We tested
five high-end ultraportables
that should reduce a road warrior's fears about taking to the streets. These systems cost you dearly at $3495 or higher, but they all feature 486DX4 processors, and all but the Gateway 2000 Liberty DX4-100 Deluxe have active-matrix displays.
What Gateway's Liberty lacks in screen quality, however, it makes up for in performance by surpassing all the others in our high-level InterMark benchmarks. The Liberty is truly built for speed, with 24 MB of RAM and a 100-MHz 486DX4 processor. It is also the only one with 256 KB of secondary cache memory. The Zeos Meridian 400A also has a 100-MHz 486DX4 and draws bit-mapped Windows images faster than the Liberty does.
The Liberty has an expansive, 10.4-inch dual-scan LCD that surprisingly scored lower than ma
ny passive-matrix displays in our screen-quality tests. Testers believed that its colors were somewhat washed out in our color-bar test. The remaining high-end ultraportables did much better in the screen-quality tests, thanks to their active-matrix LCDs.
We were also impressed with the unique designs of the ultraportables. IBM's ThinkPad 701C, which was held back by its short battery life (2 hours and 9 minutes), has a TrackWrite keyboard (known as Butterfly) that slides out and extends over the edges of the chassis. The 85-key keyboard is surprisingly firm to the touch. Our winner in this category, the slick-looking Digital Equipment HiNote Ultra CT475, features a Floppy Dock, which houses a 3-1/2-inch floppy drive and connects underneath the HiNote; it angles the keyboard, increasing typing comfort. Also, the HiNote, the ThinkPad 701C, and the Hewlett-Packard OmniBook 600CT have built-in sound with high-quality speakers, and the latter two have built-in microphones.
Digital HiNote Ultra
CT475
At 5.6 pounds with all its accessories, the HiNote Ultra CT475's 9
1/2-inch active-matrix LCD gets the highest screen rating with deep
yellows and dark blacks in our color-bar tests. Testers liked its
unique trackball design (see "Honorable Mentions") and the upright
status LCD located to the right of the screen instead of below it.
The HiNote's lithium-ion battery pack (4 hours and 40 minutes --
second best overall) conveniently clips on the rear of the system,
and Digital's optional Mobile Media Module ($899) turns the HiNote
into a multimedia notebook. Its only drawback is a $4999 price tag.
PRICE AS BATTERY LIFE
TESTED CPU/SPEED (HR:MIN:SEC)
=====================================================================
DEC HiNote Ultra CT475 $4999 486DX4/75 4:39:55
Gateway 2000 Liberty DX4-100 DL $4499 486DX4/100 4:15:12
HP OmniBook 600CT $399
9 486DX4/75 5:46:10
Zeos Meridian 400A $3495 486DX4/100 2:29:49
IBM ThinkPad 701C $4599 486DX4/75 2:08:32
OVERALL EASE OF SCREEN
SCORE FEATURES USE QUALITY
=====================================================================
DEC HiNote Ultra CT475 *** *** *** ****
Gateway 2000 Liberty DX4-100 DL *** *** *** *
HP OmniBook 600CT *** ** *** ***
Zeos Meridian 400A *** *** *** ****
IBM ThinkPad 701C ** *** *** ***
Key: Ratings from 1 to 4: * is the lowest; **** is the highest.
photo_link (20 Kbytes)
Clockwise from lower right: IBM's ThinkPad, Digital's HiNote, Zeos's Meridian 400A, Gateway's Liberty, and HP's OmniBook display NSTL's color-bar test.
High-End Ultraportables
