Business executives "on the move" have always searched for the most powerful and lightest laptop PCs available. Manufacturers have not disappointed, with the latest offerings becoming slimmer, lighter and more feature packed with every new release.
A case in point is the Rectron distributed Gigatech MNB 5500 series and SNB 7500 series of ultra light notebooks. The 5500 model, weighing in at a featherweight 1,3 Kg, is aimed squarely at the power mobile user, comes standard with either a 400 or a 466Mhz Intel Celeron processor and an 8-inch TFT Touchscreen LCD screen.
The screen is driven by a 2Mb SMI graphics accelerator and the unit is equipped with 64Mb of RAM as standard which is upgradeable to 256 Mb if required.
Hard disk storage is via a standard 6,4 Gb 2 1/2 inch Fujitsu drive. An external 1,44 Mb floppy drive and CD-ROM are also supplied as standard.
Mobile and connectivity features are plentiful. The MNB 5500 comes with a 56K v.90 fax modem as standard, parallel, serial and USB ports, 1 PCMCIA socket as well as Infrared connectivity through its built-in IRDA port and track pointer.
The 5500 supports handwriting recognition through the stylus pen or via the 85 key Windows-friendly keyboard. Microsoft Windows 98 is pre-installed.
Rectron also supplies a range of Gigatech notebook accessories. This includes: a parallel port floppy kit, spare AC adapters, stylus pens, memory upgrades, external CD-ROM drives, carry case, in car adapters, spare batteries, chargers and a USB cable for quick notebook-to-PC or notebook-to-notebook copying.
Gigatech also manufacture the SNB 7500 which is capable of running with a PII 400Mhz processor. The larger model sports a 12,1 inch TFT display that is capable of 1024x768 resolution. Further enhancements over the 5500 include the addition of an extra USB port and a full duplex SoundBlaster Pro sound card.
Along with lighter weight has come the need for greater memory, to store data and applications relating to graphics intensive Internet access.
In line with this trend Fujitsu`s 18Gb drive, the MJH2181AT, continues to attract market share. Available from Rectron, the MJH2181AT features a massive 18Gb of storage for IDE users with a fast average seek time of 13 milliseconds.
The MJH has an ATA-5 interface, 66Mb per second maximum transfer rate, 512k data buffer size. The 300 000 hour MTBF time provide a rich combination of reliability and performance.
"Fujitsu is the only manufacturer to provide a full range of hard drives across desktop, mobile and SCSI platforms," adds Denzil Wright, Rectron`s sales manager. "The MJH series provides an excellent balance of performance and features along with its generous storage capacity."
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