HARDWARE
Sure, having the newest gadgets is like having the latest high-performance car. But owning a laptop that is never going to be sold on American shores? That's like having a mint-condition DeLorean with the cocaine still in the side panels.
With its brushed-aluminum exterior, Panasonic's CF-M1ER - or as the Japanese machine is labeled, the Let's Note - even looks like an exotic car. I picked it up from an American boutique importer, Dynamism Worldwide (www.dynamism.com), and despite its childish moniker, Let's Note is a sophisticated eye-catcher. The minuscule subnotebook packs the horsepower of an oversize notebook into a tiny 3.08-pound chassis. The numbers of what lies under the 10.6-by-8.4-by-1.1-inch hood are impressive: Pentium III 500-MHz processor, 192 megs of SDRAM, 24x CD-ROM, 8.1-Gbyte hard drive, 11.3-inch XGA screen, and built-in 100/10BaseT and 56K modem. I must note, as well, that the machine ran a full seven hours on the two-battery configuration.
Dynamism sells several Japanese status machines you've probably never held in your hands. The site currently offers a featherlight Fujitsu notebook with DVD, a Toshiba with separate MP3 remote control, and a little eye candy for the desk: an NEC slimtop that buries its processor in the flatpanel screen. Rest assured that if you do buy a notebook from Dynamism, the company replaces the Japanese version of Windows with a US copy of Windows 98, and tests its performance. And within one year, Dynamism will FedEx an ailing notebook back to Japan, where the manufacturer's warranty is honored, for free. In addition, it furnishes unlimited free tech support via toll free phone and email.
There are a couple of downsides, however. First is the nature of ultraslim notebooks: Being so small means tiny keys and big headaches for those who are all thumbs. Another problem is the keyboard layout: All the alphabet chicklets are in their usual places, labeled in English as well as kanji, but commas, quotation marks, and semicolons are hard to locate amid the ideograms. (As an unintentional benefit, you can probably start learning the basic characters for future sushi menu translations.) I also experienced an occasional system lockup.
Unfortunately, I couldn't find any fellow gearheads to astonish with this laptop's cherried-up feature set. But at leastI know.
Panasonic CF-M1ER: $3,999. Distributed in the US by Dynamism: (800) 711 6277, +1 (312) 953 4479,www.dynamism.com.
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