Event Coverage

HardwareZone's 10th Anniversary: The Y2K Era

Notable Notebooks in 2000

Notable Notebooks in 2000

  • In 2000, we managed to get our hands on Apple's iBook Special Edition which was the first notebook to obtain a 5-star rating from us. Then again, Apple could do no wrong then, and it showed with its flawless integration of wireless networking. The iBook SE, like most other Apple products then, used a PowerPC processor to power the device, though the SE version utilized a much faster 366MHz processor compared to the 300MHz of the first edition. The iBook SE was both easy to use and set up, and it was also pretty to look at, as it was patterned after Apple's iMac. While a retail price of S$3188 that may seem pricey in today's standards, you'll be surprised to find that it was pretty much an average figure back then when compared with the rest of the other notebooks.

 Strangely enough, we didn't actually take pictures of the entire unit, though we have a shot of its internals. In this shot, the keyboard was removed to reveal the internals.

  • Sony's Vaio line was known for being slim and trendy even back then and the Sony Vaio PCG-SR9G only served as a reminder that even their current crop of notebooks draw their inspiration and design aesthetics deeply from the past. The PCG-SR9G was not only weighed in at a very light 1.34kg while being no thicker than a normal 3.5-inch HDD. In order to maintain this svelte weight and figure though, some sacrifices had to be made, which meant that the PCG-SR9G had no optical drive and 3.5-inch floppy disk drive. No big lost on the latter, though it's probably safe to assume that the former would be used pretty often during the time period.

 The first Sony VAIO ever reviewed at www.hardwarezone.com checked in at 1.34kg and cost $3188.

  • Some of you readers that follow tech news may have realized that Acer had recently bought over Gateway, and older readers may remember a few Gateway laptops that we reviewed in 2000. Of interest was the Gateway Solo 5300, which featured a TV output, and a much faster 750MHz Pentium III processor (compared with others of its day). Given the specifications of the Solo 5300, it may seem surprising to some that instead of being thick as a brick, the Solo 5300 was relatively thin at that time and checked in at only 35mm. With a weight of 2.5kg, it was also a pretty portable workhorse to boot.

 Gateway's Solo 5300 was a machine that delivered on both performance and aesthetic appeal.

  • Rounding up the year 2000 of our retrospective look was IBM's ThinkPad X20, a 1.43kg machine that valued portability over connectivity. While it did have a docking station to make up for its connectivity solutions, it didn't do too well for our review despite having scored pretty well in our benchmarking tests. This was mainly due to the cost of getting the X20, which based on just the unit alone, would set most users back by $3851. Tack on the docking station ($372) and the CD-Rom drive module ($230) and you're looking at something that's $4,453, which is mind boggling to say the least.

 The choice between portability and connectivity came to a head with IBM's ThinkPad X20 which was probably one of the more expensive machines at that time.

 

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