Portico use report
- From: "Karl Smith (Axis)" <karl@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 04 Feb 2005 07:28:36 -0700
Hello Folks,
I have been using a Portico M5 laptop for about three weeks now. First of
all in the spirit of full disclosure I should say that I have added the
Portico to my line of products and I am also a JAWS dealer. Having said
that I can tell you several things about my experience with its use.
I purchased the basic M5 unit with the following specifications in December.
4-664-768-02 1.44 FLOPPY DISK DRIVE EXTERNAL (USB)
SLIMHD60 60GB 9.5M SLIM HARD DRIVE
BXM80536GC1600F INTEL PENTIUM M CENTRINO 1.6 PROCESSOR 2 MB CACHE
E85-03013 MICROSOFT WINDOWS XP PROFESSIONAL OPERATING
SYSTEM
PREMBASIC PREMIER PORTICO PACKAGE (CHECKBOOK, DICTIONARY,
ASSIST CDRW, TEXT-TO-AUDIO, PDF-MAGIC, TEXT CLONER)
S5N-BATTERY S5N 9 CELL BATTERY
ASUSCOMBODRIVE S5N DVD/CDRW COMBO DISK DRIVE
S5200NBLACK S5N PIV MOBILE, 256MB, 56K, LAN, DVD/CD-RW,
WIFI, 3-1 SLOT MEMORY
ACCIDWARRANTY COMPSOLUTION EXTENDED ACCID. WARRANTY PROTECTION (1
YR COVERAGE)
EXT3YRWARR EXTENDED COMPSOLUTION 3 YR WARRANTY (PC ONLY)
PLEASE LEAVE SCREEN ATTACHED
The system has three USB ports, a fire wire port, a PCMCIA slot and secure
digital memory card slot.
The above specs made up the basic off the shelf system at the time with one
exception that Microsoft Works is normally shipped with the unit. I didn't
get this because I already had a copy of Office. Since then a blue tooth
USB adapter and a USB external number pad have been added.
The Portico is a compact, very light weight laptop which works for all the
things I have tried on it. I have used it exclusively to operate my
business rather than my desktop for about three weeks. It has traveled
with me to Boise, Orlando and Washington DC and has been connected via high
speed network and/or wireless connection in all these places with no trouble.
The keyboard is very quiet and has normal sized keys making it easier to
use. On the current model the arrow keys start one key in from the right
rather than at the right end of the keyboard making it a little hard to get
used to at first but not to bad. There are alt keys on both ends of the
space bar and the Windows key is where it should be one key to the left of
the left alt key.
One of the things I like is that the function keys are set up in
conjunction with the FN key which is at the bottom left of the keyboard, to
perform useful tasks. For example you press the FN key plus the F1 key to
put the Portico into suspend mode. Pressing any key will wake the Portico
up and put you back right where you were before you put it to sleep. This
works with JAWS just fine. Pressing FN plus F2 toggles the wireless
networking on and off, FN plus F7 turns the monitor off to help save
battery life, and FN plus F9 toggles the mouse touch pad on and off. There
are key assignments for the other keys as well such as starting your
browser and E-mail. The one negative part of this is that currently they
do not speak their status so you are not always sure if you just turned
something on or off. This problem is known and is being addressed.
The one thing I really like is the battery life. The unit comes with two
batteries, a standard three cell battery and the extended nine cell
battery. With this nine cell battery I regularly get over eight hours of
use. I generally leave the unit on all day simply putting it to sleep when
I am finished and waking it up again when I need to use it.
A couple of problems I have found are first that the three USB ports seem
to be separately configurable. By this I mean that if I install a Braille
display on the port on the front left of the unit it will not work on the
ports on the back right. I suppose this is only a problem if you don't
know it but I thought USB ports were really universal. I have discussed
this with CompSolutions and they are looking into this to see if it is a
driver issue or a function of the particular manufacturer.
The other problem I have had I am not sure is a Portico problem or a JAWS
problem. JAWS 6 with ILM seems to take a very long time to come up after
the Windows sound is played. My sighted driver can see JAWS on the task
bar but nothing speaks for over two minutes. This is quite annoying. For
fun I just unloaded JAWS and ran it again and it started up within 10
seconds so it appears whatever the problem is is related to startup. This
delay problem happens on my desktop as well although it only takes a little
over a minute on that system which I still find to long.
Finally I should say that the weight of the unit even with the extended 9
cell battery is still something under two pounds. The unit seems durable
and to operate well under heavy daily use. The folks at Compsolutions are
very open for suggestions and seem to me to be working hard to make a
quality product which works well in the access technology community.
If you have any other specific questions please contact me. Thanks.
Karl
___________________________________________
Axis
Karl Smith, Assistive Technology Consultant
4304 South El Camino St.
Taylorsville, Utah 84119
Phone: 801-967-5655
Toll Free: 866-824-7885
Fax: 866-824-7885
E-mail karl@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Web Site: http://www.axistech.net
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