Re: Withdrawal info

[epbrown@enteract.com (epbrown)]

On Thu, 3 Oct 1996 12:05:18 EST, you wrote:
"My office is rather unanimous in preference of the TP701 and TP560
"for light travel.  Those are low end aren't they?  With the education
"discount, the service from our university CoOp, and the fact that
"most of the office aren't power users, the portability and neat
"features are really what count.  From my perspective, the IBM tech
"support is about the best (comparatively speaking).  Even the 755s
"and 365s in use have fared well in my offices.  Just a note of 
"comparison, we do have a few Zeniths, Toshibas, Dells and Macs as 
"well.
	Actually, it sounds like we agree.  Yes, the systems are nice enough,  if
you aren't a power user.  But other low-end systems outperform them, and they
aren't intended for power users, either.  IBMs have great design of the box,
but what's under the hood could use a bit of tweaking.  They do make a good
subnotebook (I've a 701) and if you don't care about performance they're fine;
but that didn't keep Compaq making the Aero.  Also, the 701 was a high-end
system that IBM came out with too late.  They started out charging $5000 or so
for them, until bigger screens and Pentiums made it obsolete within months of
it's rollout.  And for a high-end system as it was intended, performance is
lousy. 
	It seems the volume sales would be in making something lots of people could
buy, better than the other guys make them.  It's really why Toshiba is
trouncing IBM in laptop sales, imo.  Their systems perform better and hold up
as well across the line, even in the $2000 range, while Thinkpads are spotty.
The 755/760s are great, but I've heard lots of complaints about the 35x-36x
line; the early 365s sound like crap from what I've heard, in fact.  And
again, performance wise, Toshibas with the same chips outperform them whether
they're 21xxs, 4xxs, 7xxs, or what have you.
	I buy IBM because right now a well-supported machine is of more importance
than a great performance system.  Considering what I've heard about Toshiba's
support, IBM could clean up if they strengthened the line.  As it is, I'll be
considering other companies for the 1st time when it's time to replace the
701, unless things change drastically.
	epbrown
epbrown@enteract.com
Laptop Central
http://www.enteract.com/~epbrown