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2
Can one of the current crop of high-end Notebooks
replace a Desktop?
Part 2, the welterweight $$ class
Staff Review, written by Keith Benicek
December 31, 2002
Under the Thinkpad T30 is IBM’s thoughtful touch for the traveling “desktop” user, a HDD air-cushioned shock absorber. There is also a port for a docking bay.
Straying from IBM’s predictable dedication to the “eraser head” keyboard Accu-point curser control, the T30 also included a “Touch-pad” much to the delight for us that hate the Accu-point. IBM calls this model-based option “UltraNav”, and we loved it. Its thoughtful design even allows you to use the eraser-head as a scroll button while using the Touch-pad for mouse steering. All the related mouse click buttons are well located for handy keyboard veteran. Speaking of the keyboard, it is one of the best we’ve ever typed on, with especially great feedback for the touch-typist.
What is particularly unique about the T30, and making it very appropriate for the corporate user is that it is the only notebook we know of that has both an embedded 802.11b WiFi and Bluetooth transceiver. No matter what office or client you travel to with the ThinkPad T30, you will be able to link to their LAN-WLAN via the 10/100 ports or either of these established wireless standards. Testing the 802.11b for maximum range, we got an unprecedented 312 feet through two sheet rock walls, down one floor and a cement wall (with windows) out to our parking lot!
With Bluetooth, you can also surf the Internet or retrieve emails via a Bluetooth equipped Cell Phone no matter where you are.
Our only reservation about the T30, is that it contains no high-speed digital ports. No IEEE 1394 Firewire or USB 2.0, only two slow speed USB 1.1 ports. I spoke with Jeff Witt, IBM’s Notebook Reviews Manager, and he explained that IBM’s notebooks are designed to meet tight corporate buyer specifications, which at present don’t find the need for high-speed ports. Geez, I hope those corporate IT Mangers enjoy doing system backups using 12 Mb/s USB 1.1 devices! I sure wouldn’t.
The Compaq Presario 1510US (1500 Series) is a fairly new notebook design, a departure from their previous non-corporate looking consumer look. In fact the Presario 1500 has a pretty “tough” Dodge V12 RAM Pickup look and our Tech-Lab staff dubbed it the Texas Corporate Cowboy Notebook. Lots of chrome, some not in appropriate places despite the effort for this desktop notebook to look more corporate.
Actually this is a fairly compact (no pun intended) and light notebook
for travel in spite of the big bruiser processor and the 15” TFT
display. It even packs both a DVD-CDRW Combo Drive and a Floppy Disk Drive,
and the front mounted JBL stereo speakers are sensational sounding.
The Presario 1510US had the fastest processor of the Windows bunch with a desktop Intel P-4 at 2.2GHz with 512 MB of DDR RAM. It was clearly the fastest “cruncher” of data of the group also, including the new Apple G4 1GHz PowerBook, in all of our “practical benchmarking”. The 1510US has LOTS of fans and baffles and so is cooler than many other mobile P4 powered notebooks. Guess they had to, with a desktop P4 stuffed in this baby.
As you might imagine with the type of processor used, battery life is not conducive to long plane flights, unless they’re under 2 hours and 8 minutes that is.
Compaq has taken an interesting approach to, ah, “including” 802.11b Wireless technology. We’d assume in deference to BTO (built-to-order) assembly lines, the Multi-port 802.11b module is plugged onto the top cover of the notebook. That would make it “onbedded”, instead of embedded? Reception and transmission range is only average in our tests at 195 feet indoors.
The Presario 1510US was the only unit in our test group with USB 2.0 ports, two of them along with a single non-powered Firewire port.
The 15” TFT display uses a native 1400x1050 pixel resolution, which is fine if you have the eye’s of an 18 year old. While very bright with good contrast, the displayed text and desktop icons look fuzzy; it is not our favorite amongst the five contenders.
The Touchpad has no border scroll area and the Touchpad is too small, having an odd almost oval shape. Our high-velocity touch-typist loved the
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