Mobile Computing News, Reviews, & Tips
Notebook Review: Dell's Inspiron 700m
Has your beloved been really good this year? Then maybe a notebook is in order.
Here's one suggestion: a Dell ultraportable with impressive power. The 3.7-pound Inspiron 700m features a 12.1-inch wide-aspect ratio screen with a native resolution of 1280 by 800 pixels, which lets you see more of your work side by side or view full-screen DVDs without letterbox bars.
The notebook's 1.8-GHz Intel Pentium M 745 processor (in the $2091 unit we evaluated) landed the Inspiron 700m in the top ten of all notebooks we've tested using our new benchmark suite. Other extras include a built-in DVD burner, a FireWire port, and a Secure Digital Card slot. There's no switch to turn Wi-Fi networking on or off, however, and the punctuation keys are small and hard to locate. But overall, PC World's Carla Thornton declared the Inspiron 700m a solid, yet lightweight portable.
Notebook Review: Dell's Latitude X300
The Dell Latitude X300 is one of the best 3-pound notebooks you can buy, says Carla Thornton. It comes with a 1.4-GHz Pentium M Low Voltage 738 chip, which helped it earn a place in the top 50 percent of portables we've tested. Its keyboard is one of the best for a notebook its size, and you get a FireWire port and SD Card slot. But there's no built-in optical drive, and you can't access the hard drive--if it crashes, you have to send the entire machine out for service. The unit we tested costs $2425.
Notebook Review: Gateway's M320XL
The Gateway M320XL is a solid middle-of-the-road portable, our ever-busy Carla Thornton says. The portable features an 80GB hard drive, weighs only 5.5 pounds, offers a total of three USB ports, and includes a multiformat DVD burner and other goodies for just $1800. At 2.5 hours, the battery ran out a bit too quickly, however, and the notebooks performance was slightly below average.
Notebook Review: Sys Technology's WideView
Here's another notebook choice for wide-screen enthusiasts: Sys Technology's $1595 WideView, with a 15.4-inch screen. The notebook we tested included a 2.2-GHz Advanced Micro Devices Athlon 64 3400+ processor, which helped it achieve the second fastest notebook performance using our new testing benchmark. The large, silver notebook weighs just under 8 pounds without the power adapter and includes a multiformat DVD burner and SD Card slot. But upgrading internal components requires you to remove 11 tiny screws and a huge panel; battery life is an unimpressive 2.3 hours; and there's no built-in Wi-Fi, which is standard in most notebooks. It does ship with a Wi-Fi PC Card, however.
Notebook Accessory News: Creative's PC Card Sound Blaster
Except for multimedia and gaming machines, most notebooks come with inferior built-in sound cards. The trouble is, internal notebook components--like sound cards--aren't easily upgraded. Creative has what it says is the solution: the Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Notebook Card ($130). The card slips into a notebook's PC Card slot, delivering 24-bit audio that has 256 times the clarity of standard notebook audio, according to the company.
Wireless Review: Next-Generation Cellular Networks
PC World's cell phone expert Grace Aquino recently tested two next-generation network services, the Enhanced Data Rates for Global Evolution (EDGE) network and the faster Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) technology. Both promise speedier Web surfing and data downloads than what you get with today's second-generation (2G) networks.
Netting it out, Grace says the near-DSL speeds that the networks offered were impressive, although data transfer rates are still below the theoretical limits of the two technologies. Pricing for data and video services varies by carrier; monthly rates can go up to $100 or more. Read "Cell Phones Do Broadband" for the full story.
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