Thin enough to slide down my pants
Written: Mar 12 '02
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Pros: Extremely light and small
Cons: mid range performance, lousy battery life
The Bottom Line: Compromising speed and versatility for size. Battery life needs much improvement.
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| LaFeet's Full Review: Toshiba Portege 2000 (PP200C-00002F) PC Notebook |
If compactness was the number one desirable quality of a laptop computer, then the Toshiba's Portégé 2000 would win hands down. At just 0.73 inches in height, this is the thinnest available full size laptop on the market today.
This ultralight comes equipped with a bevy of features that will entice business and mobile users. But those of us who need a bit more staunch performance will have to give up on the light weight Portégé 2000.
It is surprising to note that the Portégé 2000’s overall dimensions (11.4 by 9 inches) is about the same size as my high school kids spiral notebook. This will please those owning the already too stuffed brief case. The 2.6 pound weight is will also help lighten the load.
. Toshiba managed to cram the new 750MHz, ultra low voltage mobile Pentium III, a 1.8 inch 20GB hard drive and 256MB of RAM (expandable to 512MB) inside the magnesium alloy chassis. Not typically found in notebooks this small is the integrated Wi-Fi. The graphics chipset utilized is a 16MB Trident Video Accelerator CyberBlade. All in all, an impressive array of technology layered into a very thin sandwich.
The lithium polymer battery is a first for Toshiba. There are very few other notebooks on the market are using this battery type. The mere fact that these batteries can be twisted, molded, curved makes it easier for manufacturers to fit them into even smaller laptops. The down fall is the battery performance. A truly sore spot for this laptop.
The Portégé 2000 battery lasted a mere 92 minutes. Not even enough time for me to do any serious presentation or web cruising. Toshiba does include a second, higher capacity lithium ion battery, weighing .7 pounds, which is reported to provide up to 6.5 hours of computing power.
On the down side, as with most thinner laptops, as the thickness decreases, so does the performance. The Portégé 2000 takes this to heart, although not performing as poorly as I first thought. A bit of research pointed out that the Portégé 2000 is just a bit slower the Dell Latitude L400 or the Compaq Ey0 N200. This is a bit surprising, considering the Toshib has twice the RAM and a slightly faster clocked P-III processor. But for the dramatic drop in size and weight, the Portégé 2000 is a fairly capable system for most applications.
On the up side, there is a sharp, 12.1 inch, TFT display (sporting a standard resolution of 1,024x768). I found the full sized keyboard (84 keys) easy to use, even with some “out of place” keys.
The back side sports the typical 10/100 Ethernet, modem, video-out, and two USB ports. But you also get a PC Card slot (Type II), a media slot, headphone, microphone, and port replicator connectors.
Service and support policies from Toshiba have all ways been a bonus and easy to use. A three year parts and labor limited warranty and Toshiba's Notebook Depot repair program are included in the 2199 dollar listed price tag. They also promise to repair your dead laptop within 48 hours of receipt of the unit. This is a good thing, as a former computer tech, I don't want to try to repair anything this thin.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 2055
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Intel Pentium III
Processor speed: 701-800
Screen Size: 12
RAM: 256
Hard Drive (GB): 21-30
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Epinions.com ID:
LaFeet
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Member: Paule Patterson
Location: Cushing, Ok
Reviews written: 314
Trusted by: 36 members
About Me:
Retired Submariner, ex Air-Force Brat, current radiation protection tech, hiding in urban Oklahoma
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