Specifications

P
ortable computers are again closing in on
and surpassing the 10-pound mark. At a
time when almost every feature that road
warriors desire can be slid, snapped, or
screwed into a notebook of 5 pounds or
less, a compelling case can be made for heavier note-
books. And the heavier the better.
When a notebook weighs over 10 pounds, includ-
ing the paving-brick-like transformer that probably
should be confiscated by safety-conscious sky mar-
shals, the machine is more of a fold-up desktop
PC
with an internal UPS than a notebook.
Dell set the stage in 1998 when it cornered the
market on the first 15-inch notebook
LCD panels.
Actually, Dell didn’t have to do much negotiating to
grab the supply, because leading notebook makers
thought Dell—not the leader then—was nuts.
Meanwhile, Compaq,
IBM, and Toshiba were ago-
nizing over whether people wanted 14-inch displays
or 13-inch screens were big enough. But the Dell In-
spiron 7000 (a.k.a. the U.S.S. Inspiron), despite its
10-pound travel weight, surpassed all sales expec-
tations and spawned a series of imitators and nau-
tical jokes. (Q: Just what does the Inspiron weigh?
A: Anchor.)
Fast-forward to 2003. Virtually every notebook
maker offers a desktop replacement model. Most
have 15- or 16-inch displays. The biggest ones, with
17-inch wide-screen displays, make the best sense,
because they’re most like desktops. In the desktop
replacement class, I’m partial to the heavier, high-
end systems using desktop
CPUs or the desktop-
based 3-
GHz Mobile Intel Pentium 4 Processor-M,
60
GB or 80GB hard drives and combo DVD/CD-RW
drives (recordable-DVD drives are seductive but still
pricey), and 17-inch, 16:9 or 16:10 wide-screen dis-
plays with wide viewing angles. Since weight is not
an issue, you’re more likely to get a 1.5-pound bat-
tery good for 2.5 hours than a 1-pounder that lasts
only an hour and a half.
Wide screens have a couple of advantages: DVD
movies are a natural fit, and a 17-inch screen starts
to feel like a
TV. You can comfortably view a two-
page document with the pages side by side (try the
side-by-side Reading Layout option in Microsoft
Office 2003). And ultrawide screens keep the note-
book from being too deep (it might be 12 inches
deep, versus 14 inches with a 17-inch 4:3 screen).
Part of the ultrawide screen’s popularity may be
attributed to Apple. It’s amazing that Apple, a com-
pany with a market share three points away from
being a rounding error, engenders such envy. Weigh-
ing 7 pounds with a 15- by 10-inch footprint, the
Apple PowerBook 17-inch is almost portable. It’s just
not cheap.
At this point, you should think twice about the
few big-screen portables with media center capa-
bilities. Picture quality from
TV tuners isn’t that
hot; the tuner module takes up a lot of space or re-
quires an external adapter; the price shoots up past
$2,500; and most of the other media center features
you want are in every notebook anyway. For those
who want the readable-across-the-room front end
of Microsoft Windows Media Center Edition, we
offer
PC Magazine Media Console (www.pcmag
.com/utilities). Third parties sell similar products,
and graphics chip manufacturers are bundling them
for free.
While megaportables aren’t for road warriors,
they’re fine for the majority of those who travel with
a computer just a few times a year, for sales reps who
travel by car and want to make dazzling presenta-
tions without hooking up monitors, or for the week-
long cabin vacation. If you’re the
IT department for
retired parents or relatives who go south in winter,
perhaps you’ve helped them box up a
PC and moni-
tor and shove it in the back seat of the car for the trip
to Clearwater. Even the biggest portable makes infi-
nitely more sense.
Two of the best, biggest megaportable computers
are the Toshiba Satellite
P25-S507 and the HP Pavil-
ion zd7000, each with a 17-inch
LCD and a price
around $2,000. The Toshiba model is nearly 17 inch-
es wide. The
HP notebook includes a numeric key-
pad to the right of the
QWERTY keyboard. I don’t
see a big advantage of 15-inch ultrawides over 14-
inch mainstream notebooks (the total ultrawide
screen area is actually less), but the biggest note-
books are in a class by themselves. In this category,
size does matter.
BILL HOWARD
The Next Big Thing: Megaportables
When a
notebook
weighs over
10 pounds,
it’s more
of a fold-up
desktop PC
than a note-
book.
MORE ON THE WEB: You can contact Bill Howard directly
at [e-mail]. For more On Technology
columns, go to www.pcmag.com/howard.
www.pcmag.com SEPTEMBER 16, 2003 PC MAGAZINE
57
On Technology