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From...
Top 15 notebook PCs
December 1, 1999
Web posted at: 11:03 a.m. EST (1603 GMT)
by Carla Thornton
(IDG) -- Notebook vendors often claim their portables are as powerful and versatile as desktop PCs, quipping, "Now you can take your PC with you," or calling their laptops "desktop replacements." Some of these vendors deliver: Note the massive 25GB hard drive in the Dell Inspiron 7500 C466VT on this month's power list, the 128MB of RAM in the Quantex I-1410 on our new midrange chart, and the Celeron-400 CPU in the budget Toshiba Satellite 2595CDS. New this month If you've been waiting for a laptop with 75GB of storage, put Dell's new $3501 Inspiron 7500 C466VT on your holiday wish list. This 10.4-pound desktop replacement, ranked third on our power list, can hold three 25GB hard drives at once if you remove the battery and DVD-ROM/floppy drive combo.
Unlike the speakers in previous Inspirons, the C466VT's produce loud sound (although not as rich as that generated by Compaq Prosignia laptops). Like the Quantex I-1511 and new vendor Impression's 4315 (two also-rans nearly identical to the Inspiron), the C466VT suffers from a half-inch screen overbite. That could make the 15-inch screen take the brunt of the impact in case of a fall. NEC Versa SX killer? For the last two years, NEC's Versa SX has reigned as the only ultrathin, full-size laptop capable of accepting a wide range of add-in accessories. That sovereignty comes to an end with the introduction of Compaq's new Armada M700, a $3799 Pentium II-400 notebook that debuts in fifth place on the power chart this month. Like the SX, the M700 measures only a little over an inch thick with the screen closed and weighs less than 5 pounds with a spaceholder plugged into its modular bay. It can hold almost as many different types of removable drives as the SX (though Compaq doesn't sell an internal Zip drive), performed just as well as the SX in our benchmark tests, and outruns the SX in battery life: 4.6 hours compared to the NEC's 2 hours. On the other hand, the M700 costs more than the NEC (an SX with a 6GB hard drive goes for $3349), its all-gray case looks drab next to the two-tone SX, and it forfeits some of the SX's slicker touches, like an external battery charge indicator. - Gateway Solo 9300LS
- Dell Latitude CPi A366XT
- Dell Inspiron 7500 C466VT
- Micron TransPort NX PII-400
- Compaq Armada M700
- Micron TransPort Trek2
- Quantex I-1410
- Fujitsu LifeBook E Series PII-333
- HP OmniBook XE2
- Compaq Prosignia Notebook 165
- Toshiba Satellite 2595CDS
- IBM ThinkPad I Series 1480
- Chem USA ChemBook 7200
- Compaq Prosignia Notebook 150
- Gateway Solo 2500SE
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