The boringly square and mundane looking laptops can join the big, bulky desktops in the Smithsonian museum for technological artifacts, if ever there was one. Personal computers, over the years, have shed weight and girth tremendously. Now the war for smaller and smallest is taking place in the tablet and laptop world. While the laptops have thinned down considerably, their power and processing capacity has increased manifold.

The classic look of a Windows powered computer has been replaced by the more colorful and vibrant live tiles of Windows 8 OS. Given the fact that Windows 8 powers quite a few laptops, it is difficult to adjudge a single laptop as the winner. Let’s look at three popular Windows 8 laptops of 2012:

1. Sony Duo 11:

Sony Duo 11 is a laptop that looks uncannily like a tablet. Fold the laptop and you’ll find a thin seam running across the edge of the laptop concealing the keyboard under the display. Open the laptop and you’ll find everything looking quite normal. This laptop’s Chiclet-style keyboard is not the best one around. The fact that this laptop is going to be used extensively in the tablet mode offers some relief using the otherwise uncomfortable keyboard. The keyboard looks and feels cramped but the hinges holding the keyboard to the laptop look sturdy and durable.
This laptop weighs around 2 pounds, comes with an 11.6 inch screen complete with HD and IPS display. It sports an N-trig stylus that comes with 256 pressure points making it one of the perfect laptops for all the artistically inclined individuals.

2. Lenovo ThinkPad Twist:

Lenovo’s ThinkPad Twist brought together the touch gestures of Windows 8, futuristic design and the reliability that Lenovo is famous for. The ThinkPad is a bit on the heavier side than most consumer laptops usually are. Coming with a 12.5 inch screen and a 1366 X 768 display resolution, the ThinkPad Twist comes with a higher resolution than its other counterpart, the IdeaPad Yoga.
But what makes the Twist stand out from the rest is its clever hinge design. This feature makes sure that the laptop’s display screen can be rotated to suit the viewing angles of users. Coming with a 500GB hard drive and a comfortable 24 GB caching SSD, this laptop brings the ruggedness of the popular ThinkPad line along with the functionality of Windows 8 tablets.

3. Dell XPS 12

The Dell Duo 12 is a good looking 12.5 inch laptop with a screen that can be flipped over to convert the laptop into a tablet. Coming with great display resolution, quality build and good performance, Dell XPS 12 is the perfect combination of tablet and laptop. With a 4GB Ram, 1080p screen resolution, 128GB SSD and i5 Core processor, Dell XPS 12 brings the best of laptops and tablet into one.

But when using this laptop in the tablet mode, you might encounter minor issues with the software. And this laptop comes with Windows 8’s inherent issues on the app front. Although a tad expensive than other laptops, Dell XPS 12 justifies the cost with its performance.

The world of Windows 8 has just begun and the future for this operating system looks promising.