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By Jim Forbes
Fujitsu's new Montego subnotebook computer takes dead aim at Toshiba's Portégé line, vying head on with the better-known brand in low travel weight, long battery life and reliability.
The Montego does not pioneer new technology and it has neither a self-contained modem nor a 133MHz Pentium chip.
But the Fujitsu Montego weighs only 4.9 pounds, and with its battery charger has a travel weight of about 5.3 pounds. It has a Super VGA 10.4-inch active-matrix screen, accelerated graphics, 1MB of video memory, 16MB of RAM, a 1GB hard disk and an internal floppy disk drive. The subnotebook is equipped with two vertically stacked Type II ports, a serial port, one parallel port, IrDA port and a PS/2 connector. The modular bay that accommodates the floppy disk drive will also hold a second lithium ion battery. The Montego has self-contained speakers and Sound Blaster-compatible sound.
I was able to squeeze three hours from the Montego's standard battery, but typical battery life is closer to 2.5 hours.
The Montego has a near full-sized keyboard and a stickpoint pointing device. The controls are located on the system case's back, on the left and right-hand sides.
The Montego blew through our Wintune 95 and application benchmarks. Its processor delivered an average of 180.33MIPS, its hard disk system averaged 2.5MB-per-second uncached throughput, and its PCI-based video system scored an average 5.93MPixels per second. Its average times to execute for the Excel and Word macros were 25 and 31 seconds, respectively.
Priced at about $3,199 for the unit I tested, the Montego is a value-packed, great-performing machine.
Info File
Fujitsu Montego
Price: $3,199
Pros: Performance; value; brilliant screen; long battery life
Cons: Awkwardly located suspend control
Fujitsu PC Corp.
888-4ON-THEGO, 408-935-8800
WinMag Box Score: 4.0
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