|
15 FEBRUARY 2005 |
|
MX Laptop by Portable One |
|
When referring to laptops, most
people think of common brands
such as Dell, Gateway, or
Toshiba. Have you heard of
the company Portable One?
Probably not. Most people
have probably not heard of the
company Portable One when
talking about laptops because
you generally don't see other
consumers have them. This
is related to the idea of why
you don't see that many
consumers have IBM laptops as
well. That's because the
customers who buy these laptops
are generally corporate or even
military users. In
general, these laptops are much
more expensive than your typical
consumer laptop.
Today, I will
be reviewing the Portable One MX.
When I first went to Portable
One's
website
to look at pictures and
specifications of the product, I
immediately knew that this was
no ordinary laptop. Its
sleek design while having high
end performance features
definitely make this a unique
laptop on its own.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Since many of you have probably not heard
of the company Portable One, I decided to ask Ivan Gospich at
Portable One to provide some background. Here's what he
had to say:
"It all started with IBM
ThinkPad's in the mid 90's, by 98/99 we were the largest
ThinkPad dealer on the west coast and we started getting a
huge amount of DOA's, mostly IBM TP 600 Series, so we
started asking lots of questions and researching how and
where IBM made their ThinkPad's and found out that LG made
most of them and final assembly took place in Mexico etc, so
we started looking for companies that actually made their
own products, we thought Toshiba did and they did not either
and nowadays each line of Toshiba's is from a different ODM
in Asia. We finally came across Fujitsu & Panasonic,
both Panasonic & Fujitsu made their units and their
manufacturing plants were both in Osaka, so we stopped
offering all products that were not made by the vendor
we were selling, terrible business decision at first, and
just offered the 2 lines of products and became Fujitsu's
largest integration center in North America.
The past couple of years all
mobile computing manufacturers/vendors have become extremely
competitive for US market share and our two partners started
having models made by other ODM's too to save monies and be
more competitive, unfortunately sacrificing quality. And
since their marketing and channel development personnel were
ignoring some of our design requests we started looking for
solutions that our main partners were not offering and/or
make a better solution altogether for our customers."
After hearing this response from Ivan, it probably explained
the resemblance in features and style with an IBM laptop,
which is a good thing.
|
|
|
|
When I received the package, it came in a very
simple yet professional looking box. It
gave me the feeling that there was something
special inside. When you order and
purchase a laptop from Portable One, the laptop
is configured to your desired specifications.
I've read on some forums that their customer
service is top notch, if not among the best.
I heard that you specifically make a request for
Portable One to make sure that there are no dead
pixels on the laptop screen or even test the
memory to make sure it is fully working.
All configured laptops go through an enormous
point testing process to ensure that the laptop
arrives at your without any problems.
|
|
|
When opening the box, everything was neatly in
place. There are separate sections of the
box which contain the laptop as well as the
accessories.
|
|
|
The first cardboard container was thin, but
large. It contained all the extra
accessories as well as software which you might
need over time.
|
|
|
One of the first things I pulled out of the bux
were two sets of Klear Screen wipes. In
the Pocket PC world, this is a top choice when
cleaning the screen of your Pocket PC, even
before you place a screen protector on it.
It was a good choice for Portable One to include
these.
|
|
|
In addition, there is a user manual and the
necessary software. The user manual is
thin, but it describes all the basic
functionality that you can expect with the
laptop. The software included are drivers
for the laptop, Nero, Power DVD, and 3Com
Bluetooth drivers. There is also Vcom's
System Suite 5. This software suite is an
all-in-one software package that includes
antivirus protection, firewall protection, and
utilities in performing simple maintenance tasks
on your computer. Of course, this software
includes a licensed CD of Microsoft's Windows XP
with Service Pack 2. The software package
with the laptop is generally complete. I
despise how some computer manufacturers just
keep on throwing in useless additional software
to make you think that you're getting an even
better deal. It is not the case for
Portable One.
|
|
|
As you can expect, the laptop includes an AC
adapter and battery pack. I was satisfied
that the AC adapter was fairly small and very
light. The battery pack is also fairly
light for a battery.
|
|
|
Lastly, a telephone cable is provided so you
don't need to find one if for some reason you
need to use the modem on the laptop. The
black plastic bracket actually fills up an empty
PCMCIA slot and is ireally nothing but a
placeholder so it doesn't leave the slot wide
open. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
At initial glance, the Portable One MX
have a very simple yet stylish design.
The majority of the laptop is covered
with a black carbon fiber. The
edges of the laptop have a nice silver
finish. When I received the
laptop, the top had a clear sheet of
plastic covering it. I removed it.
