Eight years, and counting!!!
Written: Mar 15 '04
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Pros: $50 or less!!! Nice screen, compact size and good keyboard
Cons: Old cardbus not USB or FireWire compatible
The Bottom Line: An amazing value in 2004, and Toshiba's outstanding website offers all the support you need, even on an 8-year-old model.
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| lawman67's Full Review: Toshiba Portege 650CT laptop computer |
This is my second review of the Toshiba Portege 650CT laptop computer (relax, the first review is pasted in at the bottom). I am writing another review, rather than an update, as once again this computer has taken a new lease on life and assumed a new role, rescuing it from my eBay listing plans.
A quick rehash, I got the Portege 650CT back in 1996 (yes, eight-years-ago), as part of my job at Apple Computer, mainly to keep abreast of current trends in the opposition (Wintel). As configured with maximum 80MB ram and the docking station, this 133MHz laptop (no MMX here) cost a cool $4800, and today is worth less than 1% of its original value (yes, I saw one on eBay fetch $40 in "like new" condition).
I've played with this machine on and off during the eight years I've had it, but it only served as my primary computer for a few short months in the year 2000, when I was in-between modern laptops. Most recently, I've been using it for my army reserve duties, with Windows 2000 and Office 2000, at which it did fine until my duties demanded more multimedia work (presentations with movies and music).
A multimedia powerhouse this isn't, and so I (reluctantly) signed out one of the massive Pentium III Dell Latitudes and returned the Portege 650CT to my storage room. Then something happened.
Last month, I switched my personal computing platform from Windows to Macintosh, and sold my IBM ThinkPad in favor of a shiny new Apple PowerBook. Now the PowerBook is terrific, BUT as a law student preparing for one more round of final exams and the CA bar, I needed a Windows laptop for test-taking.
Test taking, at least at my school and state bar, can be done either the old-fashioned way with a pen and paper, or the modern way, with a program called ExamSoft that uses your own copy of Microsoft Word (2000 or better) and their encryption that locks the user out of the rest of the hard drive. Rather than resort to hand writing or trying to fake out the software by running Virtual PC on my Apple (VPC review soon coming), I pulled out the 8-year-old Portege and went to work setting it up.
First off, the 133MHz non-MMX processor will never get any faster, which makes Windows 2000 the newest OS that will run, and Windows 98SE the newest that will run fast. I have an image (Norton Ghost) that I created a few years ago with Windows 2000 and Office 2000, that went back onto the Portege for test-duty and runs very well, though boots a bit slowly. Just to see the difference, I loaded another image (also from a few years back) of Windows 98SE and Office 97, and as expected, the machine not only was faster than the 2000 install, but was actually FAST PERIOD. Under the light resource load of older software, this machine is every bit as fast as the latest 2GHz wonder running modern bloatware.
The keyboard remains a delight, more so after I gave the keycaps a good cleaning and blew all of the dust out with a solid blast of compressed air. I also swapped out the old hard drive which at 1.2 GB was the absolute minimum for Windows 2000 (besides, it was getting noisy) for a 6 GB drive out of a dead Portege 3110, giving me the space to install other software and to keep a backup of BOTH disk images on a 2GB backup partition. I have the machine set up with Windows 98SE and can use Ghost to restore Windows 2000 at exam time.
Test taking isn't the only use for this computer. I found an old serial port joystick on eBay and since this is running DOS-based Windows, I can play all of the old games I used to enjoy. Silent Hunter and Red Baron are terrific, with less detail than modern simulators, but a fast and easy playability that most of the new games traded away for realism. Both of these games run exceptionally well on the old Portege, though admittedly, they also run fine on my Apple running Virtual PC.
There are other delights. The screen, while small at 11.3" and low res at 800X600, is as bright and crisp as the day I got it. The folding legs that prop up the back add to the ergonomic comfort, and the footprint of this laptop is even smaller than that of my 12" PowerBook, which is the smallest laptop Apple has ever sold.
Would I be satisfied with a Portege 650CT as my primary computer today? Of course not. Even with a cardbus slot, USB PC cards will not work (the cardbus slot on this computer is a very early version that is not completely compatible) denying access to most modern peripherals. Want to burn CDs or watch movies, NOT WITH THIS MACHINE you won't.
So what good is it then? Well, if you use a desktop PC at home and want a laptop for working on the road, a Portege 650CT remains very tough to beat. Sure, it isn't the smallest or lightest PC out there anymore, but at 4.8lbs its not that heavy, and while a bit thick, in its other dimensions you won't find a smaller laptop that is still comfortable to use.
