Micron TransPort LT

WHAT'S HOT: With a PC WorldBench score of 146, the TransPort turned in terrific performance for a Pentium III-650/500. Only Dell's PIII-750/600-equipped Latitude CPx J750GT was faster. The TransPort blew past its PIII-650/500 competitors by 15 percent, a difference you should notice in day-to-day computing tasks. It even bested two Pentium III-700 machines, including IBM's ThinkPad T20, by a slightly smaller margin. Spreadsheet work is the TransPort's forte. It finished the Excel portion of our test scripts an average of 28 percent faster than the other nine units tested. Only the Latitude crunched numbers faster--and that was by an infinitesimal margin. For companies standardized on Microsoft applications (and few aren't), the TransPort is the only machine here that ships with the fuller-featured Microsoft Office 2000 Small Business Edition rather than Microsoft Works.

WHAT'S NOT: The TransPort lasted only 2.7 hours in our battery tests, a mediocre performance compared to the rest of the two-spindle notebooks here, most of which ran well past 3 hours. At $3599, it's also the fourth most expensive machine we examined. And if you want to use the floppy drive externally to free up the TransPort's bay for other devices, you'll need to buy Micron's $20 USB caddy.

WHAT ELSE: Overall, the 1.4-inch-thick, magnesium-clad TransPort boasts a fine design with no-tools hard-drive access; standard notebook connections, including modem and network jacks; and buttons at the top of the keyboard for controlling audio. Like HP, Micron does not supply a weight saver for lowering notebook weight when you're not carrying an internal drive. Still, the TransPort weighs only 5.4 pounds with a DVD-ROM drive in its bay--not bad for a travel notebook with a 13.3-inch screen (although not as good as the ThinkPad). In addition to the DVD-ROM drive you get at this price, the TransPort's internal bay will hold the floppy drive, a $139 SuperDisk drive, a $169 Zip drive, or a $99 second battery. The keyboard felt somewhat shallow to us, but it's nicely laid out and can be used to launch applications from the mouse buttons and one programmable key. Our notebook came with the Windows 2000 operating system and a nice print manual, also available electronically on the company's Web site. The only serious glitch we encountered was a corrupted DVD player, which squashed images and left a wavy bar on the bottom fourth of the screen. Micron says that an updated driver takes care of this problem.

BEST USE: The TransPort LT would make a fine corporate notebook for number crunchers not scared away by the price.

SUMMARY

Micron TransPort LT PC WorldBench 2000 score of 146, Pentium III-650/500, 128MB of SDRAM, 13.3-inch active screen, 12GB hard drive, touchpad, 6X DVD-ROM drive, built-in modem, built-in NIC, Microsoft Office 2000 SBE; 5-year warranty on memory and processor, 3-year warranty on other parts, 1-year labor warranty, 24/7 toll-free support. $3599 800/642-7667 www.micronpc.com