Newsflash: MidWest Micro is leaving the laptop business!

My sources state that MidWest Micro is quitting the laptop business, going back instead to just selling other name-brand computers such as Toshibas. This is particularly impressive since Midwest Micro bounced Compaq out of the #3 spot in U.S. laptop sales last year! However, it is also a good sign for consumers, given that Midwest Micro had such incredibly poor support and treated customers with so little respect.

There is a rumour that MPC is going out-of-business. I have not verified this though.

Indexes to Manufacturers/Resellers

The following are indexes to the manufacters and vendors listed in this page. It is not guaranteed to be accurate, but I tried. (Same deal as the information there-in.) Some of the vendors are also limited manufacturers, such as Compaq, NEC, and Toshiba. Some manufacturers (such as Sanyo - see Micron) aren't listed because I didn't write about them other than to mention them. And even if a company is listed, it may have just a comment or address. But it's a start. Feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Index to manufacturers

Index to vendors/resellers

Laptop Manufacturers

The next several entries are laptop manufactures. These are primarily based in Taiwan. Some vendors manufacture and sell their own but are known primarily for the latter and are listed in the Vendors section, such as H.P. and AST - the vendors here are not, generally speaking, well-known name brands.

Full-Power Investment

Full-Power Investment is a Taiwanese company that manufactures laptops and sells them to other companies to market. They are also known as Compal.

Some of the computers manufactured by them include the former MidWest Micro laptops, the ARM laptops, the Ambra N100T, Trogon, the FutureMate FM309T, the Mitsuba Ninjas, the MicroExpress NP52 series, the MPC 380s, and far more. (More models than just those listed for these companies are manufactured by Full-Power, but I don't have a complete list.)

Digital Equipment signed an agreement to have Compal manufacture their newest line of low-end laptops. Digital is based in Maynard, MA.

Compal Tech Support: (408) 526-0620

Acer

Acer is at:

or

Acer Computers: &lthttp://www.acer.com/>

Arima makes okay stuff, but they haven't been able to keep up with demand from their customers. They reported lost their accounts with IPC, Austin, Epson, and Unisys last year due to poor support.

Arima is at:

EMail Arima

ASE Technologies

ASE makes some IBM and some Winbook laptops.

Kiwi

Kiwi makes the Wedge ShowBook EL and the Novacor OpenNote.

Chaplet

Chicony

Chicony is both a laptop manufacturer and a leading keyboard maker. Many laptops from other manufacturers will come with Chicony keyboards, as do most cheap desktop clones. Chicony computers are probably between Compal and Nan Tan in quality. I'm told Chicony is a sister company to Clevo

Dual Technology

Nan-Tan Computer

Featron

Featron Technologies Corporation is at:

Clevo

Same reader: The Wedge PowerBook 5 is not a Dual and comes with 256k burst cache, PCI 65545 and PCI IDE. It is pretty fast from he benchmarks I made on it and has 10.3" Dual-Scan or 10.3" active and a built in trackball.

From a vendor: Clevo makes the Sager 7500/7600 and the Commax Smartbook IV series. The new Sager 8600 / Commax V-Quad also will be a Clevo, with a quad-speed CD-ROM and an 11.3" 800*600 screen. Clevo is a low-quality producer, considered junk by many of their own resellers.

Jetta

Jetta has had a few problems, but also has some big fans. They made some of the early Winbooks (to MEI specifications), as well as others. Now they've got their own line too. As laptop makers go, this is a tiny company!

Jetta is still having some quality problems, and still sends out the wrong computers sometimes.

Twinhead Computers

Twinhead Corp, a subsidiary of Twinhead International of Taiwan:

Inventa

Compaq signed a "manufacturing partner" agreement with Inventec in the first quarter of 1995.

Quanta Computers

Sotek

Sotek of Japan makes the Gateway and the newest Austin laptops, as well as a Unisys model. They're perceieved as being at the top of the no-name vendor quality ladder. Other than that, I don't know a thing about them.

