Reviews
Sharp
Actius MM20
Ultra-skinny notebook is fat with features
What's
a review of a conventional notebook doing in Handheld Computing?
Aside from the fact that it is beautiful and interesting in its
own right, the Sharp Actius MM20 is also the first machine to
reach these shores powered by Transmeta's new Efficeon microprocessor.
But most pertinent to readers of this magazine is that the MM20
is small enough to almost be considered a handheld.
Transmeta
has completely re-engineered the Efficeon chip, using everything
it has learned from their earlier Crusoe chips while adding in
some remarkable improvements derived from Intel Pentium 4-class
microprocessor technology. In a nutshell, the Efficeon is designed
specifically for small, low-power draw mobile computers where
performance and long battery life are at constant odds; to get
more of one means sacrificing some of the other.
One guiding
design goal for Transmeta is to make sure their chips draw less
than 7 watts, since systems at this level require no fan. Theoretically,
an Efficeon can run 200MHz faster than a Pentium M at the same
power draw. The design also makes more efficient use of idle time,
where machines spend most of their time anyway, translating directly
into longer battery life while mobile. Along with other, more
arcane improvements involving power leakage, ãspeculative executionä
of code blocks, and the improved LongRun2 power conservation settings,
the Efficeon is the chip to beat in mobile computers. Tablets
in particular stand to benefit from this chip; the thinner, lighter,
and longer running tablets become, the more likely will we carry
them in place of paper notebooks.
Rare
bird
The Japanese build the most elegant ultralight notebooks in the
world, and they keep the very best of these little jewels for
themselves. What few machines flew this way were rare birds indeed.
It has been this way for years, but forward-looking companies
such as Sharp and Sony see the potential for these machines to
become popular in the West. Sony's PictureBook line led the way
to the USA, followed by some of the smaller VAIOs introduced last
year. But Sharp is taking the exact machines they created for
the Akihabara crowd (the Mebius MM20) and is offering it to westerners
as the Actius MM20. They built on the design of the moderately
successful MM10, making substantial improvements in battery life
and overall performance.
How small
is the MM20? Photos don't do it justice. You need to pick one
up to appreciate just how light 1.99 pounds really is. The cool
matte-black and silver metal casing is stiff and fitted well,
with cutlines (the tiny gaps between body panels) on a par with
current PowerBooks ÷ which is to say, utterly superb. Even the
power adapter is tiny and weighs less than half a pound. Carrying
the MM20 around the house or office is like carrying a magazine
or small sheaf of papers; you barely even notice it until you
need it ÷ which is, of course, as it should be.
Some may grouse
about the 83%-sized keyboard, but I found it easy to adapt to
after a few minutes of use. The 10.4 LCD is gorgeously bright
and crisply detailed, with excellent off-axis viewability. Sharp
is a world leader in LCD technology, so all their notebooks have
excellent screens. This MM20's display quality makes up for the
small size. It seems bigger than 10.4 inches and denser than 1024x768.
I found it superior to any other LCD in our current stable, including
my personal PowerBook G4 15-inch.
The
little engine that could
We found the MM20's performance to be quite respectable for this
class of machine. The 1GHz Efficeon TM8600 processor is the more
capable of the two Efficeons currently offered to computer makers,
offering up 1MB of fast cache ÷ twice that of the TM8300. Comparisons
with the Pentium M are inevitable, and benchmark numbers show
it to be a close enough race that it really doesn't matter except
to statisticians and obsessives.
Using the
standard 1.8 amp-hour battery, run time is between two and three
hours in typical use. Sharp offers a stylish extended battery
pack that triples this to a whopping 8-9 hours. Long distance
travelers will definitely want one of these in their briefcase.
The unit we
tested shipped with only 256MB or RAM, but the models offered
for sale in the US will all feature 512MB standard. Drive size
is limited to 20MB due to the ultra-slim mechanism they use, so
don't plan on making this your main video-editing computer.
In the connectivity
department, the littlest Actius doesn't disappoint: integrated
802.11g WiFi offers compatibility with both 11Mbps and 54Mbps
wireless LAN variants. There is also a standard RJ45 wired Ethernet
jack on the right side. Sadly, there's no Bluetooth. This is easily
fixed with Socket's excellent Bluetooth card, an almost invisible
device that slips into the MM20's slot and protrudes just a few
millimeters beyond the casing.
As with all
such ultralights, optical drives are external USB devices; Sharp
sells a matching combo drive (CD-R/DVD) for $99, an option we
strongly recommend you order with your MM20. Speaking of USB2,
the MM20 sports one on each side of the machine for easy access.
Dockers
First
seen on the MM10, the new Actius comes with a very cool vertical
docking cradle. The machine slips into it like bread into a toaster,
where it charges the battery while displaying the charge with
a curved, colored LED window across the front. But the cool doesn't
stop there: the dock has a DirectHD switch which allows a shut-down
MM20 to mount as an external hard drive on another PC via the
included USB2 cable. Once mounted, special sync software from
Iomega allows you to designate folders for automatic bidirectional
synchronization. This is the best solution for two-PC sync I've
ever seen, making the little Actius the ideal mobile counterpart
to a desktop Windows system.
Spend a little
time with a machine this compact, you begin to wonder about the
long term viability of Palms and Pocket PCs. Why take a subset
when you can take it all? With mobile phones becoming more like
PDAs every month and notebooks as svelte as the $1500 Actius MM20,
where will that leave the $700 full-function handheld computer
in, say, 2007?
ö David
MacNeill
www.sharpsystems.com
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