Portable, High Performance, Computing Options?

Mostly a lurker asks: "I am a consultant with a need for a high performance machine (fast I/O and minimum 1GB RAM, perhaps more) with which I sometimes travel. I am willing to accept anything up to a 20lb traveling weight, but it must be compact enough to take by air. I would obviously welcome something that does not break the bank. Right now, the best I can come up with is something built around the Shuttle SB51G XPC with a separate LCD monitor and keyboard. It is really frustrating at the apparent lack of good alternatives. If I could wait six months then, the best desknotes would probably fit the bill (with the new IBM 7200 RPM drives). Today's desknotes fall short on I/O performance, and I would not be able to push RAM past 1GB. The lunchbox computers that qualify for air travel are mostly expensive rubbish, unless one's main concern is ruggedization. All-in-one computers like the IBM NetVista, Gateway Profile and ECS Aio's also seem to fall short. So, am I totally missing another great option? Have I mis-evaluated one of the options above? If I go the Shuttle XPC route, is there a really good light (and, equally important, compact) LCD monitor out there that someone wants to recommend [15" minimum, 17" would be nice, 30ms refresh or better, XGA acceptable, SXGA nice]? Thanks."

Comments

Powerbook G4

[i0wnzj005uck4]

I don't know how much you're willing to spend, but the current entry-level titanium powerbook G4 supports 1Gig of ram, and they were running a promotion where if you buy it you can get double ram for 40$ more. If you don't like mac os x you can install yellowdog linux or any of the other ppc-happy linux distros. Someone above mentioned $2000 for a toshiba, and what I'm talking about will run you $2300 (about). Does that break the bank?

Here's an idea

[afidel]

Buy any laptop with firewire built in, get a handfull of 7200 rpm firewire disks (or ide with firewire enclosures) and do software RAID of your choice on em. This should beat any other portable solution for I/O. Get a big honking Dell laptop with all the trimmings and you should have a laptop more powerfull than most people's desktops. Oh yeah and if you want to run them off the firewire's power be carefull almost none of the built in ports support power, to do that you would need one of the pc-card adapters that sucks power from elsewhere on the laptop.