First International Computer

First International Computer, or FIC, manufacturers some laptops for Texas Instruments (the TI Extensa CD-550), Everex (the ExpressNote), and for NEC, including the NEC PC-9800 series. (These are not IBM-compatible, but were the leading computer platform in Japan a few years ago.) FIC is backed by the Formosa Plastics Group, which is the largest conglomerate in Taiwan.

They also make the LEO DESIGNote notebook (Pentium 133/Multimidia builtin/quad CD-ROM/ TFT screen) with interchangable CD-ROM and Floppy drive, removable HD.

First International Computer

http://www.fica.com

Kapok

Kapok will have a Pentium Pro laptop out soon. The power requirements (double those of a regular pentium) and heat will be major hurdles.

http://www.kapok.com.tw

Veridata

Veridata makes systems for CTX (the monitor folk, who share the same parent corporation) and MPC (the MPC TouchNote).

Laptop Vendors

The following sections are devoted to laptop vendors - the folk who sell the laptops. These are the name brands you may have heard of, even though they often don't manufacture a thing.

Contacting MidWest Micro

For a complete essay on Midwest Micro, Click here.

MidWest Micro can be reached (if you're lucky) at:

Altima Computers

Altima isn't sure, as of 26-Sept-95, if they'll be staying in the laptop business or if they'll come out with a Pentium-based laptop. (Thier Virage line is manufactured by Featron, while the Virage II line is from TwinHead.)

Altima: &lthttp://www.value.net/~altima/>

AMS

There are two popular companies known as AMS in the computer business. Only one of them does laptops.

Associate Mega Subsystems is the laptop vendor, owned by some Chinese folk. They sell HyperData systems, while their SoundPro series comes from Arima They are located at:

AMS: &lthttp://www.amsnote.com/> There is another AMS, American MultiSystems, whose claim to fame is computers done in all black at exceptionally low prices. based in Sunnyvale, CA. They make the InfoGold systems, reknown as fast and cheap, and distinctively black. Howver, they do not make or sell laptops.

ARM

ARM sells the Compal Pentium machine, as the TS30P and TS96CD. The ARM TS50CD is made by Dual Technologies. Beware, though, that there have been a lot of customer complaints about both ARM's approach and service. They can be reached at:

Aspen Computer

Aspen appears to have gone out of business, folks. It's a pity, because if you liked the Nan-Tan stuff, they were the best place to get it.

Aspen sells mostly NanTan/Clevo stuff. They used to add some real nice touches, but it wasn't economical. (And yes, they've been around for quite a while, and I've seen/played with some of their early ones. Good stuff.) However, they're still higher quality than most - they do more testing and provide better service too. If you want to get those particular computers, they're a good place to get them from.

Aspen is at:

AST

AST has the Ascentia and Bravo lines of laptops, which they get from Quanta They also have the 910N line, which they make in their own plant in Taiwan. AST owns the Bravo design, and licenses it to Dell, who also gets it from Quanta.

Other AST news: AST purchased Tandy's computer-manufacturing business in 1994. Samsung purchased a majority stake in AST more recently, resulting in AST's CEO Ian Diery resigning in late August 96 after nine months on the job. He was highly credible and trusted, so this will likely hurt AST, which is already looking as massive losses for '96.

AST is at: AST Computers or
AST Computers

Astro Research Inc.

I hadn't run into Astro Research before, but they've got a web presence. They sell Dual machines with CD-ROMs. I'm not a fan of CD-ROM notebooks, but these machines have a nice feature set. Unfortunately, the company has a bit of a language barrier, which has been a precursor to extreme problems at other companies, most notably Sager.

As with other Dual computers, these come with a joystick port. If you're a game player, that could be a big bonus.

Since they didn't list it on-line, the price on 18-April for the PMD-III was $2999.

Astro Research is at:

http://www.astronote.comhttp://www.astronote.com

AT&ampT

AT&ampT gets computers from three manufacturers including NEC (The Globalyst 250, among others).

