VoodooPC's Envy 133, the world's thinnest laptop, just started shipping, and we scored one of the first production units straight outta Calgary. It's a lithe black laptop that keeps cool while running Vista, a super light machine that's strong as hell thanks to a carbon-fiber frame. It's the size of a MacBook Air with way more tech crammed inside, including its own second Linux-based operating system. And though it costs a lot more than most laptops that perform similar chores, it does it with a grace that I haven't seen since Vista's launch. It's not a gamer's system, but the Voodoo team deserves credit for using what they've learned to build a laptop that stands out when everything else on the PC market just blends in. Does it have any flaws? Yep, plenty. Here's the full review:

You know the Envy is well designed when you experience the initial unboxing. Generally, we're bored by the very notion of "unboxing" these days, but word is that Voodoo's chief designer is a packaging fanatic, you can totally tell by the elegantly nested, extra-heavy packaging that so carefully holds such a light, thin little notebook.

Once you have it out of the box and ready for action, you really notice how closely the Envy resembles a miniature black MacBook Pro, with a few distinct design choices to separate itself from an Apple: It's got a continuous glass face with embedded screen, so the whole front except for the webcam is seamless. And it's made of carbon fiber, which means it can be thinner (at the widest point) than a MacBook Air, but have a removable battery like a MacBook Pro. The carbon fiber, along with a rather noisy fan, lets heat dissipate easily, so there's no sudden burning sensation on your legs when you're using it on your lap. The carbon fiber is slick but smudgy. It didn't take long to make it look used, though a quick wipe will make it good as new—for like five minutes.

Sizemodo: Voodoo Envy 133 vs MacBook Air

To put it as bluntly as Voodoo boss Rahul Sood puts it, "This laptop is not a gaming product." It's not going to play Crysis at all, though it might achieve other, lesser games with the settings dialed down. You can tell it's not a gaming laptop because of the fact that Vista gives it a 3.1 rating out of 5 due to its integrated graphics and shared video memory; that PCMark gave it 2100 (the world's hottest machines top 15000); 3D Mark won't even test it because its adequate screen resolution is nevertheless too low to test; and it's not covered with flared plastic and blinky LEDs that go from green to red as you take hits during a game.

As you might know, the basic design was Intel's. The original Metro concept had some shortcomings though. It was made of plastic and had some questionable heat management. "There's no way you could sell the Metro because it would fall apart," says Sood.

Besides heat management, the key was to make the Metro design capable of carrying a removable battery that is nonetheless super thin. And it's a good thing, because the battery life on the Envy isn't great. In the most extreme situation, where it was powering the outboard DVD player and playing a movie, I could only get it to run for an hour before completely crapping out. That means no watching movies on airplanes, I'm afraid. In other less strenuous tests, the battery dwindled fast. Let me make this clear: The battery life on this baby sucks.The DVD player connects in an ingenious way. It uses an eSATA port that doubles as a USB port. Since eSATA doesn't yet have a bus-powered spec yet, the Voodoo guys figured out a way to draw power from the USB part of the jack, while doing data i/o through the faster eSATA jack. Sood says that they actually patented this technique and that's good for Voodoo, since it's certainly bound to catch on.

The little laptop even has an ExpressCard slot, which makes up for its lack of SD card reader—SanDisk makes a very nice multi-card reader for ExpressCard. It also means it won't take up a USB port to run a 3G modem, if you can get an ExpressCard version instead.

As you may recall from the launch, it has a few other gimmicks, like a slightly oversized power brick that, for its bulk, contains a mini Wi-Fi router, so you can plug Ethernet directly in. It also ships with a smart HDMI-to-VGA dongle for people who want to use it in presentations but don't want to convince corporate IT dudes that HDMI is in fact a viable video standard.

It also has a pseudo-multi-touch "pinch" feature like on a MacBook Air (or an iPhone), but instead of a smooth flow, I noticed it was kinda jerky. It could still come in handy, but to be honest, I am not sure how handy the Air's multi-touch is at this point. I consider all of this proof of concept for now.

