Porsche Designs a Laptop

An anonymous reader writes "Cnet is reporting that BestBuy is selling a porsche designed widescreen ultra thin laptop the looks almost exactly like a Tibook. Sadly, it runs windows so no one will actually want to use one for real work, but it looks pretty cool for minesweeper. Ah, I guess that the TiBook is no longer a status symbol if you can run Windows on it. It has all the trimmings, like those "made for windows 2k stickers" that get the screen all nasty when you close it."

Comments

Misleading

[csnydermvpsoft]

Note that it is designed by Porsche Design GmbH, not the car company. This is a company founded by the car company's founder's grandson, and appears to have no connection, other than the name.

If I got that notebook, I'd just install Linux on it, so I might as well get a tiBook and put Linux ppc on it instead, since it looks nicer.

Did anyone read this bit?

[Drakin]

...Porsche Design GmbH, the Austrian firm founded by F.A. Porsche, grandson of the famous engineer.

As in, it's not designed by the world famous car designing company, but someone's who's of the same family, and I'm thinking cashing in on the reputation that Porsche brings in this venture.

Re:Pathetic

[jackjumper]

Uh this is from Porsche Designs GmbH which, like most design houses, needs to make money so they (gasp) design things for whomever pays them.

It is *not* the same as Porsche cars, although they do design very nice high end stuff.

Re:Pathetic

[modecx]

In all serriousness, I don't think Porche has reallly quite done it. They may have been aiming fot a PowerbookG4 look, but the dimensions just aren't there:

G4 specs From apple.com:
Size and weight
Height: 1.0 inch (2.6 cm)
Width: 13.4 inches (34.1 cm)
Depth: 9.5 inches (24.1 cm)
Weight: 5.4 pounds (2.45 kg) with battery
Titanium Case.

Porche book from cnet:
6.4 pounds
13.9 inches wide
10 inches deep
and 1.2 inches thick.
Case presumably made from magnesium alloy.

It's bigger, heavier, and just not as sexy, in my opinion. That said, it looks like enough, and also has some decent hardware. Might be better if it were fire engine red, though.

Re:risk offending Apple?

[dhovis]

Considering that Best Buy was/is the first retailer to sell iPods

You mean aside from CompUSA? And Fry's? and Apple themselves?

Anyway, I'm not convinced that this is quite to the level of a TiBook. It is 20% thicker, at least a pound heavier, and I haven't seen any info about battery life (which makes me think it will be very poor).

Until someone gets their hands on one to review, I'm not convinced. That C|Net writeup sounds like it was written by marketing people, not people who've used it.

Re:Other Porsche items

[Dylan2000]

I don't know anything about the history of this company, founded by the grandson of Porsche, but my bet is most of that cheap crap from the '80s was all made in Taiwan and then someone, somewhere, with the ability to sign the merchandising agreement just authorised them and got a fat payment. Kind of like Krusty the Clown.

What I do know is that this company works together with Siemens and they make some of the most kickass home appliances I've ever seen...
blender
coffee machine
kettle

Brushed aluminium, stainless steel, These things look like TiBooks too, I even think they were out before the TiBook was and this laptop looks as much like them as it does the Apple machine.

TiJuicer?

So don't judge Porsche designs by those plastic gas station sunglasses, cause they make some awesome stuff!

People, read the damn article... and pay attention

[Gruneun]

Porsche Design GmbH, the Austrian firm founded by F.A. Porsche, grandson of the famous engineer

This is not designed by Porsche (the car company responsible for some incredible cars), but rather Porsche Design the design company founded by a not-nearly-as-famous grandson. The only car-related work was a start-up project designing a plant that built 911's, not the car itself.

The Comparison

[Jon Abbott]

I know this is comparing apples to oranges (or something like that), but here goes:

BestBuy price: $2,399
Apple's price: $2,499

BestBuy size: 1.2 x 10 x 13.9"
Apple's size: 1.0 x 9.5 x 13.4"

BestBuy weight: 6.4 pounds
Apple's weight: 5.4 pounds

BestBuy case: Silver-magnesium
Apple's case: Titanium

BestBuy battery life: 3 hours 15 minutes
Apple's battery life: 4 hours (realistically)

BestBuy CPU: 2GHz Pentium 4-M
Apple's CPU: 667MHz PowerPC G4

BestBuy RAM: 512MB DDR SDRAM
Apple's RAM: 256MB SDRAM

BestBuy HD: 40GB hard drive
Apple's HD: 30GB IBM hard drive

BestBuy wireless: Integrated 802.11b
Apple's wireless: 802.11b ready

Bestbuy video card: Unknown
Apple's video card: ATI Mobility Radeon 7500, 32MB

Bestbuy video out: S-Video-out
Apple's video out: DVI/VGA/S-video

Bestbuy Ethernet: Probably 10/100 Apple's Ethernet: Gigabit Ethernet

Bestbuy external ports: 2 Firewire, 2 USB
Apple's external ports: 1 Firewire, 2 USB

Shared items:
BestBuy and Apple LCD: 15.2-inch LCD, 1280x854 max
Bestbuy and Apple's modem: 56k
BestBuy and Apple optical: CD-RW/DVD drive

Some advantages of the TiBook get overlooked.....

[jerkyjunkmail]

The thing I think most people over look with the TiBook(and other Apple hardware) are all the hardware tricks like:

1.) target disk mode(the ability to boot up in a external hard drive mode) and be directly attach to a another computer via firewire as an external hard drive. That's a much faster way to transfer GBs of files between computers than over a network.
2.) being able to directly hook up to another computer via ethernet with either a straight through OR cross-over cable
3.) somewhat hot-swappable batteries(you only have to put it to sleep and you have about 2-3 minutes to switch the batteries),
4.) better battery life than any Intel laptops I've dealt with
5.) the first laptops, even though the switches are still a little pricey but getting close to affordable by the every man, with gigabit ethernet stock.

I don't know of any Intel laptops capable of all(or even most) of those things.

As far as PC laptops go it looks pretty nice especially if it supports, Linux/FreeBSD/OpenBSD well but once you touch and feel it it could have a cheap feel like some PC laptops like Toshiba.