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Fascinating. This is the first time I've pulled out my Fujitsu P-1120 in two months, and slashdot was the first place I went to to make sure I was connecting OK, and what do I see. Sigh. I feel bad for all the folks that will never have the opportunity to buy a P1120. All signs are that Fujitu won't be making a replacement with all the same features, namely:

1. The clearest screen I've ever seen on *anything*
2. TOUCHSCREEN!!!!
3. Size of a small hardcover book
4. Weight of a small hardcover book
5. Runs *cool*
6. Runs forever on battery power
7. No fan, silent except for the hard drive
8. Built in Wifi & Ethernet
9. Etc., etc.
10. Very nice, *useable* keyboard

Heck, I'm thinking about buying another one to have in case my current one ever breaks!

The older folks here may remember the teeny little laptop that HP came out with in the early '90s with the mouse that popped out from the side? I never bought one 'cause I figured they'd eventually come out with a faster model, and then HP just discontinued it. I always berated myself for not buying one when it was available. So when the P1000 series came out, I bought one, even though I really could have used the money for a lot of other things at the time. Two years later, I'm still convinced it's the best $1100 I've ever spent. I don't need a laptop that often, but when I *do* need one, it's the most convenient full featured, yet smallest laptop ever made.

The only downside is that it needs a bit of tweaking before it can play full screen videos, but it *can* play them, and that's all that matters. It's also well supported by Linux and has it's own forum

The Fujitsu 5020D has similar specs - 10.27" x 7.80" x 1.55" (though only certain models have 512 megs ram), and the IBM X series is also thin and light, though a little wider. Unfortunately, the lousy computer stores near me have none of these three - just massive 10kg desktop replacements that produce levels of heat and noise comparable to a blowdryer.

Well, your argument is sound, but you are wrong on saying "Plus they did it knowing that it would take years to pay off in additional sales.".

Assuming all your other numbers are correct and "several hundred" manuals means 1000 and "several hundred pages" means 1000, you have 1M pages. On 5 scanners like this for $18,000 each, you will receive a theoretical performance of 900 images per minute, which means a total of 18.5 hours for 1M documents, not considering the daily duty cycle.

For money that is worth a salary of 3 people (two-salary equivalent for the above-equipment and some extra money for a man to operate this), you get performance and manpower to scan, categorize, and post all the manuals that you need in less than a one quarter.

And I haven't even started talking about cost if you are outsourcing this type of a job to India...

Bottom line, if it didn't generate revenue, a company wouldn't do it. So even though you call Yamaha a "good" company in a sense that they have values beyond making money, that is misleading. I personally haven't worked at a corporation that is out there for just "being good"...

"There is no such thing as free lunch."

>There is no comparison. The parts are the same, but the design of the machines is completely different.

How? What are we talking about in difference, space age style difference, or "they make the circuit board a different shape and put the holes in different places, also a few chips are a little different" difference?

I can tell you for a fact making a wireless router with a circular circuit board or a rectangular one really won't make any difference to operation (although the circular one was probably a real bitch to design), for example.

>Dell - cheap plastic
>Apple - anodized aluminum alloy

Ahh, there's your problem. How about comparing a quality laptop to the Apple?

Apple doesn't have a coup on case materials (or cool designs!), you know.

It's a current model scanner d00d. Though the one I have is probably three years old now.

(don't worry, I didn't pay for it)

With Compaq aka The new HP computers in our office, which almost all had fujitsu or maxtor drives, the fujitsu drives have almost all died out from our 2001 computer batch. Computers prior to 2001 seem to be far more reliable. I would say 80% of our 2001 fujitsu's have needed the hard drive replaced.
Here is a lawfirm with a class action lawsuit regarding several models:
The Fujitsu hard disk drive model numbers that are a subject of this litigation include, among others, MPG3204AT; MPG3307AH; MPG3102AT; and MPG3409AH. Continue to monitor this page for the addition of other model numbers.

Hard drive testing programs:
IBM -- Drive Fitness Test
Maxtor -- Powermax
Western Digital -- Data Lifeguard Tools Utilities: DLGDIAG
Seagate -- SeaTools
Fujitsu -- Diagnostic Tool
NOTE: Some of these tools may work with all drives, but this (free) collection should cover quite a few drives.

Well, it DOES work like that when the laptop can hold multiple batteries at once. The Dell can hold the 2 he mentioned. Yours can't.

Actually, mine can. I was talking about 7 hours of usable time with both batteries installed.

I guess I misunderstood the AC. Dell's website says that each battery in an Inspiron 4150 gives 2 hours service, not 5. (Maybe the 4000 is 2.5 times better.)

But really, you shouldn't trust web sites. The one for my laptop claims 10.5 hours with the battery configuration I'm using, and it's an exaggeration. I've just never seen a case where a manufacturer understated the battery life by 60%.

I think 10" would be the absolute minimum in pure ergonimcal terms.

I've been using a Toshiba Libretto 70 with a 6.5" screen for about 4 years, and it's just usable. You don't really want to have more than one window on screen at once, you can't write code where you need to see more than about 20 lines at a time (but that's a good thing :-). The big advantage of this little machine over a desktop replacement notebook is that it's quite reasonable to have it with you *all* the time.

I wish somebody was making a machine like the Libretto these days. My 70 only takes 32 Meg of RAM, and that's just not enough any more. The closest I've seen with a usable screen and keyboard are the new Fujitsu P Series machines, but they are noticeably bigger than the Libretto (and way bigger than the oQo).