ForbesOnTech

Toshiba's Portage Z835 P370 Sets Very High Bar-- A RecommendedUltrabook

You don’t have to make the thinnest, lightest or longest running ultrabook  to score a homerun in this
emerging portable computing category, but it helps  lot.

Toshiba’s Portage Z835-P370 ultrabook makes my point. I’ve been cranking on it for more than a month and it’s never let me down>In fact, it’s exceeded virtually all of my expectations.

Although ultrabooks are by definition small; and light weight,. Toshiba’s P835 is noticeably lighter than other manufacturers I’ve used or evaluated.

At 2.3 pounds , this ultrabook went almost unnoticed on two 14 mile roundtrip back pack trips I made to a gold panning region on the upper East Fork branch of the San Gabriel Canyon. Based on my real world ultra-portable computing experience, the fit, finish and construction of Toshiba’s ultrabook totally eliminates any fears I may have had about reliability. It’s as rock solid as mountain granite.

I like this system’s configuration—6GB of fast DDR SDRAM, a bright 13.3 inch LCD screen with a resolution of1366 x 768 pixels,  a 128 GB SSD drive that enables the fastest boot up time I’ve experienced on any ultrabook I’ve tested so far, an i5 1.6GHz processor with a top end boost speed of 2.3 GHZ),three USB ports (two USB .20 an one USB , audio jacks, a,and an RJ-45 Ethernet connector.An HDMI and one RGBvideo connector plus  an eight-cell lithium Ion battery, and a 300GB ATA hard disk drive. Round out the Z835’s configuration.

The price of the unit supplied to me for this review is about $1,050, although it’s offered for sale by some Internet retailers for less.

I’ve always been a fan of the keyboards used on Toshiba’s portable computers and the Portage Z835’s had only one feature I don’t like-it’s smaller than normal and in my view somewhat flimsy space bar. The back lighting makes using this machine easy to use in dimly lighted conference rooms or in primitive campgrounds. Moreover, the keys on this keyboard haven’t been scaled down to fit the form factor. To put a point on it; I have large hands and wear a men’s size 16 ring and I’ve been able to use this keyboard without making numerous typos.

I also like the two-button trackpad used on this ultrabook.  Its scrolling capabilities get you where you want quite handily—regardless of whether you’re in a large document, gigantic spreadsheet or at the far end of a digitized quarter sectional topo map.the real treat on the Portage Ultrabook is an on off switch mounted in front of the trackpad, which come in handy when you’ve plugged a mouse into a USB port. It’s a great feature I wish were used on other ultportable makers adopted.

In real word testing, the Z835’s power pack consistently delivered more than six hours of battery life (above average for this class of portable)

The performance of Toshiba’s Portage ultrabook is very good—its 128 GB SSD drive slashes boot times, but its 300 GB AT drive turned in only average scores. The video display sub systems exceeded my expectations. This computer’s13 .3-inch screen Is bright enough to make working with detailed maps or spread sheets a snap. When used used with common applications like email word processing, or spreadsheets, the Z835 doesn’t bog down when running computationally intensive tasks. The Z835 P370’s 6GB basic memory configuration is a major factor in the overall performance  of this ultrabook.

From a usability stand point this ultrabook is a top flight machine. It boots very quickly – about 26 seconds, so you’re not going to be impatiently tapping your toes or cracking your knuckles waiting to go to work. Its screen is bright and displays are crisp enough to cut the strain associated with most general computing tasks. But after testing this unit in canyons, local coffee shops and two dimly lighted conference settings I believe the Portage Z835 is the best ultrabook I’ve tested so far. The integrated audio speakers on the Z835 are good enough for YouTube videos and most audio files but if you want to really get your groove on, I recommend using ear buds.

The Toshiba Portage Z835-P370 is a stalwart and incredibly useful traveling companion that exceeded my expectations every time I pulled it out of my backpack. I love this ultrabook’s wicked fast boot time and extreme functionality.

