Home & Small Office Computer Guide

Laptops were originally produced with the idea of being light and very portable but over the years that idea seems to have gone west as laptops increased in size and weight.

But Fujitsu are still interested in delivering a laptop that is both light in weight and small in size - in fact I couldn’t believe just how small the Fujitsu P7120 really was when I saw in on the weekend.

It’s powered by an Intel Pentium M753 ultra-low voltage processor that delivers over 7 hours of of use on the standard battery while connected to the Net through the intergrated blue tooth connection.

The whole unit only weighs 1.38 kilograms even though it includes peripherals that include a DVD burner. The operating system is Windows XP Professional and wireless and wired networking connections are included.

On the downside this laptop is very expensive - $2,990 rrp here in Australia and the keyboard is rather cramped. You can find a full review of the Fujitsu P7120 here

So you think your business needs a laptop but what do you look for in a laptop? What are the important qualities of a good laptop?

Obviously a lot is going to depend on what you want to do with your laptop but in general the following are some of the things you should consider.

1. Weight - the lighter the better. Most people buy laptops so that they can travel with them and so weight is important. Even with a carry bag a heavy laptop can become an absolute burden when you travel.

2. Battery Life - the longer the better. How long will the battery in your laptop last before it needs recharging. Of course, if you’re going to be using the laptop in motel rooms you will be able to use the power pack but, it is inevitable, there will come a time when you can’t plug it in to a power socket. That’s the time when you will want a battery that can run for several hours without the need to recharge.

3. Warranty - is it on site or back to base? If something goes wrong will your laptop be away for long periods of time. Does the manufacturer have a temporary exchange programme if your laptop is going to be out of service for several days.

4. Price is not always a guide when it comes to suitability. More expensive laptops may not necessarily be more suitable for your business.

Here in Australia the Samsung X20 comes highly recommended for many applications and the RRP is only $1799.

There are three other points to consider when thinking about buying a laptop.

1. Not every computer repair centre will work on laptops. They are a specialised piece of equipment and only some technicians will touch them.

2. Talk to your insurance company about coverage as soon as you make your purchase. You might find that your new laptop is not covered under any of the policies you might have.

3. Don’t buy a laptop to replace a desktop machine. If you spend a lot of time working on your computer the change to a laptop will quickly become an ergonomic nightmare.

It may not look much on the outside but under the hood the story is very different.

CompAmerica has announced that it has enhanced the ORCA Laptop to accept the AMD Dual Core FX-60 CPU in addition to the AMD Athlon 64 Dual Core X2. Other ORCAs also supports Intel Pentium 4 Processors. The FX-60 upgrade extends the performance of the product line to “faster than nearly all desktop PCs”, claimed the company.

CompAmerica ® has dubbed the ORCA, which spans all three CPU types, is “the most powerful laptop on earth” and also “the most powerful Gaming Laptop on earth”, sporting the nVidia 7800 GTX CPU.

CompAmerica ® indicated it will continue to introduce more dual core Laptops in both DTR and Centrino / Duo Core versions in the not too distant future.

“We want people to be happy with the performance of their laptop” said company Chairman Dr. Jack A. Shulman. “In the grand scheme of things the X2 4800+ combined with the nVidia 7800GTX is extremely fast and the extra 10% performance of going to 5200+ rated FX-60’s just inspired us at CompAmerica to build this laptop to do everything ‘yesterday’.”

Featuring new CPU-based Enhanced Anti-Virus Technology and 64 Bit AMD Instruction Set Extensions, the Orca sets the bar for safe performance. Other “world beater” features: its dual HDD SATA-150 Disk Array, its dual DVDRW / CDRW Optical Array… the Orca X2 Laptop is said to be “technologically superior”.

All Orcas include an integral Gigabit Network Adapter (compatible with 10/100 Mhz Fast Ethernet as well), a fast v.92 Faxmodem, and versatile wireless networking: a WIFI 802.11 G/B standard adapter with optional Bluetooth.

For the audiophiles, Orca FX2 includes a built-in 4.1 audio system (with an external 8-channel interface) with audio enhanced, distortion-less sound and a potent Subwoofer (beneath the Keyboard!) CompAmerica’s ® new 64 Bit ORCA (both the Pentium 4 based 9098 and the new X2 Dual Core) vaporize the previous limits as to what a Laptop can do.

