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Technology Stocks : C-Cube -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Black-Scholes who wrote (41478)	5/24/1999 6:46:00 PM
From: Alfie	Respond to of 50808

zdnet.com The Big Picture--To Go By Carol Venezia — May 19, 1999 Ever since Dell Computer Corp. introduced its Inspiron 7000 notebook with a 15-inch display earlier this year, it's been the talk of the town. Would consumers buy such a heavy machine (nearly 10 pounds with AC adapter)? Well, judging from the Inspiron's success, the answer is a resounding yes. Not surprisingly, Dell competitors Gateway and Micron have followed suit and have introduced their own notebooks with 15-inch screens. But do these machines up the ante for not-so-mobile mobile PCs? We tested the Gateway Solo 9150LS ($3,634 direct) and the Micron TransPort NX ($3,699 direct). Comparatively, a similarly configured Inspiron 7000, at the time of our testing, cost $3,510. Lots in Common Both the Solo and the TransPort are powered by 366-MHz Mobile Pentium II processors with 256K of full-speed, integrated L2 cache. Each portable also features 64MB of RAM (upgradable to 384MB via three SODIMM slots), a 14GB hard disk, and a graphics subsystem based on the ATI Rage LT Pro AGP 2X chip set with 8MB of SGRAM. In addition, these laptops both have DVD drives and LS120 drives, although they are integrated in different ways. The Solo's implementation is a combo drive mounted up front in an option bay (you can opt for a combination 24X CD-ROM drive/floppy disk drive for $300 less, and the option bay can alternatively take a second battery), and its DVD drive is a 2X model. The TransPort's 4X DVD drive and LS120 drive are housed in separate bays. The former can also accommodate a 2X DVD, CD, or second hard disk; the latter will take a floppy disk drive, Zip Drive, or second battery. Although both machines have the right stuff for DVD movie playback, we liked the Solo's implementation better. First, for decoding, the Solo uses hardware (C-Cube's ZiVA-PC DVD decoder), and the TransPort uses software. This difference translated to smoother playback from the Solo, with fewer dropped frames. Frame dropping and audio skipping was most evident on the TransPort when we adjusted volume (via function keys, as opposed to the Solo's thumbwheel approach). The Solo's display quality, however, was muddy and dark in general. The Solo also has more options for hooking up external peripherals. Both machines have line-in, microphone, headphone, and NTSC-in and -out ports. But the Solo adds both a line-out jack and an RCA coaxial connector in the back for 5.1 channel Dolby Digital-out support. We also preferred the Solo's speakers; though still small notebook speakers, they produced better sound than the TransPort's.