Portables can do big jobs — Uplink Archive

Notebook computers have significantly improved in speed, storage capacity, and expandability, making them viable tools for reporters doing data-intensive work. Modern notebooks now offer large hard drives, upgradeable RAM, PCMCIA slots for peripherals, and docking stations, though they remain expensive compared to desktop computers.

Your next big number-crunching computer may not be so big. In fact, you may be able to carry it with you to your local government agency.

Notebook computers are steadily gaining in speed, capacity and adaptability. It might be time to take another look.

In the past, notebooks could only handle the smallest databases. Hard drives were small, memory limited and the only input devices were floppy disc drives. There was little standardization in the industry - so you could only buy extra memory or a larger hard drive from the manufacturer. This meant higher prices and configuration restrictions.

But a new group of notebooks is hitting the market that meet the reporter's need for large RAM and storage memory, as well as the flexibility to attach peripherals such as tape drives and take advantage of upgrades in bus speeds.

Most notebooks come with at least 250MB hard drives with some upgrades reaching 1GB. Notebooks with removable hard drives allow for an almost infinite storage capacity as long as your analysis programs are on each drive. 4MB is still the standard for RAM but many vendors now offer cheap upgrades to 16MB.

A number of notebooks are available with built in CD-ROM. IBM offers a notebook with a "hot swap" feature that allows you to pull out your floppy and stick in a CD-ROM drive without turning off your system. External CD-ROMS can be added on notebooks with PCMCIA slots.

For on-line users, PCMCIA also allow you to add 14,400 or 28,800 bps modems and guarantee you can upgrade to future speeds. SCSI cards, Ethernet adapters, hard drives and sound cards can all be added using the PCMCIA ports.

The real news for reporters are the new docking stations offered by many vendors. The station acts as a expansion device allowing anything from extra hard drives, extra batteries, CD-ROM drives or peripheral cards.

While many of these new tools are finally available, they are still expensive. Prices have been steadily falling though and expect that to continue. Overall, expect to pay a little less than twice the cost of a desktop. RAM runs $45-$60/MB for notebooks. Hard drive prices are still somewhat expensive. For example, the EPS Pentium-90 Notebook with 16MB RAM and a 810MB hard drive can be bought for HD, $4588 delivered. Not bad for portable computer assisted reporting.