You can obtain more information at http://www.compamerica.com/X2

Belkin has announced the release of its new cable free hub. This is said to be the industry’s first USB hub that does not require a cable to be connected to the computer.

The four port hub will not require any additional software but will need a dongle plugged into the user’s laptop. This new devide will allo lap top users to move around their environment and still remain connected to printers, scanners, hard drives etc. while they remain within wireless range.

This handy device should be released during the northern hemisphere spring.

These days laptops come equipped with internal wi-fi cards but as recently as a couple of years ago, when we bought our latest laptop, wi-fi was new technology and internal cards were yet to be thought of.

When we moved to wi-fi for our home based business we bought a wi-fi network card for this laptop that plugs into a port on the side of the machine and over the last 12 months it has worked very well.

At the same time we have had all our equipment included in our household insurance. Our insurance company was quite happy to include our computers because we could legitimately say that every one of them was used, in very small part, for private use.

As far as the insurance company was concerned it didn’t really matter how much they were used for private use and their only criteria for establishing that it was for private use was if there were games installed on the computers and - being computer geeks - of course there were.

So that was the situation on Monday morning … when I dropped the laptop and of course it fell on the side where the wireless card was plugged in. After the fall the wireless card was pushed much further in than it normally goes.

I powered up the laptop and it worked, I tried to access the network and it didn’t work - time to call the insurance company.

The bad news was that our insurance company (RACQ - a very reputable company here in Queensland) does not cover anything for accidental damage if the policy is for goods situated in a house that is leased - we lease.

The company does not cover laptops for accidental damage, even if they are listed as a specified item, if they are used for business.

The moral of the story is - check your insurance policies item by item because the cover you think you have may not really be there at all.

Well it depends on who you talk to as to whether this is really a laptop or a tablet PC or as Gateway calls it, a Convertible Notebook.

Whatever you might call it it’s just been released in the US and if I lived in the US then I could definitely see one in my future. After all, if it’s good enough for Bill then it certainly is good enough for me

You can find out more about it right here

Here’s a bit of information that I’m sure you really do not want to know … but I’m going to tell you anyway.

The latest edition of Australian Personal Computer magazine is reporting that scientists in Singapore have developed a battery that produces energy from urine.

Just imagine one fitted to a laptop - no more annoying toilet breaks in the middle of coding that next killer app - you can take care of it and recharge your laptop right there are your desk.

I wonder what unit of measurement they would use to assess the life of a urine powered battery?

Sony has recently released it’s latest S series laptop/notebook. It’s the S480 and it is definitely rich in features.

Those features include:

13.3″ wide XBRITE

Intergrated optial drive

nVida GeForce Go 6200 graphic card

Bluetooth wireless technology

915PM Intel Centrino Mobile chipset with integrated wireless LAN

Connectivity for a wide range of digital devices including digital cameras, video cameras and PDA

And all that comes in a slim and lightweight package.

Hewlett Packard have announced the voluntary recall and replacement programme for battery packs used in some HP notebooks. The battery packs affected by the recall were manufactured between March and September 2004 and distributed worldwide.

Hewlett Packard have a full list of machines that could be carrying the problem batteries on their website at:

http://bpr.hpordercenter.com/bpr/

Laptop’s are an invaluable tool for anyone who needs to work online at time s when they’re not near the office. Anyone who has lugged a laptop around with them knows that they’re not as light and portable as they’re made out to be. After a while they become weighty little monsters that become a nuisance.

But any laptop that weighs in at 1.15kg is worth having a look at and the Toshiba R200 is one laptop that isn’t going to weigh you down.

The specs for the R200 are:

1.6 GHz Pentium low-voltage chip

512MB of DDR2 RAM

Wi Fi

60GB hard drive

And that’s all packaged in a magnesium alloy case that is less than 2 cm thick.

There’s no reoom for an optical drive and so it doesn’t have one.

Now if all those specs and the ultra thin image really made you want to rush out and buy one then perhaps you should take a deep breath first because they are not cheap. Here in Australia they retail for around$3.5k and I saw one in the US advertised for $1999.

But they are a nice looking unit and they only weigh 1.15kg …