that I did not understand. That left me in front of a class with no PowerPoint and no idea how to fix the problem (usually I could muddle through after a few minutes of embarrassed fiddling). I prayed that some PC maker would attempt to emulate the MBA in a reasonably-priced, usable machine. The minute I spotted the Lenovo U260 that weighed the same as the MBA, used Windows 7, and was completely familiar to me in every every respect, I purchased it online, picked it up at the local Best Buy and have loved it ever since. On the third day of class, it dropped off a podium (I nudged the video cable by accident) and landed on a ceramic tile floor after a 4 foot unsuccessful attempt to fly. I placed it back on the podium, rebooted, and it started perfectly and has been working like a charm ever since. The owner's manual boasts of its ability to stop the hard drive during such an incident and I lost nothing as a result. The only evidence of the incident was a miniscule dent on one corner of the cast aluminum body (a nice rubberized brown in contract to the Apple brushed aluminum). All I can say, is I love it -- particularly when toting it from one side of O'Hare to the other while running at full tilt.