During my testing, I noticed that the
oils from my hands and fingers did start
to contaminate the surface. When
looking closely, I was able to see small
smears of oils probably from the hands.
Don't worry though, it can't been seen
at a distance. If the top does
start to have more smears than you'd
like, then just clean it with a slightly
damp cloth. |
|
|
|
At first glance at
the back of the laptop, there's not much
to look at except the modem and network
ports, two USB ports, and what looks
like to be the heat exhaust at the
corner. There is a flap that
blends into the back to reveal addition
ports. Although the flap is thin
and flimsy, it is interesting how it
uses magnetism to keep the flap closed
in place. When opening the flap,
you will see an addition 2 USB ports, a
VGA port, and a printer port. |
|
|
 |
|
On one side of the laptop, there is a
DVD reader which is also able to burn
CD's as well. Right next to the
DVD-ROM drive is a headphone port, line
in port, and the AC port. I like
how the AC port is located on the side,
because otherwise, I find it a bit of an
annoyance in reaching all the way to the
back of the laptop to provide it power.
|
|
|
|
The other side of the laptop has a
single PCMCIA slot, infrared port,
Firewire port, and a locking hole for
laptop security. This laptop
included a Bluetooth PCMCIA card already
in the slot. |
|
 |
 |
|
When opening the thin cover of the
laptop, the display, keyboard, as well
as the touch sensitive mouse are seen.
The general layout is what you would
expect from a laptop. You have a
power button right at the top center.
There are the usual status indicator
lights such as power, battery,
hard-drive use, etc. The touch
sensitive mouse is right below the
keyboard.
|
|
|
|
The keyboard has the usual layout that
is expected. The only slight
differences is the bunching of the del,
home, insert, pg up, pg down buttons
around the right edge of the keyboard.
Although the placement is different from
a full-size standard keyboard, you still
shouldn't have much problem getting used
to them. There are the typical
function at the top right of the laptop
which are indicated in blue. You
activate them by pressing and holding
the function button and pressing the
desired key. These control
important functions such as the
brightness of the display, volume,
numlock, scroll lock, and allowing you
to switch the screen to another source
if you have another monitor connected to
the laptop.
|
|
|
|
There are addition buttons which allow
you to perform quick tasks such viewing
your email or browsing the web. As
you can see, these buttons blend in with
the color of the laptop making them hard
to see. You will simply have to
remember which button does what.
The buttons could have had white
pictures instead, but it might disrupt
the overall professional look of the
laptop. |
|
 |
|
The touch sensitive mouse is a bit of a
mixed bag. Having an old IBM
notebook, I have grown to love the
TrackPoint mouse on the notebook,
therefore, I generally find the touch
sensitive mouse on notebooks annoying
and cumbersome to use. Using the
touch sensitive mouse on the MX notebook
made it slightly easier for me to use.
At its default sensitivity, it is fairly
sensitive so the mouse cursor generally
moves easily with my control. Then
I started to notice some issues.
The mouse is a bit too sensitive.
There were frequent occasions where just
the slightest touch and my mouse cursor
would immediately jump somewhere else or
to another open running program.
By reconfiguring the mouse, I was able
to improve its usability by making it
less sensitive. I still miss
Trackpoint on IBM notebooks.
Below
the touch pad are the left and right
mouse buttons with a two button scroll
placed right in between them. Some
ergonomics can be used for these
buttons. I found that these
buttons do get uncomfortable with
lengthy use because the buttons are
simply flat. That means it
requires slightly more force to push
down on the buttons with your thumb on
its side.
|
|
|
|
|
So far, I have described to you how the
laptop generally looks as well as its physical features.
But one might wonder how this laptop is any different from other
notebooks. The main difference is the quality and
selection of parts for the laptop. According to Ivan
Gospich at Portable One, the laptop encasing is made by Asus,
the motherboard manufacturer leader.
Another
great feature about this laptop is the screen. This screen
is actually made by Samsung, not some unknown generic brand.
I have to admit that the screen on this laptop is among the best
that I've seen. It uses a an SXGA screen that accommodates
extremely small pixels that make images on the display look
extremely clear. The brightness of the screen can also be
commended. At its brightest setting, it is still a marvel
to look at.
While we're on the subject of
quality, let me also mention that at least 50% of the parts in
this laptop are made in approved countries since the US Military
is a major customer. Lastly, the memory used in the
machines are either made in Germany or Switzerland. As you
can, just from these facts alone, there are some high quality
parts in this laptop.
|
|
These are the specifications of the laptop.
