Good travel machine, especially for presentations
Written: Sep 06 '99 (Updated Jun 09 '01)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: very portable; great screen; has video-out on main machine
Cons: crummy el-cheapo modem
The Bottom Line: If you can find a used one, buy it, because it is still a good machine, even if it may not last that long.
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| jakob's Full Review: Archived Computers & Internet Reviews |
I have been using the Sharp Actius PC-A150 for almost a year and so far without problems. It *still* impresses most people when I pull it out. When I am on panels at conferences, most other speakers lug around big bricks that look like they were designed to compute Pi to millions of digits rather than supporting the mobile professional.
The screen is very good. The keyboard is quite acceptable, though I would not want to write long reports on it. It's fine for short emails, though (who wants to receive long email messages anyway...).
The designers did their homework in terms of a task analysis of the mobile professional's needs: people quite often bring a PC on their trips to project PowerPoint slides (as much as we can lament those speakers who use PowerPoint as a crutch, sometimes it's nice to have illustrations for a talk). All the other ultra-portables I considered before buying the Actius relegated the video-out port to a special port-extender add-on bar that takes up extra space when attached. Putting *most* ports on a special unit is fine: I don't need a parallel port or a floppy drive or a CD-ROM when I travel. But video-out is necessary if you want to project slides. And Actius has the video-out port right on the main machine!
One gripe: Sharp saved $2 on the modem chip and included a sub-standard modem that often has problems dialing in and getting a handshake with various ISPs. I have spent many, many times Sharp's savings in extra payments to hotels for the extra dial-out attempts. Bad, Sharp, bad. Buy a genuine high-end modem next time and I will gladly pay $10 extra.
UPDATE: The screen broke in October 2000, so this machine lasted about two years. Maybe I had been too tough on it; hard to say. It survived a lot of travel and then one day, about 20% of the pixels were dead. I didn't bother getting this laptop fixed; instead I bought a Windows'2000 machine. I would have preferred to have the Sharp last another year, though.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
jakob
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Member: Jakob Nielsen
Location: Mountain View, CA
Reviews written: 20
Trusted by: 99 members
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