Austin

Austin Computer, which had some big quality problems in the early 90s, was acquired by IPC of Singapore (which also owned MediaMagic) in 1993. More recently they've gone back to being Austin Computer Systems, parented by GEM Ventures in New York. In published reports, they still do extremely poorly on support surveys, coming in behind even MidWest Micro! However, they have been working hard to combat this, dropping the wait on support calls to an average of two minutes by their measurement. They are also one of the few places that will sell and configure an NT laptop for you.

The Austin Vista is similar to the Canon Innova, and is made by Chicony. Arima makes the Austin Business Audio Series. Quanta makes their StepLite Notebook and their current stuff. Their newest systems will be from Sotek, including the Edge Duet. Quanta made the Steplite and the Austin Edge XL, Edge XP and Edge CD.

Austin had quality problems in the early '90s, but has since done a lot to turn them around, including changing suppliers, adding a quality assurance department, tracking return and call rates, improving technical assistance, and more. I don't have any recent experience with their systems, but they've certainly taken all the correct steps to win their way back into the hearts of consumers.

Austin

http://www.goaustin.com

IPC Technologies

BIT

The BIT Cheetah IV is supposedly a Dual machine.

Broadax Systems Inc.

BSI sells the Nan Tan pentium as their 3656T. They price aggressively, but haven't got good word-of-mouth on the usenet.

Compaq

The Compaq LTE 5000 has also been very buggy, including a very dim 10.4" TFT display, incompatibilities with OS/2 Warp, inability to turn off when in a docking station, and an erratic mouse. The dim screen would have to be fixed through a high-voltage inverter, which Compaq may sell but certainly won't give away. The other problems may be fixed by a BIOS upgrade that was due out in January 1996, but had not appeared by March of '96.

The LTE 5000 is scheduled to be updated with a 12.1" screen and 4x CD-ROM soon.

So all is not as it seems with Compaq. Either way, Compaq is at:
Compaq: &lthttp://www.compaq.com/>

Canon

Chembook

or try

www.chemusa.com

Commax

The Commax SmartBook III is made by Nan-Tan.

CTX International

CTX is primarily a monitor company, but they sell the EzBook laptop manufactured by their sister company VeriData.

Dell

The Dell Latitude is a nice leading-edge laptop, and some of the line have high-end or innovative features, plus a great reputation for quality and service. However, the Dell Latitude is licensed from AST and manufactured by Quanta of Taiwan.

Dell Computers: <"http://www.us.dell.com">

There is an interesting Dell site at http://wysiwyg.great.fi/~pekka/xpi/

DFI

DFI sells the Nan-Tan 486 as their Media Book, at a somewhat inflated price.

DFI is at:

Digital Equipment Corp

Digital gets their laptops from other vendors - they do not make their own. The pick of the litter is the HiNote Ultra II (486/75, very light), which comes from Citizen. It isn't the sturdiest of machines though.

The HiNote VP is made by Compal Acton, MA
800/722-9332, 603/884-4304

Digital has been aquired by Compaq and is no longer in operation as a notebook computer vendor.

Discount Laptops

They specialize in low prices over the web. They were selling AMS and Commax systems, but now are selling Wedge Technology and Magitronic notebooks. Neither Wedge nor Magitronic make their systems - Wedge is hyper-linked here, Magitronic sells Clevo and Chaplet systems, I believe. Consequently, I don't know what you will wind up with.

What I will say is that the company (Matt Richards) does seem to be responsive on the net. This counts for something these days.

http://www.discountlaptops.com

Reach them at:
Matt Richards
info@discountlaptops.com

http://www.itsnet.com/home/laptop

Dolch Computer Systems

Dolch Computer Systems used to be reknown for the Dolch Pack, one of the first popular very portable systems (called "lunchbox" systems due to being roughly that size.)

EPS

EPS sells competitively priced laptops, but has a history of poor service, support, and quality. They claim that they've stopped selling the problem-prone Clevo-made Workbook line (same models as the Sager 7600), and are now manufacturing their own. I'm not convinced they really make their own though.

I've heard only negitive things about their sales and service support.

Impulse Computers

Impulse sells the same system also. They're at:

I'm told that they've gone bankrupt and the remaining stock has been sold to Data Integrity Inc.(416-638-0111).