Speaking of the trackpad, it's supposed to lock down when you have two hands on the keyboard. I don't know if I have funny shaped hands, but from time to time, I still find the trackpad acting up while I type, executing weird app and system requests, but given the fact that I have typed an awful lot with my hands touching much of the trackpad as I went along, I can easily say the auto-safety works 99% of the time.

The gimmick I am most interested in is the lightweight Linux OS called Voodoo IOS. At startup, you can select to enter Windows or choose Skype, media player, web browser or photo viewer to take you into the VIOS environment. I was eager to try this out and can say that it works as billed, though I'm still divided on its ultimate practicality.

It is very handy to hop into VIOS instead of launching Windows when you want to do something minor, like launch a web browser or Skype, but I am vexed by the fact that, to enter VIOS, you have to shut down Vista and reboot—rather than choose it as a reboot option from Vista. Once in VIOS, the apps have certain limitations: The Linux version of Skype can't support the built-in webcam, copying photos from a memory card to the photo browser seemed impossible (if I'm wrong I'll settle for unintuitive), and the music program worked but just made me miss iTunes. The browser was fine—a Linux version of some Mozilla variant, if I'm not mistaken. Over all, it seemed like a pretty nice Linux environment, clean and fun, with quirky interface features like a flaming Voodoo face signifying a short wait. Who knows, it may even be a fertile ground for savvier software tweakers to play around in.

Voodoo IOS app walkthrough

Overall, I can safely say that this was the most satisfying experience I've had with a Vista notebook, and I've tried quite a few. Even while I was prepping this, my Mac started acting funny and I realized that if I had to switch to it full time, it would be far from disastrous. The only reason besides the questionable battery life that I am not gushing is that this laptop costs a hell of a lot of money. The fairly basic config with an 80GB 4200rpm hard drive that I tested starts at $2,450, and the 64GB SSD versions don't even kick in till $2,900. If these babies could come in even $500 lower, I could see a value proposition, but as it is, it's too high a price, especially when something this nice is still so far from perfection. [Voodoo Envy 133]

News about the possibility of manual auto-correct shut-off showing up in the iPhone 2.2 software has sparked a minor debate amongst the editors about the usefulness of such a feature. Most people would probably leave it on, but it would be nice to type the word "fuck" now and then without iPhone wholesomeness turning it into the word "duck." Let's face it, emailing someone to call them a "stupid duck" kind of disarms the comment altogether. However, with a consistent regimen of swearing, the iPhone will eventually stoop to your level. That having been said: has your iPhone learned swear words? Would you shut off auto-correct if it were implemented?

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MSI has announced that people wishing to get their hands on an MSI Wind U100 Netbook can stroll into their nearest Best Buy starting today and pick up the 10" 3-cell version with a 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor and Windows XP for $399. Before your rush out to get one though, keep in mind that the updated U120 version with HDSPA could hit before Christmas.

MSI WIND BLOWS INTO BEST BUY

CITY OF INDUSTRY, CA – October 06, 2008 – MSI Computer, a leading manufacturer of computer hardware products and solutions, is excited to announce the MSI Wind U100 Netbbok is now on sale at Bestbuy locations across the country. The Wind, an acronym for “Wi-Fi Network Device,” was the first 10” netbook to feature the speedy new Intel Atom™ 1.6GHz processor

“We are excited to be able to reach our clients through this new channel,“ said MSI’s Director of U.S. Sales Andy Tung. “By partnering with Best Buy we can introduce more people to the Wind, and meet the needs of the buyers who either don’t want to purchase online or would like to touch and try out our netbook before making a decision.”

Weighing in at just 2.3 lbs, MSI designed the Wind to be lightweight and ultra mobile, without sacrificing convenience or performance. The Wind features an ergonomically designed keyboard that is only 20% smaller than a full sized notebook keyboard, with the keys spaced a comfortable 0.68 inches apart.

