I'm getting really sick of hearing people on this list try and claim the Sony Vaios,
Toshiba Porteges, Sharp Mebiuses/Actiuses, etc. are such great fantastic machines.
They aren't. They are cool feats of hardware, but it is not going to be an extension
of your video/graphics workstation or much of anything else.
If you're worried about heat and battery life, why do you think the ultrathin wintel
machines are going to help? I have both a Portege and a 2400/G3, and I can tell you
that first, the Portege gets less battery life normally....and the Portege is the one
with the best battery life.....the Sony Vaio gets even worse battery life....and it
gets much hotter. At least with the 2400, you can still use the keyboard and trackpad
comfortably......after about an hour's use, the Portege gets so hot that you can
barely touch the keyboard or pointing device.
It's just really frustrating here, hearing all these comments about how enticing the
ultrathins are. They aren't that good for a number of reasons;
a) the hardware really isn't that great. better than most wintel notebooks, but that
isn't saying much.
b) battery life and heat on these machines is horrible....even worse when using a PC
Card.
c) on the vaio, it's nice it has firewire (aka i.link), but it is so bad at actually
handling any video input or output that it is practically useles.....this is actually
true on a lot of their desktop machines as well.
d) it's nice they are thin and light, but once you carry around the ac adaptor,
external floppy drive (you need this with windows), external CD-ROM drive, port
adaptor, etc. you will see that you'll need a fairly large carrying case with it. And
this ends up completely negating the benefit of having such a thin and light machine.
I'm not saying things like the Duo and 2400 don't have this problem, but it turns out
that they end up being very similar.
e) they run windows. I don't know how big a deal this is to you.....it will be
different for different people. I personally don't mind windows. I decided to get a
PC desktop at home for games (I use my Mac for work)....I don't like Windows, but on
the desktop I can at least deal with it. But the annoyances and quirks of windows
become increasingly horrible the smaller it gets (this sliding scale culminates in the
terror that is Windows CE, but that's a different story). Windows is bad enough on a
normal notebook, but it is positively dreadful on these ultrathins.
Now, I didn't think it would be such a big deal to me, which is how I justified buying
a Portege in the first place. But it is.....I can deal with Windows on the desktop,
but as a portable OS I just hate it.
Now, I've only had my 2400 for a day now, but I already love it much more. It is just
a nicer machine. In terms of width and length, it is actually the same size as my
Portege.....in fact, it is smaller, since the external battery increases the length.
The portege is definitely thinner though (0.77 inches thick for the portege as opposed
to 1.9 inches thick for the PowerBook). It is heavier though....2.7 pounds vs. 4.4
pounds. But I still think this is generally a much better machine.
These ultrathins do look enticing, I agree.....it was enticing enough to me that in
December 98 I bought the portege instead of a PowerBook (since the only PowerBooks
they were selling at the time were the nearly 8 pounds, and having just come from a
Toshiba Satellite that weighed 7 pounds, I didn't want another big and heavy machine).
==============
Justin Higgins
ThruPort Technologies
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.thruport.com
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