Elite Computer Systems

Elite started life by purchasing the warranty database when the superstore Silo (similar to Circuit City, Good Guys, and FutureShop) went under. They provided the warranty service with the intent of gaining loyal customers through that unorthodox (and expensive) gambit. It has worked.

They also now sell computers, including refurbished and overstocked units procured at extra-low prices and their own OEM'd line (currently provided by Samsung. The emphasis is still on service and customer-satisfaction though.

Additionally, they may be able to help with hard drive upgrades and other repairs.

Epson

Epson sells the Clevo 86-series computer.

Future Technology

Future Technologies sells Pentium laptops from almost every manufacturer, a fact I find more than a little bit frightening. These include Kapok (Taiwan) and Dual Technologies. Their CD-ROM laptops are from Dual. The company is not known for providing good support.

The FM366T is made by Nan-Tan.

The FM309T is made by Compal.

The FM559D with the removable screen is made by Dual

Gateway

Gateway laptops and notebooks are designed and made in Japan. They are not relabelled Taiwanese clones, but rather are custom-designed (some by Sotek of Japan) and built (reports vary, perhaps by Sony, Citizen, or Casio) by Japanese companies. Therefore, if you like a particular Gateway, you are not likely to find the same computer being sold under a different name.

This isn't an issue to me - I don't like the ergonomics of the Gateway units. Gateway has put the pointing stick on AccuPoint/TrackPoint systems in every place except where it belongs - they've put it below the keyboard, above and to the right, and below and to the right. Clearly they're missing some important concepts. However, they do extremely well on customer satisfaction surveys, and I liked my old Gateway desktop and their service enough to have continued buying their desktops, even if they don't understand laptop keyboards!

Some of the following text is from Gateway.

The Colorbook and Colorbook2 were both manufactured by Citizen. The original Colorbook had a small pop-out trackball and featured processors of 486sx25 and 486sx33 with single scan Color Displays. The Colorbook2 boasted dx2/50 and dx4/100 Intel 486 processors and featured dual scan 10.2" color displays and 16 bit sound cards. The Colorbook was discontinued in early 1995, the Colorbook2 followed in September 1995.

The Liberty was Gateway's best reviewed portable ever and featured a 4.2 pound weight along with a square 10.4" Display. This subnotebook featured an infra-red port for data transfer and printer communications. The original systems came out in May 1995 with dx2 50 and dx4 100 configurations. External Cache was added in late summer and made the Liberty defeat every Pentium 75 it tested against in the July '95 PC Magazine, earning it a Editor's Choice award.

The Liberty was designed and built for Gateway by Toshiba Corp and was discontinued in January '96.

The Solo (November '95) and the Solo2100 (July '96) represent Gateway's Pentium/ Multimedia line and are both currently available. The Solo is made by Tartor Sanyo, and the Solo2100 by Quanta.

Gateway has a large web site presence at http://www.gw2k.com.

Grid

Grid made some great stuff, revolutionizing the laptop industry. However, they were purchased by Tandy (Radio Shack) quite some time ago. I do not have any current information on Grid.

And, just to confuse things, AST purchased Tandy'scomputer manufacturing business in 1994.

(And, in case you're wondering, this section is here because of the large number of queries about Grid that I still receive.)

Hitachi

Hitachi is entering the laptop world with gusto. They've already lined up the larger distributors, and their first entry, System C, looks like a pretty solid performer. However, Hitachi is solidly Japanese, and may suffer the warranty service problems attendant with that. It's an unknown risk as of yet.

Different sources say different things - it appears as though the Hitachi is made by Clevo. Hitachi: &lthttp://www.HitachiPC.com>

HyperData

HyperData is the American marketing arm of Sunrex of Taiwan, which is in turn a subsidiary of Jing Mold Enterprise, Ltd.

HyperData manufactures laptops sold by AMS, Maximus (The MediaNote and PowerMax), and MPC, including their '486 MultiMedia Laptop with the flip-up cover for changing CD-ROMs. (This is the MPC CD-Book 875.)

