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3 out of 3 people found this review helpful
4.5 stars
"Great at Doing What It's Made For"
Pros: Weight, Crisp Display, Features, Price
Cons: Necessary Ultraportable cons: smaller keyboard and display
Summary: My last laptop had all the bells and whistles (most of which I never used anyway), but it was too heavy to carry every day to work, so I did not get much use out of it. Weight was therefore the biggest factor for me this time around, along with an optical drive being built-in. What good is an ultraportable if you have to lug an ultrabay to use the CD/DVD? The Sharp was the lightest model out there, and the experts gave it a good review, so I picked it up. Yes the keyboard is a little small. Hey, it's called ultraportable for a reason. It is only 10 inches wide. And you CAN touch type, even with large fingers like mine with a few minutes practice, so it's fine. And the screen is not huge. But they sell 5, 6 and 7 inch portable DVD players, so this 10.4 inch beauty is huge in comparison, and the display is bright and crisp. "Oh, but there's no firewire port." Well to this day I haven't ever required a firewire port. USB does everything I need. Two USB ports are built in, and I picked up a $10 USB 4-port hub. So I can plug in my wireless mouse, my 1GB Sandisk USB Memory Key, my Plantronics USB headset microphone for IBM ViaVoice, and my iRiver H340 all at the same time, with a port to spare for a card reader. "Oh, the Transmeta Efficeon is not as fast as the Intel." Could have fooled me. Then again, all I usually do is surf the web, e-mail, use some Office applications, dictation software, record my CDs and transfer files using Musicmatch and my iRiver H340, pay my bills, whatever. I'm not calculating pi to the millionth degree, so I don't see a difference. I think few of us regular folks would. I do everything with this machine that I do with my Dell Desktop (and without the spyware I can't seem to get rid of completely). If you're looking for lightweight, buy this thing. It is cheaper than its counterparts, and lighter, and it does everything you're likely to want your laptop to do. And since it is so light, you'll actually carry it every day.
