More Power to Them

The engineers at Intel Corp., it seems, have gotten a whole lot better at making molehills out of mountains. And as usual when such miracles occur in the world of notebook computers, the beneficiaries are the folks who use the amazing little machines.

Over the past few months, practically every major notebook manufacturer has started shipping products with the mobile Pentium II processor and its much-ballyhooed 440BX PCI chip set. Given the sheer number of transistors on a Pentium II chip (7.5 million), and the heat the chip generates (it's hot), squeezing Pentium IIs into portable chassis qualifies as a breakthrough in-deed. And this one took the semiconductor giant a mere 11 months to achieve.

It's a good thing the breakthrough occurred, too, because the appearance of the Pentium II in desktops last year seemed a step toward second-class citizenship for notebook users. Granted, Pentium processors with multimedia- enhancing MMX technology resided in the innards of most notebooks, and they were decent, serviceable machines, by and large. But the truth was, those MMX-enabled portables sorely lacked the processing punch of the newfangled Pentium II desktops. So now, the gap between the best of the notebooks and the best of the desktops is again narrowed to a sliver.

You certainly can't blame Intel's managers for looking to port the new chip to the portable world quickly. Notebook computers-- and their hefty profit margins--are big business these days. According to International Data Corp., a Framingham, Massachusetts-based market research firm, 8.3 million portables will be sold in the United States next year--a whopping 21 percent jump from this year's sales. Increasingly, the sales come from Corporate America, where notebooks are fast becoming the computer of choice for senior managers. What's more, the sophisticated, high- end operating system Windows NT is inexorably supplanting Windows 95 and 98 as the standard business network. And as most heads of IT will tell you, trying to run NT on a plain old Pentium notebook is like trying to drain Frisco Bay with a spoon.

Fortunately, a better utensil is here. If you're thinking of purchasing notebooks for your staff--and are seriously considering running NT on this notebook someday--skip MMX-enabled portables and go straight to Pentium II models. We particularly liked offerings from Dell Computer Corp., IBM Corp., and Hewlett- Packard Co. But any in this roundup will fit the bill, with big active- matrix screens, sizable hard drives, and clock speeds of 233MHz or higher. Of course, fitting the bill doesn't come cheap. With the exception of the Gateway Solo 2500SE, all these Pentium IIs cost more than $3,200. Several cost more than $4,000. This, it goes without saying, violates CFO's cardinal rule: Never spend more on a notebook than you would on a mobile home. But wait until prices on these powerful notebooks start to drop around $3,000 --and they will.

The performance is hard to beat. According to PC Computing magazine, a notebook with a 266MHz Mobile Pentium II processor will outperform a similarly equipped 266MHz Pentium MMX notebook by about 20 percent. The number shoots up dramatically if you're running Windows NT on your portable. Although CFO does not benchmark computers, our subjective tests-- that is, using the damn things--convinced us that Pentium II notebooks get data from point A to point B faster than a greyhound on steroids.

Getting yourself to point B, however, won't be so easy with one of these Pentium II portables in your briefcase. In a reversal of the weight- loss trend of recent years, most Pentium II notebooks now on the market have the incredible lightness of, well, manhole covers. (The weights we quote in the guide are "travel weights," typically including battery and drives.) Other than the IBM ThinkPad (and some MMX-powered "ultralights," such as the models from Toshiba American Information Systems and Micron Electronics Inc.), the luggables we surveyed weigh more than six pounds, and some top out at eight. That's a lot to schlepp around the international departures hall at LAX.

While we fervently recommend the Pentium II machines if you're going to be running Windows NT, in fact, lighter non-Pentium II notebooks will do just fine if you're sticking with Windows 95 or 98. Indeed, if most of your computing consists of number crunching and E- mailing in that 95­98 world--and you're on airplanes a lot--ultralights might be the smarter choice. We particularly liked the excellent Toshiba Portégé 320CT, which can't possibly cause ulna damage.

While the newly redesigned Macintosh PowerBook G3 will never be mistaken for an ultralight-- it's one bulky machine, both in size and weight--it's the best machine in the roundup. The G3, based on Motorola Inc. and IBM's PowerPC RISC chip, features a superior operating system, a bright-and-beautiful screen, and enough Apple-flavored goodies to keep things fun as the "think different" company returns to the forefront of portable computing. And with the Mac's translation capabilities, moving files from Windows to Mac portables and back again should be a snap.

Of course, what we'd really like to see is a Pentium II or PowerPC processor running at 300MHz, a DVD (digital video data) drive, a 14- inch active-matrix screen, full-sized keyboard, and a four gigabyte hard drive--all weighing in under five pounds. And, oh yes, costing under $2,500. If our prognosticating is any good at all, this very machine will be shipping sometime in the summer of 1999--for our next buyer's guide.

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