The HyperData Media Go CD-Note is an interesting design you'll see sold by some other vendors. In addition to the double-speed CD-ROM under the flip-up keyboard (a now-obsolete feature), it sports a Cyrix 586 instead of an actual Pentium. However, since it also lacks an L2 external cache, it's hard to tell if the Cyrix chip is as fast as a pentium.

The HyperData 900A is identical to the Maximus PowerMax.

HyperData appears to be both a manufacturer and a reseller.

Hewlett Packard

HP gets the HP 4000 CT and OmniBook 5000/5500 from Twinhead, but manufactures most of their laptops in their Corvallis, Oregon, plant. Their palmtops (the 95LX/100LX/200LX) were manufactured in Corvallis and in an HP plant in Singapore.

Hewlett-Packard: &lthttp://www1.hp.com/ahp/>

IBM

IBM makes most of their own stuff. The IBM ThinkPad 360 is manufactured by ASE though, while the 365C (486/75, CD-ROM) is made by Acer.

I'm quite smitten with the IBM ThinkPad 760CD. For more on it, check out my Top Laptop/Notebook Picks.

http://www.pc.ibm.com

ITronix

ITronix makes rugged mobile field equipment, including the X-C 6000 Cross Country, a computer with a magnesium frame, Santoprene (a rubber used in gun grips to absorb shock and provide grip), high temperature-range monochrome LCD, and weighs in at 6.5 pounds. It can withstand temperatures from -4F (-20C) to 140F (60C), rain and rainy wind, vibrations, and repeated 1 metre drops. It's limited to 16MB of RAM though, and only has a 40MHz 486SX processor, so we're not talking about power.

Itronix, a Texlon Company

Lightspeed Technology

Lightspeed seems to be a new player. According to Co-Owner William Roach, they specialize in Pentium laptop computer systems, currently the same machines as Sager and Pro Scan. (This means it's a Clevo/Kapok.)

Lightspeed is:

http://www.pacificrim.net/~lspeed

MegaImage, Inc

MegaImage puts their own custom motherboard into Samsung cases for their 911 series. They do this because they provide low-voltage TCP processors ahead of the general market. They also claim a very low return rate, which I have not verified.. They have been in the laptop business for five years.

Maximus Computers

The PowerMax and the MediaNote are both made by HyperData. It is probably worth avoiding this company, due to support complaints.

MPC Technologies

Flash News:10-April-96, I hear MPC is going out of business. I have not verified this with them - you may want to ask them though.

Okay, it's verified. They're gone. HyperData is doing their non-warrantee work. Good luck.

MicroStar

Some people mistake MicroStar for a manufacturer. They're a reseller of Kapok computers.

Micon

Micon also sells Kapok computers.

Micon is at http://www.micon.com

Micron

Micron is a big name in the desktop business. In addition to being reknown for their own high-performance desktops, they are the largest manufacturer of RAM in the USA. They also completed the purchase of Zeos, another large mail-order computer company similar to Northgate, Dell, and Gateway.

The Micron Millenia TransPort is a multimedia laptop due for release any time now. It's made by Sanyo, which also has their own successful line of notebooks. The Millenia is based on the Mobile Triton PCI chipset, and uses EDO memory.

Micron is at:

Olivetti

Olivetti is based in Europe. They've tended towards the off-beat, but now sell standard relabelled systems. Currently, they sell the Chaplet systems.

PC Portable Manufacter, Inc.

PC Portable Manufacter, Inc. can be reached at:

Polywell Computers

Polywell is a direct marketer of high-end computers. They'd left the laptop market for a while, but are back now with systems made by Prima. Unfortunately, I don't know anything about Prima.

Polywell can be reached at:

http://www.polywell.com

ProLinear Corp.

ProLinear isn't really a laptop computing company. They sell the PalmBook, which is basically a heavy-duty palmtop. However, it fills some niches so I'm including it here.

