OK, here it is. Bought a WinbookJ1, 1 gig Pentium, 256 Meg Ram, DVD/CD-RW, 20 Gig hard drive, 2 USB ports, PCM/CIA slots, WinME (2K was another coupla' hundred) tax, title, and license somewhere around 1800 bucks. Edit - V90 modem and 10/100 Fast Ethernet included.
I considered Compaq 1215, Sony 250, and looked at a couple of others. With the Compaq, you killed the touch pad when you plugged in the serial mouse, with the Sony, I just didn't like it.
I had a Winbook XL bought on the Net 3 or 4 years ago. I dropped it a time or two, spilled coffee on it once, and tweaked the various setting up and down. The durn thing never blinked, can't remember a crash, I practically loved it. Used it as a desktop until I killed the battery with constant charging and not enough discharging.
There's a plastics guy here(Houston) that makes cookbook holders out of clear plastic. If you lay it down on your desk and put your notebook on it, the angle is just about the same as a normal windows keyboard. Works great.
Bought a 4-port USB bus, plugged into the back of the WinbookJ1, hooked up a USB optical mouse (those are wonderful for surfing the www)hooked up my USB Epson, a UMAX USB scanner I found at Fry's for $24.99, a USB SanDisk flashcard reader (Use it like a remote removable hard drive)and my day flys by. (SI shows that "flys" in red, ya' reckon it oughta' be flies? I thought that was winged insects) Oh, well!
I use the USB mouse sometimes and the touchpad others. You gotta' be careful when punching keys that you don't inadvertently move your cursor by brushing the touchpad but after you screw up an Excel spreadsheet or two, you learn to stay away from it.
They really built a fine machine. Mine is about 4-5 weeks old and I wouldn't trade it for any of the other brands.
The only thing I've found so far that I'm not too sure about is the way you have to toggle numlock on/off. You hit the green function key+numlock. Then, and only then, can you use Alt+keypad numbers to produce ASCII characters not included in the current font. I use é and ñ a lot and it's a hassle to remember the Fn+ combination.
Unreserved high recommendation. Uncompensated testimonial.
CharleyMike |