With the Portage Z835-P370, Toshiba has done much more that simply build a computer to an Intel specification.  Instead it’s designed an ultrabook that is so good, it makes it to the tippy top of my recommended list.

Take away my Portage ultrabook? From my cold dead hands!—Jim Forbes 07/31/2012.

 

Ths Daunting Cost of a College Education--Paying the Cost to Become the Boss

It’s been two weeks of college graduations for some of my younger friends and now that they have their sheepskins a couple of them are beginning to talk about one of the more onerous aspects of getting a degree today, Student Loans.

            I am appalled at the cost of a four-year college degree here in California. It’s rare to find a student who doesn’t leave school with more than $17,000 in student loans and pretty routine to hear about young men and women who graduate owing $24,000 or more. And this is in a state that was tuition free for almost one hundred years.

            I’m pretty fortunate, I guess, I may have been among the last group of young adults who could work their way through college without student loans.

I can’t imagine what it would be like to get my degree back from the framers on the same day I got a billing statement for my student loans.

Actually, I can imagine it.  I think I would be seriously bummed.

Listening to the Bill Gates/Steve Jobs discussion at the All Things D conference last week, coupled with seeing a young lady I watched grow up who graduated late last month really started me thinking about the high cost of a college education today.

First things first, both Gates and Jobs agree that meeting the educational needs of today’s technology driven work force may be one of the biggest problems companies like Apple and Microsoft face today and in the future. Now consider this in context: neither Gates nor Jobs graduated from college (although I’m willing to bet a C-note their kids will).

When I look at young college students on campuses here in California, I try to put myself in their shoes or sandals. I wonder how horribly daunting it must be to think that, as a college student today: ”I’m going to need to borrow $20,000 or more to get a freaking four-year Bachelor’s degree, then maybe find a way to finagle enough cash to get a Master’s, while keeping body and soul alive.”

It’s a frightening thought for legions of kids with the intellectual drive and necessary credentials to get into a four-year college today.

So now we come to the other component in the equation, students' parents, many of whom are co-signers to those necessary loans. How do you think they feel about guaranteeing several score thousand bucks at a time when many are worried about a forced early or forthcoming retirement?

College tuition costs are going up in California and most other states. And there are virtually no 100 percent scholarships for kids who aren’t superstar jocks. Something is horribly wrong here.

It’s much more important to turn out competent lawyers, teachers, engineers, public servants and other professionals than it is to get a team into the Toilet Bowl or some other nonsensical college holiday post season game. I’m sure most college presidents are aware of this, yet they continue to grant full ride scholarships to classes of students who are least likely to make major societal contributions.

But wait there’s more. There’s another class of student that gets really hit by the current high cost of a college education.  That class is the returning veteran, who because of their age, life experience and maturity are much more likely to be in need of financial assistance than your typical 19 or 20 year old sophomore. First, today’s GI Bill bears no resemblance to the GI Bill of World War II and Korea.  If the soldier, sailor, marine, airman, (or woman) or Coastie, sets aside a fixed amount of their monthly pay check, the government matches that amount, and disbursement begins when the veteran begins college and lasts until the funds are exhausted. Sadly, most colleges still think of the GI Bill in terms of its original late 1940’s model. But, it’s better than nothing, although few colleges reserve spots on admissions’ lists for veterans.

I have an suggestion for Mssr’s Gates and Jobs:  How about you set up new educational/tuition assistance programs for the children of your employees? It may help solve some of your concerns about the educational level and suitability of their future workforce and it sure as hell could become an important draw in recruiting dedicated new employees.

To the producers of the Wall Street Journals All Things D conference? Don’t you think it’s time to suggest that industry titans put their money where their mouths are?  What about it Kara and Walt?

Finally, soaring tuition costs seem to be outpacing inflation. Yet, as a country we absolutely have to invest in the education of future generations. And to do this we need to face the dichotomy of making under graduate degrees more meaningful to industry and more affordable to middle class families.

Todate, I believe we’re failing on both fronts.