The PalmBook is larger than an HP 100/200LX, closer to the size of a Zeos Meridian, but still available. It's 9.5"L x 4.5"W x 1.25"tall, 19oz, with a 640x200 CGA monochrome display, 386SX-25 CPU, serial and parallel ports, and closer to a real keyboard than the HPs. It runs on 4 AA batteries.

It doesn't come with any disk space, but the two PCMCIA slots can accept storage devices (i.e. FLASH cards). They start at about $900.

EMail: pic@ix.netcom.comEMail: pic@ix.netcom.com

ProStar Computer, Inc.

ProStar's computers are made by an affiliated company Kapok, which they are a minority share-holder in. They are also a sister company of Sager. Their 9400 is made by MicroStar (aka Notestar, which seems to be going out of business) though.

Be careful of ProStar - they are among the bottom three in customer satisfaction on the web.

Sager Midern Computer

Sager sells NanTan, Clevo, and others. They have the rudest and worst phone manner I've ever run across, and are reknown for refusing to fix things, for charging a fortune for parts, and generally being hard to work with. Sometimes the computers work though, so some people are happy with them.

The Sager 840D is probably a Compal.

Sager has a sister company, ProStar.

Sceptre Technologies

Sceptre Technologies is actually owned by Compal, the makers of the MidWest Micro SoundBook Elite. However, Sceptre sells their laptops with trackballs. Sceptre can be found at:

Samsung Electronics

Samsung laptops vaguely resemble the newer Digital laptops. They're slim and curvy, and available in a wide range of configurations and features. The Sens 810 is a real dream machine!

Samsung makes their own machines. They recently bought a majority stake in AST though, so some AST designs may make it into Samsung machines soon.

Samsung machines are also sold by Elite Computer Company and, with a different motherboard, by MegaImage, Inc.

Samsung is at:

&lthttp://www.sec.samsung.co.kr/>

Sharp Microelectronics

The newest Sharps are the PC-30X0 series and PC-90X0 series. These are all Pentium-based laptops, with 11.3" or 12.1" displays. The 30X0 series weighs 5.5 pounds, come with 8MB min, lithium-ion battery, and a Win95 keyboard (i.e. two windows-specific keys). The 90X0 series adds a removable 4X CD-ROM drive, IR port, on-board MPEG decoder, PCI local bus and 28.Kbps modem.

The older Sharp PC-8900, PC-8700, PC-8650, 9000/9030 and PC-3050 were made by Twinhead.

Sharp:

Wedge Technologies

The Wedge PowerBook 5CD is made by Clevo.

WinBook Computers

Winbook designs their own computers, and WinBook owners tend to be as dedicated as IBM ThinkPad or Apple PowerBook owners. The systems do rank highly for both quality and service regularly. WinBook announced a new Pentium laptop on October 2nd, 1995. The Press Release is availible here.

Unfortunately, there seem to be some problems associated with the new XP5 systems running at 90MHz. If you're having problems with the laptop dying unexpectedly, try switching the switch on the motherboard down to 75MHz.

So who is WinBook?

WinBook is a division of Micro Electronics, Inc. The other divisions are MEI Mail Order Accessories and the Micro Center Stores (10 large computer department stores.)

Micro Electronics started the WinBook line in response to customer surveys done in their stores. Working under the impression that they knew better than the large manufacturers what the customer wants, they designed and built it - and are now the #8 laptop vendor. (IDC, Sept 95) Their goal is to be #3.

WinBook computers are designed by WinBook (in Columbus, Ohio) and by Palo Alto Designs. The cases and motherboard are contracted out in Taiwan to specific Winbook designs - nobody else sells the same computer as WinBook. The rest of the computer (screens, pointing devices, sound support, disk drives, etc.) are assembled in Columbus.

The original WinBook case/motherboard was contracted out to Jetta in Taiwan, although one WinBook source says it was made by ASE. The WinBook XP was contracted out to a different, larger and better quality, Taiwanese vendor, Quanta. Note that much of the work is done in Columbus after the case and motherboard are done.

