Laptops related stuff Mini-Reviews [1/1/98]

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Mail me any comments, suggestions, corrections etc, thanks. Forgive my bad english.

You can find this file at my current Web page : http://www.pacher.net.

Contents

1. PCMCIA Cd-roms drives
   1. Panasonic KXL-720 2x cd-rom
   2. Sony PRD-150 2x cd-rom
   3. Panasonic KXL-D740 4x cd-rom
2. Subnotebooks
   1. Dec Hinote Ultra CT475
   2. Other interesting subnotebooks
3. Portable Printers
   1. Canon BJC-80 Portable Printer
   2. HP Deskjet 310 Portable Printer

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1 PCMCIA Cd-roms drives

1.1 Panasonic KXL-720 portable pcmcia 2x cdrom

The Panasonic KXL-720 is a portable scsi cdrom player. It has a
standard micro-scsi 2 connector and an pcmcia interface card is supplied with
it. It can work with 6 AA batteries (about one hour to one hour and half
autonomy).

It has Windows 95 drivers, and dos drivers with or without Card &
Sockets services. There are actually two dos drivers, the aspi driver
(for scsi) and the cdrom driver. The drivers are well documented in the
manual.

The PCMCIA card is actually a pcmcia scsi interface which work with
others scsi devices (it’s rumoured to be an OEM version of Adaptec slim
scsi PCMCIA card), although in the manual they don’t refer to it as a
scsi interface. I tried it with 2 cd-roms drives at once and it worked fine.
The only thing is that it has a micro-scsi DB50 male connector so you might need an
adapter for other scsi devices.

It’s a little bulky compared to the Sony PRD-150, but nothing
drastic, you can still use it as a portable audio cd rom player although
you can’t program the audio tracks with this device. Performance of the unit
is good too, with 250 ms average seeking time and 390 ms maximum seeking
time (and that make a great difference compared to Sony’s).

1.2 Sony PRD-150 portable PCMCIA 2x cdrom

The Sony PRD-150 portable PCMCIA 2x cdrom is also a portable cdrom
player. But unlike the panasonic, it has a proprietary interface.

Its drivers are not very good, they need Card and Socket services
and there wasn’t a windows 95 driver available when i bought it. And there is
nothing in sony’s documentation about the meaning of the switches of the
drivers.

Its performance is pretty bad too, average seeking time is 390 ms
but the maximum seeking time is 980 ms ! There are two fine things about
the Sony PRD-150 though, it can operate on 2 AA batteries (and they last
at least twice longer than the 6 AA batteries of the Panasonic) and it
is smaller than the Panasonic, with the possibility to program the tracks
of an audio cd so it’s a fine portable audio cd player.

1.3 Panasonic KXL-D740 portable pcmcia 4x cdrom

Well I just upgraded my KXL-720 pcmcia cdrom to the KXL-740 version which is a
4x cd-rom.

It’s exactly the same as the KXL-720, for the micro-scsi 2 connector, a new scsi
PCMCIA card (rumoured to be an OEM version of the Buslogic’s) and its versatile drivers
(Windows 95, Dos with or without card socket services, aspi driver), the shape and weight
(so it’s still a little bulky).

Its power supply is lighter than the KXL-720 (well I have the french version of the KXL-740
whereas I had bought the usa version of the KXL-720)and it seems a little slower than 4x (more
3.5x with Diablo system test), but performance is good. I’m rather happy with it (as I bought it
second hand for a fair price).

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2 Subnotebooks

2.1 Dec Hinote Ultra CT475

Well, this is my laptop I bought at a bargain price when the stock was dumped by Digital in
France. After some personal modifications it has now the following specs:

• 486dx4-75 processor without cache
• 24 Mo ram
• Toshiba 2\"5 Mv1301 1.3 Gb hard disk
• 9.5\" active matrix lcd screen
• Integrated sound (soundblaster compatible)
• Lithium ion battery (3h in theory)
• 1,7 Kgs
• 2 PCMCIA type II ports
• IrDa infrared port

Some additions are a USR 33.6 PCMCIA card, a Xircom PCMCIA network card, a Panasonic KXL-740 PCMCIA
4x cd-rom drive, an old Jazz PCMCIA sound card (which I use as a joystick/midi card) and a Wetsuit 2.0
case.

It’s a great subnotebook with everything one could want from a subnotebook (for me weight is very
important). Keyboard and trackball are great, the parallel and serial port are fast, the screen can
have a virtual resolution and the bios is flashable, the power supply is very small, there is a
PS2 keyboard/mouse port, everything is perfect except the battery which is out when you drop to 25%
and the bios which doesn’t spare power enough.

It’s true that nowadays, a 486 is a little slow for some software but I can bear it. I mean, sure
Quake II and Office 97 are far too slow to be usable on this laptop but a lot of software are still
fast enough (ex: Windows 95, Internet Explorer 3.02, Office 95, Gameboy emulator, Rtype/Blacktiger emulator,
Daggerfall, LBA 2, Duke Nukem 3D, Warcraft II and so on). I mean my company gave me an 12.1 TFT P150 thinkpad,
with integrated 8X cd-rom, 48 megs of ram and 2 Gigs hard drive and I don’t ever use it (it’s still in
its Targus bag somewhere). I’ve got my eye on the new slim line 4 gig IBM notebook hard drive though 8-).

