Huge difference between 340 and 350 machines...

[solidpro]

Hi All

I was going through some 3xx series machines and I was struck by how different the 340 and 350 machines. I'm sure I've read about this elsewhere but I'd forgotten that the 340 was manufactured in Japan and the 350 (my one at least) was manufactured in Scotland!

The 340 is certainly 'economical' with it's build but is still fairly solid. It's shrugged off it's 300/310 Zenith shackles and is a sturdy albeit plastic machine. Standout differences to the 350 is that the 340 has decent hinges that still work, plastic that hasn't cracked, it has the IBM 'duck' pointer BIOS and uses fairly unreliable DRAM credit cards for RAM. The B&W DSTN screens are fairly high contrast and certainly interesting to see.

The 350 looks and feels COMPLETELY different. It feels more like a PS/note machine or a 700 - with all the terribleness of them like the weak hinges, ultra-brittle plastic (meaning loose bits everywhere). It has a more 'metal' and powdery feeling finish to it, different mouse buttons. The BIOS is very similar to the 701c - which is 3 or 4 pages of text options rather than mouse and icon driven 340s. It has a different (15v) PSU to the 340 and even different case badges (that unusally show the model in silver, like the PS/Note and 700 machines did).

The 360 onwards seems to float back to feeling a bit like both designs, with a less breakable/brittle case, easy access to the insides with a lift-up keyboard...

Just sharing my experience really....