Is the ultraportable I want still out there...?

[Guest Rimjaw]

Here's my problem in brief... in all this snow and ice, I fell on my ass. The fall was cushioned by my bag, however (hurrah, he thinks)... till I remember that my bag has my laptop in (oh dear, he thinks) and, to put it bluntly, it's knackered (bugger, he thinks). My beloved Vaio TX5XN is now as much use as a brick.

Luckily, my insurance will replace it new for old, but the new just isn't the same. The current equivalent would by the Vaio X series. about the same footprint as my old one, but ridiculously thin... however, its missing a few important elements.

Most notably, mine has a DVD recorder. And these days of everyone trying to make the cheapest tiny laptop they possibly can, you just don't get optical drives on them. My TX had

11" inch screen

100gb (or 120?) HD

1.5 GB ram

Core Solo processor

DVD burner

fingerprint recognition (possibly gimmicky and unnecessary, but I liked never having to remember or fill in passwords... just a swish of the finger and you're away!)

6 or 7 hours battery life

So, is there anything similar out there? Everything seems to be Atom processors (which, and I'll happily stand corrected, just don't have the power of a core solo or core2), nothing has an optical drive. And there's no fingerprint gimmicks (no more will I feel like bond)

... or should I stop whining and just by a slim external drive and let my insurer give me one of Sonys overpriced, underfed X series (which I'll probably fall on and snap in half rolleyes.gif )

Anyone know of an alternative?