760cd impressions

[Michael MacDonald <macd@panix.com>]

Wow...what a machine. Blows the 755cd, which I owned previously, out of 
the water. It's much faster, the screen is significantly larger *and* 
brighter, and the special features (4x cdrom, mpeg, video in/out) are 
incredible.

I'm most stunned by the MPEG capability. IBM includes a demo disk with 
the 760cd that has a 60-second trailer from the movie "True Lies". The 
MPEG-2, 4 MB/S version is spectacular. It's almost as good as watching a 
VHS copy of True Lies on the Thinkpad. Too bad it's only a minute long. 
That single clip gobbles up 40 MB of CD-ROM space. There are two other 
clips to watch, shown in various compression settings. Even the MPEG-1, 
1.5 MB/S versions are decent.

The one thing I dislike about the 760cd is the location of the speakers 
(at the front of the keyboard). Invariably my hands rest near or over the 
speakers, blocking much of the sound. The volume level is a bit too low 
even when they are not obstructed. The good thing about the speaker 
location is that there's much less CPU interference (the 755cd's speakers 
emitted a continuous high-pitched whine at high volume levels).

The 760cd is also tempermental about making IR connections to 755-series 
PCs. I tried to initiate a TranXit session between a 755ce and the 760cd 
and had to wait 4 minutes for the two to negotiate a connection. It took 
a 755cd 90 seconds to negotiate a link. It may be because the 755s use an 
older IR driver (1.0) and older TranXit software (v1.00, compared to 
v1.04).

All-in-all, however, I'm very impressed by the 760cd.

Michael MacDonald
macd@panix.com
mmacdon1@tinker.hofstra.edu