Where it excels is value. You can buy one of these in great condition for about $50. $50 for a working laptop, with a terrific screen and comfortable keyboard. Brand-new batteries are under $30 on eBay, and while incompatible with USB and FireWire PC cards, ethernet and WiFi cards work great.
Go ahead, laugh at new laptop pricing and pick up one of these gems, then enjoy working on a laptop that still gets the job done.
***Old Review***
This is not an ordinary review of an ordinary computer. I have owned this laptop for seven years now, yet it only served as my primary laptop for a few months in the year 2000. It has spent more time than not sitting, boxed-up, in my storage room, though every time I go to sell it, my delight in the design and function of this machine is renewed and I end up keeping it. First, I¡¯ll describe the strange circumstances under which I acquired and used this computer, then I¡¯ll get to the hardware itself, and finally, to its usefulness in the year 2003.
In 1996 I worked as a technical support and pre-sales support trainer for Apple Computer, or more accurately one of the companies to which Apple out-sourced this service. I was a die-hard Macintosh junky and was still using my then 3-year-old PowerBook 145B as my primary computer. Of course, as pre-sales, I needed to know all about the modern stuff, and thus used the latest PowerBook 5300ce and 1400c, and various models of the competition.
The competition meant the Wintel crowd, and we always bought the best, which was up to me to select, and always meant whatever was top-of-the-line in IBM and Toshiba¡¯s catalog. Since this is a review of the Toshiba Portege 650CT, you would be correct if you guessed that this was one of the machines we purchased. Actually, in mid-1996 the Portege 650CT set Apple back $4500, $5800 by the time we upgraded the memory to 80MB (maximum) and added the port replicator. This was a high-end, corporate-class laptop, costing what most people spend for a used car.
I left Apple barely a month after we bought that Portege, and it was given to me as part of my severance (the small company I worked for being to cheap to give me a FINANCIAL package). Of course, I still used my Apple PowerBook as my primary computer, though the Portege, then running Windows 95 and Office 95, was used whenever I needed compatibility with the rest of the world, or wanted to play games.
By 1998 I had owned two other Apple laptops and finally made my break from the Mac platform, and bought a new laptop PC. The Portege was packed in the box and sitting in my storage room, and rather than take it out, I thought it would be too old and too slow, and it just stayed in storage. It wasn¡¯t until the summer of 2000, when I enrolled in law school, that that old Portege came out, my plan at the time to sell it on eBay and buy something new.
The first step to selling the Portege was to remove any and all traces of my documents, and to do that I had to boot the machine up. Once I booted it up, all thoughts of selling it went right out the window, for reasons I will describe below. Having just purchased a new Pentium II powered laptop with built-in CD ROM, the 4-year-old Portege, which lacked any built-in drives save the hard disk, was still not to be my primary laptop.
The Portege sat in storage, coming occasionally when I thought about selling it for some extra money, and once in late 2001 when I wanted to play with Linux, which the Portege handled beautifully (SuSe 6.4). My primary laptop changed many times over the years, most of them being newer models in the Toshiba Portege series (3490, 3480, 3110 and 4000). Finally in the fall of last year, I sold my then-current Portege 4000 and bought an IBM ThinkPad, which I consider to be the ultimate laptop for my needs.
So what about that old Portege 650CT? Well, it is out on my desk again, freshly configured for a new role: the military. I am a member of the Army Reserve, and we have rules about the mixing of civilian and military information on a computer. The IMO officer (equivalent to IT manager in the civilian world) issued me a Pentium III equipped Dell Inspiron, however that machine weighs almost 9 lbs, and is so large that it is useless on airplanes, not to mention taking up most of my desk. The IMO agreed to let me use my own laptop, if I would designate it for military use only, and thus the Portege has found a new lease on life.
Now the reason I went through all that long narrative about my Portege 650CT¡¯s history is because the software requirements for a laptop in my unit are far beyond what most people would consider a 7-year-old Pentium laptop (not even MMX) capable of handling. We use Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional, Office 2000 Professional and Internet Explorer 6.01, software most people would consider a Pentium III with at least 256MB of ram as the minimum for.
To prepare the old laptop, I installed a 6GB IBM TravelStar hard drive out of my ThinkPad (which has a nice, new 40GB in its place), and nothing else. The 80MB ram is the most that machine will ever handle, and I was a bit concerned that it wouldn¡¯t be sufficient for the Windows 2000 operating system. Also, 133MHz is listed as the minimum to install Windows 2000, and most magazine reviews recommended at least double, meaning a 266MHz Pentium II, which also has the MMX instructions that my Pentium processor lacks.
