Dvorak spanks 701C butterfly

[Bob Collins]

Anybody looked through Dvorak's 10 worst notebooks article?
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1630454,00.asp

He thinks the butterfly is a bad thing. I don't get it. I can only figure I am a true oddball. I love hatchback cars, have had an MG Midget, currently have a BMW 318TI (hatchback) and still have my 701C I purchased new so many years ago. He seems to not like the idea of a folding keyboard in a sub notebook. I think that was what made it brilliant, a full size keyboard in a sub notebook. To me that is like putting choclate sauce on vanilla ice cream!

Oh well, I guess I am doomed to appreciate odd things......

[erik]

dvorak clearly doesn't understand the japanese market, either.   in #6 he bashes the toshiba libretto, which was an enormous hit in japan and was originally only intended for the japanese market.   without japan, we probably wouldn't have as large of a market for subnotebooks such as the libretto, sony 505 series, and thinkpads like the 701, 235/240, s30, and X20/30/40.

the 701 series became obsolete with the rapid increase in features and decrease in size with competing notebooks circa 1996.   i would hardly fault the butterfly design as a cause of its short-lived sales life.

-erik

[BillMorrow]

THAT was a very interesting bottom 10 list..

FWIW, THIS ONE:
" The Gavilan (1983). Actually this was an amazing attempt at leapfrogging everyone. Unfortunately, the developers leapfrogged over a cliff. This (despite what Apple mavens believe) was actually the machine that first employed the mousepad, then called a touchpad. The company soaked up a then-whopping $30 million in venture capital and essentially failed right out of the gate. Nobody wanted the machine, and the rationale for the touchpad was always questionable. The pad was poorly located, above the keys. Originally known as the Cosmos Computer, it ran the GOS operating system as well as MS-DOS. Seen by many as the first true laptop, the machine is highly collectible. It's a machine that could also easily appear on the ten-best list."

was my very first jump into "laptops" since when gavilan went bust, i went to the bankruptcy auction and bought about ten of those things..
and then sold them all for a small profit..
i do NOT recall any such thing as a touchpad but then i never did more than turn them on and sell them..!
i ALSO bought a rather nice ZILOG Z-8000 computer system that ran unix system 5 with berkeley enhancements..
along with this system came a box of backup tapes..
all of these tapes were the backup for the development work that had been done on the GAVILAN machines OS..
and one tape has what appears to be the source code for DOS ver. 3 or whatever they were using..
i sold the computer many years ago when i sold my house in los altos hills to sail away..

hows THAT for thread drift..! %-)

[Bob Collins]

"hows THAT for thread drift..! %-)"

Thread drift, heck! You wandered not only into another time zone, but perhaps through the space-time-continuum. We're not in Kansas any more.

Neat stuff, though.

[epbrown]

I don't get how he can praise the Poquet and dis the Libretto and other tiny notebooks. I think the real issue is that Dvorak, like most Americans, simply isn't a fan of subnotebooks. They've always struggled in this market, where people tend to associate "expensive" with "big" or 'luxurious" rather than "small but clever." or "fast." I'd but the Sony Picturebooks as one of the best gadgets ever built, but they never got more than a niche market foothold in the US, and Japan's loaded with electronics we don't get because of our preconceptions about cell phones and laptops.

As for the 701, it was a clever solution implemented too late. It would have been a great solution before LCD sizes increased, when you had tiny displays in the center of large-bezels to accomodate the keyboard. What would have been hailed as genius on the 500 series was a bust on the 701.

Emanuel

[K. Eng]

It's a good read, but Dvorak is confusing poor design with market failure. The 701C was a good design that just didn't sell well.

[JHEM]

What killed the 701C was the fact that it's introduction was so closely followed (6 months) by the release of the 760C and it's stunning (for the time) 12.1" SVGA display.

But my little, now ancient 701C can still draw an appreciative crowd. Something that's pretty difficult to say about any other 10YO electronic device.

Regards,

James

[Daniel]

He does mention the Thinkpad line as a whole in his 10 best list.

3. IBM ThinkPads (1992-present). I'm grouping these together as one, since nearly every one since the original was a classic. Only the odd units with a "butterfly" keyboard were dubious. Nearly all the rest were huge successes that catapulted IBM to the top in laptop design and popularity.