Diamond in the Rough
Written: May 10 '02
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Pros: *on-board combo drive*, 3 usb & 1 firewire, lightweight, stylish
Cons: low battery life (main batt.), hard to find, limited accessories, single ram slot
The Bottom Line: Four pounds with a combo-drive on-board, lots of ports and solid performance ... best buy I've ever made ... get one if you can find one ...
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| rawstock's Full Review: NEC Versa TXi (L32B111-0012002) PC Notebook |
After searching high and low for a lightweight replacement to a Dell Inspiron 4000, I managed to find one of these NEC Versa TXi's - it ended up being one of the best technology purchases I've ever made ...
To begin with, the specs on epinions don't seem to mention one very important feature of this notebook: IT HAS A MODULAR BAY, UNLIKE MOST NOTEBOOKS THIS SIZE. This bay can take an optical drive or an additional battery. I have a DVD/CDRW combo in mine.
Also, I HAVE NOT BEEN ABLE TO FIND ANOTHER ONE OF THESE NEW OR USED SINCE BUYING MY OWN. I'm fairly sure that their discontinued or, at best, awaiting an update ... which is a shame ... but if you can find one in good shape, grab it.
This notebook is only slightly larger than a Dell C400/L400 and has a virtually identical 12.1 SVGA screen capable of 1024x768 (although I do believe there are new Dell 12.1 screens running XGA resolutions), but has the optical drive on board, has two more usb ports and a firewire port (iLink-style, 4-pin). I can't recall if the Dell has them, but this model has vga out and tv-out, onboard 10/100 NIC and modem, and a parallel connection via dongle. The speakers are on the front, and are far better than the ones on my Inspiron 4000; phones and mic work great with NetMeeting.
I'm a fan of touchpads on laptops and this one hasn't disappointed me. The keyboard is fine (feels like about 97%); I've done a lot of word processing and conding on it.
The case is slick and the physical layout is exceptional. Manual volume control, the ilink/firewire, and audio jacks are on the front of the notebook, recessed below the touchpad; the 3 usb ports are on the front-right, in front of the modular bay; the NIC and model sit side-by-side on the back left side, behind the receiver for the parallel dongle and the 2 stacked PCMCIA slots; the vga and tv-out dongle connectors are on the back left, with the primary battery taking up most of the back-side of the notebook.
There are some multi-media buttons above the keyboard and, though I've never set it up (I'm not sure I got the utility for it), there's an NEC badge behind the screen (the top of the notebook when it's closed) that can flash alerts in multiple colors - even when it's asleep. You could, for example, set it up to glow green when you have email, or red when you have high-priority mail, etc ...
In general, performance has been excellent, certianly as fast as the Inspiron (which was a P3 750 as well); I'm running Windows2000 and added a stick of 128mb of RAM that I pulled from my Inspiron (adding up to 192). I find myself routinely lying on my couch with the notebook, streaming audio or video over an old Sohoware wireless network, working on a paper in Word or coding in ColdFusion studio without any noticeable lags; I've done some decent Photoshop project on it and ripped some divx clips from massive AVI's captured with it through Premiere; I'm using PowerDVD on it and have watched a couple of full features without any problems; Nero burns fine, all formats read and write fine.
The only downside is the battery life of the primary battery; this hasn't been a problem for me, because I bought it for lightweight transport more than mobile use (on planes and such). The caviet is that two additional batteries are available: one for the modular bay and one extra large that replaces the main battery and adds a layer to the bottom of the notebook ... they're both expensive and hard to find - I haven't actually seen either of them. The big one is supposed to give some insanely high usage time (like 7 hours).
Price? You'll see high list prices all over ($2000 to $3400); at the time I bought mine, Buy.com, Computers4sure, and a few other had these listed (with the combo drive and windows 2k) for $1400! Out of stock all over, no firm date on delivery ... I got mine open-box for ... ahhhh ... $950!
Add the fact that the factory warranty is 3-year, and I think it's the best value in this category. I'm very interested to see if they update the guts in this chassis.
And ... I guess ... that about covers it; email me if you have questions ...
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 950
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Intel Pentium III
Processor speed: 701-800
RAM: 128
Internal Storage: CD-RW and DVD
Hard Drive (GB): 13-20
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Epinions.com ID:
rawstock
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Member: Ted Ross Stock
Location: Sacramento, CA
Reviews written: 9
Trusted by: 3 members
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