2.2 Other interesting subnotebooks

Thinkpad 560 series
This is a good subnotebook I’ll never buy because it’s almost impossible to play Warcraft 2
with its damn trackpoint (which always drifts after a while I don’t know why). The floppy drive
with a cable is not practical too (on the Hinote Ultra, it can be screwed under the notebook
when you need it).

Toshiba Libretto CT70
This P120MMX subnotebook is very impressive and weights only 850 grs. It would definitely be
a possible future notebook for me, the only things which are holding me back are the
keyboard, the screen (good quality but a little small, I don’t know if it will be easy to
work for long hours in front of it whereas it’s ok on the Hinote Ultra) and the PCMCIA floppy
drive with a cable ? (I have never managed to see a picture of it).

Dec Hinote Ultra II 11.3 TFT version
The one I would buy right away if it was available with a french keyboard at a fair price
in France. It’s basically the same as the Hinote Ultra, with a Pentium 150 and a larger
screen. Sadly, Digital has all but disappeared in France for PCs.

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3 Portable Printers

3.1 Canon BJC-80 Portable Printer

I just bought the new Canon BJC-80 portable printer yesterday (12/31/97). The printer is a
new version of Canon’s BJC-30 and BJC-70 portable printers. Its price was 1590 french francs
including VAT (20.6% in France !). That makes it around 225 US dollars without VAT. Info about
the printer can be gathered at Canon’s Web site.

Bad points

First the bad points; the quality of the printer, in monochrome or color, is not outstanding,
perhaps even worse than my old hp deskjet 310 portable printer, and it’s louder. The power supply
is bulky but you can buy an international power supply from Canon.

Good points

This printer has a lot of good points. First it’s light (1.4 kg), small and compact.
The cover opens and works as a sheet feeder (which is reliable, unlike the deskjet 310
mechanism). The replacement of the cartridge (for a color cartridge or the scanner head) is
easy and reliable. It is supplied with the color and the black and white cartridge and extras
ink only cartridges for color printing (Canon is really generous 8-)). A box to put the other
cartridge in is supplied too (this box can be sealed so that the ink of the cartridge won’t
dry). It’s very fast too in its default mode (4.5 pages/mn), with resolution up to 720x360, and a 4-color
color cartridge (with black ink and 3-color ink in separate boxes).

It has a lot of features. It has an infrared port and it’s the first portable printer with one
so you can at last print from your irda equipped laptop without a printer cable (see below for tips
to make it work). It even works fine with infrared from my Psion Siena organiser. You can use your
printer as a 360x360 dpi 24 bit scanner with the optionnal scanning head although it’s a little slow,
1mn for monochrome A4 at 360 dpi, and 3 mn (90dpi) to 8 mn (360 dpi) for color scanning. Of course it
can use a Ni-Mh battery which can last 200 pages.

Printing in infrared

I have an old Digital Hinote Ultra (486) laptop with a infrared port and I had to follow the following
steps to make the printer work in infrared with my laptop:

1> Enable the IR port in your laptop (in your system bios or with supplied utilities from your
laptop manufacturer).

2> Download the latest version 2.0 of the IR drivers for Windows 95 from Microsoft site and install them.

3> Install the supplied Canon Bjc-80 printer drivers and choose a virtual infrared port for the connection;
on my laptop it only works with the virtual infrared com port (ex: COM4) and not the virtual infrared printer
port (ex: LPT3).

That’s it, of course it’s slower than cable connection but it’s fast enough for normal Word output with
some charts. To make it work with the Psion Siena organiser, look in my
Siena Connectivity pages.

Conclusion

Well, the quality of the output is average, but it’s certainly the best printer by far for laptops out
there. It’s also a great printer if you don’t have a lot of space to spare and a great addition to a
laser printer which will always be necessary for top quality documents.

3.2 HP Deskjet 310 Portable Printer

Hum, it’s a bit unfair to compare my old deskjet 310 which is already 3 years old to my new Bjc-80, but
I believe that the newest HP 340 model has a lot in common with the previous one. Info about
the printer can be gathered at HP’s Web site.

Good points

The quality of monochrome or color output is good, even better than the one of the new Bjc-80.
The printer is fairly fast, not noisy, and compatible with the other HP deskjet models. For example,
on my old Amiga computer, I could use a program which printed 8 ascii pages on one (16 with recto-verso,
great to use less paper).

Bad points

First the unit is bulky and heavy. It doesn’t have an integrated sheet feeder (the latest model
the HP 340 has one i think). With the sheet feeder which one has to buy it’s really massive (almost
as big as a regular printer).

The sheet feeder (or even the manual feeder) doesn’t work well, it’s very easy to jam the paper with bad
feeding, in the end I always used the manual feeding being extra careful with each sheet of paper. The
cartridge replacement mechanism is not as intuitive and easy as the Bjc-80.

Of course it doesn’t have all the extras of the Bjc-80 like scanner head, infrared connection,
box to keep the color cartridge (which is only 3 colors but the quality is perhaps better).

Conclusion

Good printer for the quality of the output. Pretty bad for portability and general ease of use.