Re: Is there an equal for the 760ED?

[Dane Tyson <runngdog@mcs.com>]

At 05:56 PM 6/21/96 EDT, you wrote:

>I have looked at the 720CDT and it looks very good to me, I will let people
>know more when I get mine, supposedly early next week.

Having used my 720CDT for a week now, I'd like to add a few comments.

First, a bit of history.  The Tecra was not my first choice.  After what
seemed (then) like an intolerable wait between the first mention in PC Week
of the 760ED and IBM's announcement on April 23, I faithfully placed my
order for the ED within a couple hours of the announcement.  I felt
confident that the machine would ship quickly, because (a) I was at the top
of my reseller's (PCs Compleat) order list; (b) IBM was already receiving
terrible press for shipping problems with the 760CD (which I
hypothesized/hoped might have been related to a shortage of critical
components diverted to ED manufacture); and (c) IBM's ED announcement
gratuitously cited April 23 as the "availability" date on the new machine.

The same day I placed my order, an associate ordered a 720CDT from the same
reseller.  A month later, he received his machine, while I was still trying
to elicit a firm ship date on my ED (it had slipped to late June by that
point).  In frustration, I called another reseller (Micro Solutions) and
ordered a 720, which they assured me I could get by mid-June.  I thought
this would be particularly convenient, since both resellers offered a
limited time MPG, allowing me to do a head-to-head comparison (assuming both
resellers met their ship dates) and send back the "loser" without penalty. 

 However, the Micro Solutions actually obtained and shipped the Tecra
earlier,and I would have had it only 2 weeks after placing my order had it
not been for a sticky-fingered Fedex employee somewhere in Chicago who is
now enjoying my Tecra (or the proceeds therefrom).  As it was, Micro
Solutions was able to find me a second machine and have it into my hands
when I returned from a week-long trip on June 18 -- still less than 4 weeks
from order to delivery.  (The estimated shipping date on my ED meanwhile had
slipped to mid-July.)

In terms of performance, I'm very satisfied thus far with my 720.  It's an
extraordinarily solid-feeling machine.  I find the combination of large
palmrest, Accupoint, and the Toshiba style buttons (large "left" button
directly above small "right" button) ideal for my particular combination of
typing and mousing.  The high-resolution screen is gorgeous, especially on
photos, videos, etc., that benefit from the extra resolution, as well as
spreadsheets and "landscape" oriented text pages. I also like that fact that
what I see on the screen when I travel with my 720 matches what I see when I
run it through a 17* monitor at work  In terms of speed, I find the 720 very
fast, noticably faster than a 760CD I tested. ( I cheated a bit, though:
since the 720 cost $750 less than the $6,999 I had been authorized to spend
for the 760ED, I used $400 of my savings to upgrade the RAM to 32 Mb, which
gives a real performance boost.)

 I was rather surprised at the comments on the 720 in PC Week's comparative
review.  With regard to the weight of the machine, it is certainly true that
the 720 is heavy, though the difference from other full-featured laptops is
fairly minor, and on the positive side, the 720 seems to be built like a
tank.  The comment  that the 720's screen resolution is too high, so that
text and icons are unreadable,  is nonsense IMHO -- the 720's resolution is
essentially identical to that of the Thinkpad 755CX (or any other 10" SVGA
machine, for that matter), with equivalent readability. 

Finally, the comments that the 720 is a "slow" machine or that its
performance is "poor" based on relative benchmark performance vs. SVGA
laptops seem completely off base.  In the 720, Toshiba made a conscious
decision to use the extra processing power of the 133 MHz chip to add
capabilities vs. the 120 MHz  (i.e., pushing around 314K extra pixels on the
screen) rather than for incremental improvements in speed.  Adjusting for
screen resolution differences, the 720's relative performance is just fine:
PC Week's sister publication Windows Sources compared the 720 to the Micron
Transport (the fastest 133 MHz machine they had tested), with both machines
run through an external 1,034 x 768 monitor and found the performance of the
two to be virtually identical.

At this point, it looks like I'm going to stick with the 720 -- I'm already
finding myself growing very comfortable with it (and this after 5 years on a
Powerbook 170).  Of course, it could be that if I'd received my ED within a
reasonable time frame, I might have been even more pleased with it than I am
with the 720.  Even if I'd received the ED at the end of June (which is what
I was told when I ordered the 720), I would have been able to do a
head-to-head comparison that might have favored the ED.  But today's call to
PCs Compleat got me an August 5 ship date (tentatively!!!), and that's just
too damn long to wait for a machine that has supposedly been "available"
since April 23.  I'll stick with the bird I now have in hand, and IBM can
count me as a lost sale.

I'm curious to hear how others of you who have deserted IBM for the 720 feel
after using your machines for a while, and I would certainly be interested
in knowing of any Toshiba mailing list, or in participating in a Toshiba
splinter faction of the Thinkpad list.  Toshiba does operate a forum on
Compuserve, but I prefer a mailing list.

Regards,

Dane