Who knew sugar wafers and Rolos could so accurately recreate the situational Pavlovian response we get from looking at the latest silicon wonders from Intel, AMD, ATi and NVIDIA? While we've never before craved some motherboard and milk or hot motherboard

A guy named Vin Marshall along with a team of nine talented but misguided individuals have constructed a 2000 pound pedal-powered Panzer tank replica complete with a pneumatic cannon that fires water, wieners or whatever onto unsuspecting crowds. Then they painted it pink—making it the most effeminate war machine ever constructed.

The "Pink Panzer" is capable of cruising along at 15 mph thanks to pedals re-claimed from six ten speed bicycles and a steering system cobbled together from an old Geo Metro and a Ford 150 pickup. All-in-alll, the tank took 11 days to build at an expense of $3000. Not a bad project for anyone who really, really hates parades. [PopSci]

Parents! Are you looking for a way to make sure your teenagers are safe while they drive? Also, are annoyed while they drive? Well Ford has your back. Its new MyKey system is sure to make driving an infuriatingly annoying ordeal.

When enabled, MyKey can cap the top speed of the car to 80MPH. That's not too bad, really. But it can also chime whenever the car reaches 45MPH, 55MPH and 65MPH, apparently to "alert young drivers about their acceleration." Oh-kay.

It can also limit the volume on the car stereo, which would piss me off to no end, and chime every five minutes when the seat belts aren't buckled. Lastly, it'll chime when the car is 75 miles from empty.

Essentially, it will beep at you all the time and keep you from listening to music loudly. Just the idea of driving down a road at about 55MPH, dipping below and above that speed frequently, hearing a beep every time I do, is enough to bring me to the brink of road rage.

Look for MyKey on the 2010 Ford Focus and later on other Ford, Lincoln and Mercury models. [Ford via CNET]

After getting resoundly swatted in court by Tivo time and again for walking all over its patent for a "multimedia time warping system" (cool retro-future speak for a DVR), Echostar (now just Dish) is finally admitting defeat once and for all. Following its loss to TiVo in a US Appeals court earlier this year, Echostar appealed to the Supreme Court, which just decided not to hear the case, leaving Echostar nowhere else to turn.

So Echostar has decided that it will in fact be handing TiVo a check for $104 million plus interest, though TiVo is looking for further damages apparently, due to "EchoStar’s continued infringement of our Time Warp patent." More importantly, their victory here opens the door for TiVo to start hunting down everyone else selling a DVR, so the real ugly might still be on the way. [Zatz Not Funny]

Logitech has quietly released a new entry-level universal remote, the Harmony 510, for $100. Looking quite similar to the Harmony 550, it offers basically the same features as the rest of the Harmony 500 with a slightly different button layout and a lower price. You should be able to find this online for less than the list price, so if you're in the market for one of the more basic Harmony remotes, this might be a good bet. [CNET]

Even though the blank media companies have been touting 200GB Blu-ray discs for years, mostly as part of the psy-ops war against HD-DVD, the largest discs today's players and burners can handle are dual-layer 50GB blanks that burn at up to 8x. A new 450 mw blue laser diode unveiled by Sanyo, however, will enable players to read and burn four-layer 100GB discs at up to 12x speeds. Actual drives with the new laser are still probably a year or two away. [Computerworld]

When we saw Firefox Mobile in action a few months ago, it looked pretty snazzy, but we were a bit concerned by a few reports floating around that it might be a long wait to actually get our hands on it. Happily, that's not the case. Mozilla CEO John Lilly says that we'll see the first Firefox Mobile alpha releases "in a few weeks." Is anyone else psyched for Firefox Mobile and the start of a whole new browser war? I am pretty bummed that the iPhone won't be one of the battlegrounds though because of the SDK restrictions. [Linux Insider via Unwired View]