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The High Price Of Thinness

Ultraportables demand more than a few trade-offs. All the notebooks we evaluated for this article lack internal bays, which can accommodate an optical drive or other devices such as a second hard drive. Optical and floppy drives, usually standard with larger notebooks, are extra-cost items on most thin-and-lights. (Of the notebooks here, only the LifeBook B Series bundles a USB floppy drive.) And none in this group have parallel, serial, or PS/2 ports, or the more cutting-edge IEEE 1394 or S-Video-out ports.

Fortunately, travelers can have their ultraportable and keep their legacy features too, via extra-cost add-ons. All five notebooks here gain most missing features when you attach either a snap-on docking station equipped with an optical drive, or multiple separate peripherals and a port replicator. Choosing the all-in-one docking station can avoid the octopus effect of having several external peripherals plugged in at once. The Compaq Evo N200 and IBM ThinkPad X23 both use docking stations. The downside: Docking stations add at least a couple of pounds and another $250 to $500 in cost.

The Fujitsu LifeBook B Series, the Sharp PC-UM10M, and the Toshiba Portégé 2000 use simple port replicators, which provide the missing legacy ports, and external USB or PC Card drives. This piecemeal approach lets you pick what to buy and what to take on the road.

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