| BUSINESSWEEK ONLINE : MARCH 1, 1999 ISSUE | ||||||||
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| TECHNOLOGY & YOU
Light, but Not Lite, Laptops They get skinnier and more convenient, and they're brawnier in terms of features Not long ago, serious computing on a laptop meant hauling around something that looked and felt like a cinder block. Sure, you could get smaller, lighter notebooks. But they were lightweights in every sense, with slower processors, limited memory, and dinky disk drives. Not anymore. When Intel Corp. (INTC) announced its newest mobile Pentium II processor in late January, with speeds up to 366 megahertz, manufacturers immediately began popping it into their thin and light laptops. With room for loads of memory and massive hard drives, these are serious computers for the desktop or the road, and are more than adequate for all but the most demanding of applications. SALES HELP. So it's not surprising that for mobile executives who have a choice, the old-style ''full-size'' laptop, generally weighing upwards of seven pounds and measuring two inches or more thick, is becoming a thing of the past. Large notebooks still dominate sales. But most are comparatively low-powered versions targeted at consumers or for corporate uses, such as equipping a large field sales force, where low cost takes precedence over power and mobility. With the new models, reduced size means gaining a lot of portability while not having to give up much in performance. A comparison between two IBM ThinkPads, the 770, a traditional power notebook, and the svelte 600 makes the point. A 366-Mhz ThinkPad 770 starts at $4,600 (a 300-Mhz version starts at $1,000 less); it is 2.2 in. thick, 12.3 in. wide, 10 in. deep, and weighs 7.7 lb. The 366-Mhz version of the 600 starts at $3,950 (again, the 300-Mhz model sells for about $1,000 less). Compared with the 770, it's nearly the same depth and width, but it's 0.8 of an inch thinner--and that can make the difference between the laptop fitting into a briefcase or not. More important, the new ThinkPad weighs two pounds less. What do you give up by choosing the thinner, lighter model? Nothing of much practical importance. The maximum memory in the 600 is 288 megabytes, compared with 320 Mb in the 700, but either amount is far more than is needed for most uses. Disk drives on the smaller notebook top out at 6.4 gigabytes, vs. a staggering, and probably excessive, 14.1 Gb. The big laptop does have a few other superior features. It offers two bays that you can fill with any combination of drives or extra batteries, instead of the single bay on the 660. And the 770, with its bigger display--14.1 in. vs. 13.3--and advanced multimedia capabilities, is clearly a better performer for presentations or design work. The question a potential user has to ask is whether those features will ever be used and whether they are worth the extra bulk, weight, and cost. For most laptop users, the answer will be a resounding ''no.'' Little wonder, then, that the thin, light design is booming. In addition to the ThinkPad 600, similar notebooks equipped with the fastest processors include the NEC Versa SX, Hewlett-Packard's OmniBook 4150, and the Dell Computer Latitude CPi. The Toshiba Satellite 4080XCDT is somewhat heavier and thicker but accommodates both an internal CD-ROM drive and a floppy drive. If you are willing to trade convenience--but not power--for something even thinner and lighter, there's another option. These notebooks provide neither a CD-ROM nor a floppy unless you use an external drive, multimedia base, or desktop docking station, but they get the weight under 5 lb. The ThinkPad 560 invented this design, but it is not being updated with the newest Pentium II. The new HP OmniBook 900, at $4,300, weighs just 4 lb. but features a 366-Mhz Pentium II, a 12.1-in. display, and a 6.4-Gb hard drive. The $3,700 (without the CD-ROM expansion unit) Compaq Armada 3500 is about 12 oz. heavier, but features a 13.1-in. display. COOL CHIP. One reason that laptop makers were able to install the fastest new processors into these thin models immediately is that the newest Pentium IIs actually draw less power and produce less heat than the older, slower chips. This happy circumstance will not apply to the next generation of fast processors. This fall, Intel plans to ship the first mobile Pentium III and later will ship a new technology, code-named Geyserville, that will let superfast chips run at full power when connected to AC power and throttle them back to conserve energy when running off batteries. The amount of heat generated in the high-speed mode may preclude the use of these chips in thin laptops. But most business users don't need that sort of speed, and today's laptops combine plenty of power for the road and a computer that will do just fine on the desk, in an easy-to-tote package. BY STEPHEN H. WILDSTROM _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ BACK TO TOP |
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