Why Tecra 550CDT?

• High end brand name model: not necessarily the bleeding edge, but something that won't die when CDE + Netscape + Java Workshop all come up at the same time, and that I'll be able to repair here in NY even two or three years from now;

• Ability to handle enough RAM: I have 128M on the desktop and didn't want to go with less on laptop;

• TrueColor video: I didn't care much of the screen size, but I wanted a display capable at least of 1024x768x16M;

• Networkability: I've got a 4 node LAN at home, and the ability to connect at least to my router to me is something that no meaningful job can be accomplished without;

• Working sound: I was too spoiled with it on my desktop and didn't want to not be able to listen to CDs or play MIDI from the Net while I'm doing my work.

That's basically it. With those goals in mind, I started looking around ...

What I discovered after a couple of months of searching the Net, were two things.

Firstly, there're astonishingly few experiences, at least of those available from the Web or on USENET, with successful setup of the type - complete and without compromises - that I wanted and needed. Of course, there's a lot of stories, reports, recipes and even legends about putting UNIX (mostly Linux, of course) on laptops and notebooks, but most of them go like this:

OK, I've got <some-UNIX> on my laptop, and it works perfectly! Sure, I didn't try X Window yet, and there seem to be no way to use modem and suspend mode, but everyhing else is fine!

To me, it does not sound like the person has a working UNIX system: standalone mode with no graphics and perspective to reboot several time a week is not something that I was ready to accept as a price for the possibility to work in my dining room or backyard.

Secondly, it turned out that there's a very little choice of systems on the market (it was June 1998) that satisfy all my requirements. You may not believe it, but I could count all possible variants using fingers on just one hand! There were many decent products from respectable manufacturers capable of running Windows NT and even - to the lesser extent - Linux, but not Solaris in the configuration that I wanted!

I was disappointed... I started to realize that I may need to solve much more problems than I anticipated, and that any solution won't be perfect, mostly for two reasons: the lack of portables that have all hardware options I wanted at the same time (e.g. RAM/disk/weight is OK but the system's video won't do TrueColor, or display and everything else seems fine but the RAM is limited to 96M, and so on), and the lack of support of hardware intended primarily or exclusively for Windows variants in Solaris (e.g. all notebook parameters look great, but there's no any [decent] Solaris/x86 driver for its exotic video or audio system in the entire Universe, and there's no hope it'll ever be).

Eventually, I ended up with two candidates: Tecra 550CDT and its only real alternative - IBM ThinkPad 770E[D]. I was inclined to go with ThinkPad. Despite that its price was over 50% more, although not giving me any perceivable advantages except of a bigger hard drive (which was OK) and larger display (which I didn't want anyway), I was ready to pay. But first I wanted to be sure that I'll be able to install Solaris on such a machine at all, so I asked people from EIS who sell preconfigured systems, including portables, if they can configure a TP 770ED based Solaris system for me.

Well, they tried hard, and after some time reported that Solaris simply doesn't run properly on that hardware: it locks unexpectedly, it hangs, in short words, it behaves in an unpredictable manner. (BTW, since then I still watch closely all reports on USENET and the Net in general about installation of Solaris/x86 on IBM notebooks, and I haven't run yet across a single successful story about TP 770E[D] model ... So EIS' David van Beveren was most probably right saying that these TPs aren't good for Solaris at all).

So, in the end I actually didn't have an alternative to Toshiba ... Another important consideration in favor of Tecra was the old good Toshiba's tradition of making fairly UNIX (SCO OpenServer, Linux, Solaris) compatible laptops and notebooks. I went with Tecra 550CDT, although by that time there were no reports about successful installations of Solaris/x86 on it. I just hoped that I'll be lucky. And I was.