Zenith

Zenith was one of the first big players in the laptop world. In 1984, their Z-183-93 set standards for power (having a blazingly-quick 7.14MHz NEC V20, which was an Intel 8086 clone) and storage (a full 20MB of hard disk), plus the best LCD display on the market (bright blue on white, CGA). It only weighed about 15 pounds, and had diagnostics in hardware. Great computer.

Zenith were sold at the end of the 80s to Groupe Bull (France, I think), and more recently to Packard Bell.

Packard Bell has recently been acquired by NEC. On 01-March-97, NEC announced that they would no longer manufacture Zenith products except to finish fulfilling government contracts, and those will run out inside three years.

The Zenith ZNote GT is made by Chicony. Zenish Z-Star GX-133 is made by Full Power Investment.

Zeos

Zeos was purchased by Micron in 1994, but the two lines are still fully separate. Zeos stuff - even their desktops - have always had more quality problems than those of most other major mail-order companies.

Zeos is at:

Micron is at:

FOSA Computer

FOSA Computers are from Kapok - FOSA is the primary owner of Kapok, while ProStar is a minority holder (along with many many others.)

http://www.fosa.com

Fujitsu

Identity Systems

Identity was owned by IRG, but IRG has gone bankrupt and Identity was sold to USA Systems. USA is continuing the Identity line of systems, which is manufactured by Featron, although some of the 486 notebooks are manufactured by Chicony.

Aquiline

has gone out of business. They had some neat stuff, including the Huricane, the Cyclone (an early CD-ROM laptop), and the Cruiser (an early overhead-projection-compatible LCD laptop). This was rather sudden - they received good reviews as recently as May 95 (PC World).

Other recent departures include Dauphin Technology and Altura Computers.

Micro Express

I've been asked about Micro Express several times. I'm guessing they must have great prices. However, I've heard as many horror stories about them as about anybody else except MidWest Micro, and I may hear a lot about MidWest due to this page.

Anyhow, Micro Express sells Nan Tan Computers, generally one of the poorer-quality clones. They occaisionally win Editor's Choice awards, but usually come with substantial caveats, and did exceedingly poorly in the PC World satisfaction surveys (11/94 and spring 95).

The NP92DX4 is one such Nan-Tan.

The MicroExpress NP52P100 is a Full Power Investment machine, a bit heavy for travel and with the usual very short Full Power battery life of less than an hour.

MicroExpress

Toshiba

Toshiba's Home Page: &lthttp://www.toshiba.com/tais/csd/products/>
Toshiba Benelux

NEC

NEC manufactures the AT&T Globalyst as well as most of their laptops, but they get some of theirs from First Computer International of Taiwan.

Interesting note: NEC has acquired much of Packard Bell, who acquired much of Zenith a while ago.

NEC Computers:&lthttp://webserver.nectech.com/textnotebk/verfam.htm>

Texas Instruments

The Extensa 500 and CD-550 are made by FIC Computers.

The Extensa 400/450 is made by Acer.

Texas Instruments: &lthttp://www.ti.com/>

Ergo Computing

Ergo became famous with their Brick systems, which were very powerful portable computers without monitors. They were aptly named, but wouldn't be termed laptops. Ergo has a fairly successful line of laptops now, most made by Twinhead of Taiwain.

The Ergo SubBrick is made by Quanta.

The Ergo PowerBrick is made by Arima.

Swan

Swan is a branch of a reseller. Currently, the Swan-Note Plus is a Compal with an SVGA screen.

Swan was purchased by Zenith some years ago, and is now part of the NEC/Packard Bell mess.

Swan Technologies: &lthttp://www.swantech.com/>

Unisys gets some computers from Arima.

The Aquanta MN is an Acer 950, the Aquanta EN is an Acer 970, and the Aquanta LN is a Sotec.

KeyData

KeyData is a subsidery of DataPro. The KeyNote 8500CD sports a GlidePoint, CD-ROM/Floppy/Battery bay, Pentium, SVGA display, Sound-Blaster compatible, and low price. I don't know who makes it.

Keydata International, Inc.

800/485-4800
908/756-7300
Established 1983.
Last modified on 26-Nov-97

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