Re: tlug: VAIO 505EX vs. Moebius PC-PJ1

["Jonathan Byrne" <jpmag@example.com>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Manuel Chakravarty <chak@example.com>

>write to this list because I wonder whether anybody has
>already seen the Moebius in real?  In particular, I am
>interested in the quality of the keyboard and screen.  (I
>like the VAIO keyboard.)

My ex-wife has an older Moebius (P133, 16 meg, 1 GB HDD) and
both the keyboard and screen are fairly decent.  I haven't
tried out any newer ones, though.  I think her machine is a
1996 model.

>A Linux-related matter that I am worrying a bit about is
>that the Moebius has a builtin modem supporting the
>so-called `K56flex' protocol, which seems to allow a mixed
>use of 56,000bps and 33,600bps and they write, 内蔵モデムは
>Ｗｉｎｄｏｗｓ９５アプリケーションソフト用です。

Hmm, not sure.  There is such a thing as a WinModem, and
these things actually needs Windows to work.  They make them
cheaper by offloading some hardware functions into the
driver, and only the Windows driver can run them.  Make sure
to ask if it's one of these before you buy.

Is it really an internal modem, not a PC card?  If it's
internal, that's the pits. If it's a WinModem PC card., you
can just throw it away.  Also, make sure it can be
flash-upgraded to V.90, since V.90 modems are not
backward-compatible with K56Flex or X2.  So once your ISP
upgrades to V.90, kiss 56K connections goodbye until you
upgrade also.  33.6 is the fallback speed if a 56K
connection can't be established.  Also, the upstream flow
(from you to the ISP) is always 33.6K, a little fact that
modem makers don't like to mention in their adds.  ISDN
blows 56K away, another little fact modem makers don't like
to mention in their adds :-)

An Ethernet install is probably no problem, but since I've
never tried it, I'll leave that question to Scott.

Jonathan

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