Toshiba Portégé 3440CT, Vindigo and AutoRoute 2001

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I wrote these reviews in the Spring of 2001.

Toshiba Portégé 3440CT

I have used my faithful Toshiba Libretto 70CT for nearly three years. Usually the alphabet soup of product names and numbers doesn’t signify much. In this case, however, Libretto means ultra-ultra portable. It is a fully-fledged portable PC with Windows and a colour screen in a package the size of a videocassette. Sadly they stopped making them a few years ago, presumably because there was a small supply of gadget addicts with fingers small enough to use the tiny keyboard. My problem is that I loved it. It was small enough to fit into carry-on luggage and leave space for carry-on luggage! It was light enough to carry to and from the office without dislocating a shoulder. But it isn’t powerful enough and has too many limitations in terms of keyboard size and screen size to really be a useful portable machine. Also my requirements have changed somewhat. I need a machine that I can really work on and use as a day-to-day machine. In other words, what I need is a machine that has a proper keyboard, a big screen, a fast processor but which weighs the same as the Libretto and takes up as much space. An impossible task, you would have thought.

But no. Toshiba have come up with another beauty called the Toshiba Portégé 3440CT. It costs about £1500. It has a big, well-lit screen; a keyboard that the normal-fingered can type on; a fast processor and a big hard disk for storing work on. All this comes in a package that weighs about the same as the Libretto and has the shape and size of two or three copies of Real Business stacked on top of one another. I’ve been using it for the last three weeks to write my various articles, work on my so-called novel, and generally do computer stuff. I love the built-in modem, which means I can browse the Internet with the laptop on my knees in front of the TV (much to the annoyance of my girlfriend). I like the built-in USB that I use to plug in a mouse and also hook up to my main PC using a high speed Laplink USB cable. It doesn’t have a built in CD drive or floppy disk drive. This is the price you pay for compactness and light weight. Luckily it comes with a plug-in floppy disk drive and a connection to hook it up to an office network. I have no complaints about the battery life although I wish someone would come with a portable that could run for eight hours on a single charge rather than the usual two or three.

There are two other features that I really like and which I wish were available for desktop PCs. The first is the ability to put the computer into suspend mode more or less instantly. My desktop claims to do this but it takes about the same time to shut it down and reboot it. The second – wonderful to relate – is that it doesn’t seem to have a fan in it, or if it does, it is a silent one. This means that it is absolutely silent in normal operation. This has a significant affect on my stress levels. If you don’t believe me try turning off all the computers in your room and see how much quieter it is. As far as I know, no computer since the original Apple Macintosh managed this trick and I think it is a shame.

Overall, I deeply recommend the Portégé. It’s the crown prince of laptops.

Vindigo

I’ve discovered a very neat program for my Pilot called Vindigo. It contains a listing of restaurants and shops in London (and, if you want, major American cities). It downloads the latest listings, reviews and film listings from the Internet and puts them into your Pilot whenever you synchronise. The cool thing about it is that you can tell Vindigo where you are by entering name of the street you’re in. It uses this information to find restaurant that are nearby. It can even give walking directions to wherever you choose. You can download Vindigo for free from www.vindigo.com.

Microsoft AutoRoute 2001

I’ve been a big fan of AutoRoute for more than a decade since I wrote the (now unavailable) Macintosh version after I left university. At heart, it is a PC map program. It is able to give directions from one place to another and the latest version, AutoRoute 2001, contains a detailed street map not only of the UK but of all of Europe. Since I live in London, this is very useful because I can use it as an A-Z. I use it all the time to get directions to meetings. I print out the directions AutoRoute provides and then a detailed street map of my destination. I am sure that this has saved me being late or getting lost countless times. The other useful thing about AutoRoute is that it can calculate distance and cost for trips, which is useful for filling expense claims. AutoRoute is an invaluable piece of software.

Toshiba Portégé 3440CT, Vindigo and AutoRoute 2001