When comparing these specifications with the default
specification, you can tell that this review unit has a higher
specification. This laptop typically comes with a 1.8Ghz
Intel Centrino M Dothan Processor. In addition, the only
other difference is that this review unit has 2GB of DDR400 RAM
instead of the default 512. These differences in
specification should still not affect our general idea of how
this laptop performs. In fact, the default specifications
are still plenty sufficient.
If you take a
look at the specifications below, you can get a good idea of how
these features differ from a consumer laptop. In fact, I
pretended to shop online for a consumer laptop to see if I could
find a laptop similar in terms of size, weight, and performance.
I had an enormous amount of trouble finding one. Most of
the thin laptops simply could not match the specifications of
this laptop. Even if I was able to find one that was equal
or better than this laptop, they were surprisingly enormous and
bulky.
In my opinion, the choice of parts
for this laptop couldn't have been a better combination.
One of the main bottlenecks in laptops today is the hard drive
speed. This is immediately remedied with a full 7200 RPM
hard drive in this laptop which you rarely see in slim laptops.
When the hard drive is paired with the fast DDR400 memory and a
Centrino processor, you theoretically should get some amazing
performance.
2.0 Ghz Intel Centrino M Dothan
Processor
60GB 7200 RPM hard drive
2GB DDR400 PC3200 SODIMM
14.1" SXGA display (1400 x 1050 resolution)
Intel Extreme Graphics 2
Modular Combination DVD/CDRW drive
4 USB 2.0 ports and IEEE 1394 FireWire port
56k modem and 10/100Mbps LAN
3Com XJack Bluetooth PCMCIA card
integrated Intel PRO wireless a+b/g wireless LAN
copper moulded heat sink with heat pipes including Arctic Silver
5
1 year warranty
Windows XP Professional w SP2
12.16" W x 10" L x 1.14" H
4.9lbs including battery and optical drive
|
|
This is my first experience with a Centrino
type notebook. I can truly say that it does do its job in
maximizing the performance while using very little power.
On a different laptop using a Pentium 4 processor or even a
Pentium III, it simply can't compare with the battery life of a
Centrino notebook. When doing daily tasks such as doing
word processing, viewing web pages, checking email, etc, I was
able to get 4 to5 hours usage on the laptop. When doing
more processor intensive tasks such as circuit simulation or
watching a movie, I was able to get a good two hours or more.
For such a slim laptop, I was expecting much less battery life,
but with the help of Centrino technology, it saves the day.
|
|
I have to admit that when looking at the
display of the Portable One MX, you can expect to see a detailed
looking display. It is more than sufficient for doing
tasks such as web browsing, working with applications, and
reading email. When playing DVD's in full screen, I was
impressed by the detail and picture quality. It was a bit
of a different story when streaming movies off the Internet
where the picture size is much smaller. When going to
Ifilm.com to see the Grayson trailer at a stream rate of
200K, I found the trailer a bit hard to see. It wasn't the
viewing angle. Even at full brightness, the trailer was a
bit darker than I had expected, therefore, making it difficult
to see the dark scenes. It would help if the screen had an
even higher constrast ratio. This shows the slight
discrepancy between the a notebook display and a LCD display for
a desktop. Nevertheless, when compared with other laptops,
the screen is still top notch. |
|
One of the major bottlenecks in laptop
performance is the hard drive. Typically, notebooks have
slower moving hard drives. This notebook uses a full 7200
RPM hard drive. I did a test with HDTach to determine the
hard drive performance in the laptop. The laptop performed
at a respectable sequential read of 93MB/s. This is not
too far off from the Hitachi 7K400 internal desktop hard drive
reviewed previously which had a read speed of 125.9 MB/s.
It is quite impressive how far the technology in laptops has
gone.
|
|
I really enjoyed using this laptop.
Most laptops that are slim simply cannot match their looks.
The Portable One MX is otherwise. It manages to balance
performance and mobility in a notebook as well as style. With the
quality parts in this laptop, you can be assured that you have
something unique in your hands. The MX notebook did have
some minor issues such as the overly sensitive touch pad as well
as ergonomic issues with the mouse buttons, but it did not
affect my overall positive experience. At the default
price of $1899, this is quite expensive for a laptop for a
consumer, which is why this is ideal for mobile professionals or
corporate users. With the price you pay, you will get a
set of premium features and quality that rivials the similar IBM
Thinkpad nobteooks. If Portable One can provide a laptop
geared more toward consumers at a more affordable price, I have
no doubt that they will be able to compete with the big common
consumer brand names.
|
|
Reviewed by
ronald@digitalreviews.net |
|
|
|