Windows 2000 installed smoothly, if not slowly, as did the latest Internet Explorer and Office 2000 Professional. The machine does take a little while to boot-up, but once running it isn¡¯t that much slower than my 700MHz PIII IBM running Windows XP. Windows open quickly, pages draw smoothly and even graphics don¡¯t slow it down much. I can tell that virtual memory isn¡¯t accessed very often as the hard disk light isn¡¯t on constantly as I work. Even such modern functions as Hibernation and Infrared work well, giving up very little to a more modern machine.
Are there significant limitations? Of course, this is 7-year-old hardware after all. There is no USB port, and while it is equipped with Cardbus (32-bit) PCMCIA slots, it is a 1st generation Toshiba-proprietary controller and from what I¡¯ve read, USB PC cards cannot be made to work. I haven¡¯t tried the newer cards out there, and plan of plugging in a USB 2.0 card (which I want to add to my ThinkPad) just to see. If that works, then my biggest complaint will be solved. Other issues are that the screen resolution is only 800X600, which is annoying on many newer websites, which increasingly are optimized for 1024X768. It is also incapable of addressing a larger than 8GB hard drive without using software to ¡°fool¡± the bios. Lastly, 80MB and 133MHz are not much these days, meaning video, music and animation are simply not going to happen, unless you revert to 1996-era software and OS.
So how about the hardware itself? I must say, this machine is still a delight to use. The light-gray case looks positively ancient, and at 1.8¡± thick, the machine really shows its age. At 4.8lbs, it is also heavier than many modern machines that include optical drives in the case, though still it is lighter than most. While thick and for an subnote, heavy, the footprint is tiny and when you open the display, the 11.3¡± TFT display looks positively huge compared to the rest of the machine. That display, by the way, is extremely bright and crisp, with excellent color that is easily the equal of any laptop I¡¯ve ever used.
The keyboard is another strong-point. The Portege 650CT used very high-quality scissor-action keys, giving each key a crisp and springy feel, while remaining light and quiet. At 3mm key travel, it is as comfortable as a keystroke can get on a laptop, though at 18mm, the key caps are a touch smaller than those on a full-sized laptop. The mouse, of the eraser-head variety, is also excellent if you like these devices (I do). It drifts occasionally as all such devices do (self-calibration), but its touch is light and motion is precise. Finally, there are little plastic spring-loaded legs on the bottom of the unit that when extended, tilt up the back of the computer for increased comfort. Battery life is still average today at 2 hours.
Is this machine still useful in 2003? Well, judging by my installation of Windows and Office 2000, I would say so. There are other benefits as well, such as a significantly smaller footprint than most modern subnotebooks, and of course cost. A clean Portege 650CT on eBay costs roughly $150 today, far less than the $4500 it fetched when new. For that $150 you get a compact laptop with an excellent keyboard and display that is capable of running fairly modern software well. This makes an excellent machine for school or business use, handling Word, Excel, email and light web-surfing without even breaking a sweat. If your needs run beyond office-tasks, however, then a more modern laptop would be advised.
Performance is relative, however. If I was willing to run Windows 95 or 98 and Office 97, then this laptop would actually be fast, rather than adequate. Windows NT4 also runs well. The problem with those operating systems is the lack of real power management (95 and NT) and the lack of OS stability (95 and 98). I honestly consider Windows 2000 Professional as the oldest truly useable version of the Windows operating system, and the Portege 650CT really does draw the line for the minimum acceptable hardware specification.
In conclusion, I really like the Portege 650CT, enough so that even after seven years, I cannot sell mine (even if I wanted to, it isn¡¯t worth much anymore). For what perhaps 90% of users do 90% of the time, which is writing in Word, sending and receiving email in Outlook and surfing the web in Internet Explorer, machines like the Portege 650CT (or any other laptops of this period) are more than up to the task. If you want to do more, however, then you can call such machines obsolete.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 4800 (1996)
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Intel Pentium
Processor speed: Under 200
Screen Size: 11 inches
RAM: 64
Hard Drive (GB): Under 4
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Epinions.com ID:
lawman67
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 in Computer Hardware |
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Member: Andrew F
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Reviews written: 208
Trusted by: 63 members
About Me:
Her Majesty's a pretty nice girl but she doesn't have a lot to say.
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