Can your laptop ace the manila envelope test? It better, if you’re trying to compete in laptop 2.0-land. For that you can thank Steve Jobs and the Macbook Air, nearing its first birthday. Great party trick, impresses your friends, especially when they find out you keep manila envelopes at home for just that reason.

But for Apple that slim sexiness came with some serious drawbacks. Like, no easy way to view DVD movies or install new software, because there’s no disc drive. Their solution?— almighty WiFi. Seriously. The Air doesn’t even have an Ethernet port for a wired internet connection. Instead, you can “borrow” the CD drive of another computer, as long as you’re connected over the air. There’s no removable battery either, and a single USB port for your stuff to fight over.

But did I mention it fits in a manila envelope?

Non-Apple models have since caught up and, if you’re not totally Mac-besotted, offer competing cool-factor with more conventional tools.

Standing out in the sci-fi style and performance departments is the Envy 133, from Voodoo. As thin if not thinner than the Air, with the same 13.3” widescreen and more connectivity blah blah blah. Not carbon neutral but carbon fiber—that’s what this baby is wrapped in. Besides matching the hood on your Acura rice rocket, this let Voodoo give you a (too small) battery that you can actually remove yourself. The only problem is it’s even more expensive than the Air ($2,449 vs. $1,800), has a crappy battery life, and still no optical drive.

Coming in at the top of Manila 2.0, I mean, laptop 2.0 heap is lovely, luscious Lenovo, with their X301 Ginsu knife, I mean, laptop. At about $3,000 it’s also one of the most expensive laptops you can buy. So if you cashed in your i-bank stock in time, and you’re willing to trade form for function, read on. It comes in black matte instead of carbon fiber or aluminum, but it still fits in that gosh darned cool manila envelope. But what’s this? Why, it’s an optical drive! And it’s modular! That’s exciting stuff for you first-class flyers out there, who will no doubt also appreciate the crap load of ports for stuff like USB, external display and Ethernet. One other cool, expense account feature is the hard drive, which like your iPhone is solid state—no moving parts. You can get this option on the other laptops I’ve mentioned, but here the 64GB drive is mandatory, and expensive, but cool. Performance is zippy, due to the fast Centrino 2 brain, which also gives it stupid-long battery life.

Now looking ahead, what does laptop 3.0 look like?

It’s something the techies are calling a netbook. Like a notebook or a laptop, but pretty much only good for web browsing or light documents. Cute, huh? While for now it’s basically a smaller, cheaper, dumbed-down laptop, that’s bound to change, and for two reasons. One, it’s the stupid economy, stupid. Netbooks are selling like crazy on Amazon, and that’s likely to continue as people look for deals. Two, Moore’s law. What costs $500 now, set you back four times as much a few years ago. Better, more energy efficient processors, batteries and operating systems mean you can do more with these things, longer. And longer is always better. Always.

Of course, no one would confuse these pretty homely devices with the supermodel-hot Envy or Air. They’re a different sort, and that’s alright, too.