But I firmly believe that somewhere out in the wiregrass the next Bill Gates, Steve Jobs or Henry Ford is probably hitting the books for SAT exams or tinkering with a new web-based application. Such potential students are much more valuable to our society than a young jock whose name will be forgotten six months after his last college bowl performance.—Jim Forbes on 06/04/2007.

(disclosure, I have two children, and I made a decision that one of the most important things I could do as a man and a Father, was pay as much of my children’s college tuition as I could and eliminate their need to get student loans—JMF)

Foleo--Palm Pushes Creativity and a New Frontier

Right now the technology industry, particularly the mobile and its associated segments seems to be suffering from a general lack of creativity.

I mean think about it, when was the last time anyone introduced took a chance and went against the commercial tide and launched something that wasn’t just a repackaged “me too” product?

Nothing brought this home more vividly to me than analysts’ reactions to Palm’s new Foleo e-mail appliance, described by its pioneering father , Jeff Hawkins’, as a companion for smart phones.

            Launched yesterday at the Wall Street Journal’s All Things Digital Conference over the hill from me in Carlsbad, CA,  analysts quickly adopted an “I Don’t get it” pile-on that clearly demonstrates how much creativity and critical thinking is missing in today’s market.

            When I saw Foleo the first thing I though was “how HP Omnibook 800-like” and “cool instant on and drop dead simple mail synchronization.”

            Bear with me as I shift into my Sam Salmon mode and swim against the popular tide flowing against Palm’s newest appliance.

+Foleo’s industrial design is outstanding. It’s unobtrusive yet stylish. It has a full-sized keyboard, which is critical to usability. This is exactly the type of product that Jeff Hawkins excels at and which is appealing to executives and other classes of workers professionally tied to critical email.

+ The addition of Wi-Fi to this platform makes it an attractive alternative to subcompact notebooks that are twice as expensive. With WiFi, its users can hit Web-based productivity apps like Google’s Docs and Spreadsheets (which severs the expensive bond I had with Microsoft for the last two decades) for those occasions when email text editors just don’t do the job.

+Foleo’s price is low enough to insure initial adoption by corporate and other high visibility workers. If you look back in time, the original Palm Pilot wasn’t priced very low, wasn’t the first device in its category, yet it went on to establish a strategically important beach head that has been expanded by other companies who have rode Palm’s technological bow wave.

+ The email management and synchronization software for Foleo is top flight. It’s simple to set up intuitive and works right out of the box. Again, these are trademarks of Palm products, yet the analysts covering this product launch yesterday either couldn’t remember this or just incapable of understanding how important creativity is to furthering technology.
+The choice of a Linux operating system wasn’t surprising. Palm’s management has made it very clear over the last several years that they were investigating Linux and may use it if it helped a product or technology.

+One of Palm’s historic strengths has been third-party developers. Foleo is a product that can blossom quickly with such backing. Furthermore, the stature of Jeff Hawkins is such that the risk capital suppliers may be willing to take a flyer on third-party Foleo development efforts.

+ Foleo is a first generation product. I’d be willing to bet part of an avocado crop that future products will be more complex and have many more features. In fact, when I saw Foleo yesterday, my first reaction was ”add a digitizer screen, and change some mechanicals and this device could make a great sub-$1,000 tablet computer.

+ Foleo bolsters the capabilities of smart phones and will play to dual mode wireless phones that support cellular and WiFi technology while using Bluetooth for short range networking and synchronization.

Palm’s Foleo device shows that there are still companies and executives out there who have both the creative chops and backbone to launch products that expand existing categories and pioneer new ground. I think Foleo and future versions of this product could open the floodgate to a new generation of important devices.

More importantly, if you want  to see how to demonstrate a product look here at the launch feed from the AllThingsD conference. No one is better at demonstrating a product than Jeff Hawkins. Period.

It’s just too bad that industry analysts and so-called seers have become risk adverse and unwilling to gauge the power of creativity in an otherwise moribund market. Jim Forbes—05/31/2007

(madatory disclosure: in the 1990's I served on a Palm  advisory panel)