Re: Future of this site -- the transmonde laptop information page

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Subject: Re: Future of this site

Author:
Doug Millsaps

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Date Posted: 06:52:56 08/04/99 Wed
In reply to: Navin Sabharwal 's message, "Future of this site" on 18:01:46 08/02/99 Mon

> I think that this site should not limit itself to
> Transmonde laptops.
>
> I for one would like it to morph into a site with
> independent, thorough, user-submitted reviews of all
> kinds of laptops. This would make it a one-stop haven
> for laptop buyers that would complement the NGs. This
> would be a very unique site.

I would agree with the concept. But after awhile, wouldn't it turn into comp.sys.laptops? Where you see a lot of "what should I buy for my situation?" type questions. If you could keep the topics semi-constrained to laptop reviews I would be for it.

> Personally I am very disenchanted with professional
> reviews. They are biased towards advertisers. This is
> the dirty secret of the journalism trade. Most
> damaging is when the reviews simply omit the mention
> of obvious flaws/problems.

I agree

> For example Compaq often partitions the hard disk so
> that the recovery OS and utilities are on it. This
> saves the cost of CD (big wow).
>
> When was the last time any review mentioned that most
> new Toshiba laptops with CD-ROMs are not capable of
> reading CD-RWs (in all cases) or CD-Rs (in some
> cases). Or that the video subsystem on Toshiba is way
> inferior and that the new models with DVD drives
> cannot in realistically decode DVD movies adequately.
> You would need a PC card decoder to do that.

Very good examples. I _was_ looking at both Toshiba and Compaq (among others) earlier. I decided against Toshiba because none of the Satellite series has a TV out port. The Tecra line is to expensive. If I'm going to buy a DVD-equipped notebook, I might as well have a way to hook it up to the tv.

> I can come up with a thousand other examples with well
> known flaws across whole laptop lines that are
> intentionally omitted in professional reviews.
>
> These are real issues that affect day-to-day usability
> NOT benchmarks that separate computers with the same
> CPUs 3% apart (big deal).
>
> Do you agree that the idea of expanding the focus of
> this website is a good idea? Most importantly does
> Jessica agree? Well you asked for feedback Jessica.
> Just my 2 cents.
>
> Navin

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