The fast lane

  • Frank Bajak / Associated Press
  • Saturday, May 25, 2002 9:00pm
  • Business

By Frank Bajak

Associated Press

NEW YORK — Ever feel like the pace car at the Indy 500 when you’d rather be tearing around the track at more than 200 mph? That’s about how I’ve experienced every new generation of laptop computer.

Compared to desktop PCs, notebooks have always been mediocre substitutes, tolerated because they’re portable.

Now that Intel’s Mobile Pentium 4 microprocessor is here, the notebook computer finally gets you into the passing lane.

I looked at three: IBM’s A31 Thinkpad, the Inspiron 8200 from Dell and Toshiba’s Tecra 9100, all billed as desktop replacement units.

None cheap but all snappy performers thanks to the Mobile Pentium 4, whose clock speeds start at 1.4 gigahertz. Bonus: Intel’s so-called SpeedStep technology cycles down the processor to extend battery life in times of low demand.

But egad, these computers are bricks.

Adhering to the auto metaphor I’ll classify them:

  • The A31 is the black Mercedes sedan, solid, strong and smartly engineered. Weight: 7.6 pounds. Price: $2,674.

  • The Inspiron is the gunmetal Volvo wagon, sturdy and sensible if boxy. Weight: 7.7 lbs. Price: $2,263.

  • And the Toshiba Tecra is the Honda Acura, sleek and light. Silver exterior, black keyboard/wristrest. Weight: 5.3 lbs. Price: $2,877.

    My requirements were a microprocessor running at 1.6 gigahertz, 256 MB of RAM, integrated audiovisual in- and outputs, two USB ports, built-in 56 kbps modem and Ethernet — both an RJ-45 port and integrated 802.11b wireless with embedded antennas.

    The IBM and the Toshiba included a combination DVD reader/CD burner, which I consider de rigueur nowadays.

    The Dell had a DVD reader alone. It was also the only of the three to include a floppy drive. How quaint. It also had a 30-gigabyte hard drive, 10 GB less room than the others.

    All three units had infrared ports but only the Tecra boasted Bluetooth wireless capability at this price. Heck, in a new machine I’d want that.

    Bluetooth kits are already available for printers so you don’t have to get on a network to print if you’re an outsider.

    The Tecra was the only machine to include a Secure Digital media slot, while the IBM had a nifty slide-out numeric keyboard and the Dell was unique in including a FireWire port.

    Now, I asked all three companies if they couldn’t give me a lighter notebook with all or most of these features — say under 4 pounds. None could. That’s because, it was explained, the MP-4 chip runs pretty hot, requiring a good-sized exhaust port.

    Battery life is also crucial and in my Internet radio test (all three machines streaming my favorite station over a wireless broadband connection with LCD screens lit and all sleep and standby features off) the IBM’s was the first to quit, losing the juice at 1 hour and 57 minutes.

    The Tecra died at 2 hours and 30 minutes, the Dell 5 minutes later.

    For sound quality, the IBM was best, its speakers down in front of the keyboard. The Inspiron was a close second, while the protruding speakers sounded tinny on the Tecra.

    I watched the same DVD on all three machines; all came preloaded with InterVideo’s WinDVD player on top of Windows XP.

    All had TFT active matrix screens so the images were crisp.

    Least impressive here was the Tecra, whose S3 Supersavage 16MB integrated video can’t do better than a 1024-by-768 pixel resolution on a 14.1-inch screen.

    The Inspiron’s screen, at 15 inches, was the brightest and clearest, affording a 1400-by-1050 peak resolution on its LCD from a 32MB NVidia GeForce 2 Go.

    The Thinkpad screen was the same size and slightly inferior in image with a 32MB ATI Radeon 7500 video component providing the same resolution.

    The plastic shell was most durable on the Thinkpad, with the Tecra second and Dell third.

    The keys and mouse-click buttons seemed fragile on the Inspiron, though the combination touchpad/trackpoint for cursor work is clever.

    I didn’t care at all for the Tecra’s smallish cursor tabs. Nor do I like its keyboard layout. By contrast, the "delete" and "insert" keys are both just above and diagonally left of the backspace key on the Inspiron and the Thinkpad.

    The Thinkpad boasts additional programmable buttons on a left hand panel that are good for e-mail and Netsurfing. The IBM and Dell had volume keys that the Toshiba lacked.

    The Tecra did have good power management controls with a well-designed console applet.

    The A31 was even more intelligent in configuration software and power management. Dell was far less user-friendly in the tool department.

    Because for me a laptop should be able to travel — without throwing out my back — I can’t say I favor any of these three machines.

    Though the Tecra was the lightest, its keyboard and inferior display repel me.

    The Dell shell seems too brittle and the Thinkpad, well, it’s a joy on my kitchen counter.

    But I’d not wish to lug it through airports.

    Copyright ©2002 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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