Re: Buying a Notebook (non-XW)

[mto@xxxxxxxx (Michael O'Brien)]

> I'm in the market for a notebook and would appreciate any leads. From
> their ads, I'm attracted to MPC, Gateway 2000 Colorbook, WinBook and
> Midwest Micro, but of course it's impossible from ads to know, for
> example, what the keyboards are like. My upper price limit is about $2300,
> for which I'd like to have a 486DX2-50 or higher CPU, 10-inch+ dual-scan
> color screen, local bus video with 1 Mb VRAM, 8 Mb RAM, 350+ Mb removable
> HDD, touchpad pointing device, at least one PCMCIA III slot, and the usual
> other stuff (1.44 FDD, standard ports, power-saving features and led
> indicators).

FWIW, in buying a notebook I'd stick to Toshiba, Compaq, or IBM
if you value reliability and a solid, well-supported design. You
can always find second tier notebooks with more features and/or
lower prices, but the big three are the best in putting together
something that really works the way it should, and holds up too,
imo.

Mike O'Brien
Lincoln, MA mto@xxxxxxxx