by Chuck Horowitz
Look for notebooks by Dell Computer Corporation (Austin, TX) and Acer America Corporation (San Jose, CA) with the new Intel 300MHz Pentium II. Dell will be selling their Inspiron notebooks below $3,000 and their Latitude models below $3,500. Acer will add 266MHz and 300MHz models to the Extensa 710 line and reduce their prices on some existing 710 models. Dell can be reached at 800-915-3355 or www.dell.com and Acer can be contacted at 800-733-2237 or www.acer.com.
Gateway 2000 (North Sioux City, SD) has the Solo 9100LS. This notebook is a hefty 9.9 pounds with the power adapter and has a 266MHz Pentium processor, 64 megs of RAM, 4 megs of VRAM, 512KB cache, a 5GB removable hard drive, a 1431 inch TFT (Thin-Film-Transistor) screen at 24-bit color, a modular combo drive with 3.5 inch floppy and DVD-ROM drive, two lithium-ion batteries, 16-bit Wavetable sound and stereo speakers, two stacked Type II PC Card slots or one Type III slot, NTSC/PAL video input and output, a touchpad, two USB ports, I/O ports (serial, parallel, keyboard, mouse, MIDI/game, microphone and audio in/out), and a carrying case. This luggable is priced at $3, 749.Gateway can be reached at 800-846-2000 or www.gateway.com.
Using the AMD K6-2 chip, Umax Technologies, Inc. (Fremont, CA) is shipping the ActionBook 330T with this 300MHz chip. The 330T is selling for $1,899 with 32 megs of RAM, a CD-ROM, a 4GB hard drive, a 12.1 inch active-matrix screen and a Ni-MH (Nickel Metal Hydride) battery. Umax can be contacted at 800-562-0311 or www.umax.com.
Do you travel with your digital camera? Silly question, right? Well if you do, Greystone Peripherals, Inc. (Los Gatos, CA) has introduced the Filmate CompactFlash and PC Card reader/writer that lets notebook users transfer digital-photo files from your camera to your notebook. Their FilmDock is a portable unit that reads and writes to digital-camera CompactFlash and PC Card flash memory. Their Filmate sells for $129 and the FilmDock is $99. With a $30 FlashAdapter the cards can be read in any notebook with a PC Card slot. Greystone can be reached at 800-600-5710 or www.greystone.com.
Simple Technology, Inc. (Santa Ana, CA) has released their Global Communicator. This 56K PC Card modem can connect to a landline, GSM mobile phone, ISDN and Ethernet. The Global Communicator is capable of being upgraded to the V.90 standard. The Communicator sells for $299. Simple Technology can be contacted at 714-476-1180 or www.simpletech.com,
Keydata Technologies (S. Plainfield, NJ) has the Keynote 8800XL, a 300MHz Pentium II notebook with 64 megs of SDRAM (expandable to 192 megs), a removable Ultra DMA 4GB hard drive, 512KB of Level 2 pipeline-burst cache, a 24X CD-ROM replaceable drive, a PCMCIA 56Kbps V.90 fax/modem, a removable 3.5 inch floppy drive, a Smart Bay (accepts Zip100, LS120, floppy drive, hard drive and a 2nd battery), full duplex Yamaha 3D audio and Wavetable with stereo speakers, two Type II and one Type III PCMCIA slots (supports CardBus and Zoomed Video), two USB ports, parallel port, serial port, PS/2 port, Game/MIDI port, SVGA port, IrDA (4M-bits), a NTSC video in/out port and a lithium-ion battery. With a 14.1 inch screen all this can be yours for $3,245. Keydata can be reached at 800-486-4800 or www.keydata-pc.com.
Compaq Computer Corporation (Houston, TX) has now armor-plated their Armada 7400. This 6 pound unit has a new magnesium case. It has a 266MHz mobile Pentium II processor (300MHz when available), 32 megs of RAM, a 4GB hard drive, a 24X CD-ROM drive, a 13.3 inch XGA TFT screen and Advanced Graphics Port support. No pricing is available at this time. Compaq can be contacted at 800-888-5925 or www.compaq.com.
Check-out Government Computer News/State and Local, August 1998 edition for a chart of forty-one (41) notebooks: a 266MHz Pentium MMX processor, at least 32 megs of RAM, no less than a 2.1GB hard drive and a 20X CD-ROM. Prices range from $2,595 for an Everex StepNote SK with a 3.2GB hard drive and a 24X CD-ROM drive to $5,447 for an IBM ThinkPad 770E with a 5GB hard drive and a DVD drive.
Toshiba (Tempe, AZ) has a great accessories catalog. Twenty-four pages of mouth-watering add-ins and add-ons, along with phone accessories, storage media and PC Cards. To get your copy contact Toshiba at 800-959-4100 or www.toshiba.com.
New World Technologies, Inc. (New York, NY) has a catalog with all kinds of goodies for your Palm III and PalmPilot, including upgrades, software and hardware. New World can be reached at 877-502-7283 (it’s tollfree) or www.nwt.com.
I recently acquired a 20X CD-ROM drive made by Eiger Labs, Inc. (Newark, CA). The EigerMedia 20X us a portable CD-ROM that uses your notebook’s PCMCIA slot. It’s extremely lightweight and highly portable (great for us Road Warriors – right?). It comes with an AC adapter and can also be used with six (6) AA batteries (not included). It can be used as a stand-alone unit, without the computer, if you have a headphone set or speakers.
Installation is straight-forward and very easy with the CD-ROM supplied by Eiger Labs. By the way, I lost the CD right after I installed the drive. So, if you happen to find it, you know it’s mine.
The unit will play both CD-ROM and audio CDs and comes with a PC Card (PCMCIA) and cable. It can be used on all notebook computers that are 386 or faster. It can also be used with DOS 6.0 (?) or later, Windows 3.1, 3.11and 95 and OS/2. You need a PCMCIA card slot (Type II or III with card and socket service) and 1 megs of RAM. Eiger Labs can be contacted at 510-739-0900 or www.eigerlabs.com.
Chuck Horowitz is a HAL-PC member who can be reached at 281/486-6043,
FAX281/486-6053 or at BrisAssoc@aol.com or
chuckh@hal-pc.org.
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