Watch Out! Getting Notebook Design Wrong

My previous article, Getting Notebook Design "Just Right", was about what I look for in the design of a portable computer in terms of hardware, with an emphasis on keyboard, screen and build-quality. It was a very subjective look at what works for me and why. In this follow-up, I'd like to examine the opposite end, bad design, and how you might spot it before spending your hard-earned money.

First, the Keyboard

Clearly, if a good keyboard is essential for a good laptop, nothing will ruin a portable more quickly than a poorly designed keyboard.

Of course, it's not so simple. Everyone wants a stiff keyboard base that prevents the keyboard from flexing when used, but to completely eliminate flex you need two things, a sturdy base (adds weight) and solid mounting to a rigid chassis. This is great where possible, but sometimes there are important reasons why you cannot have that rigid base or solid mounting.

I gave the example of the G4 iBook as a great design that was crippled (for me) by a flexible keyboard. What I did not mention is why that keyboard is flexible. In the iBook, Apple's engineers wanted easy access to RAM and AirPort slots; they achieved it by making the keyboard user-removable without tools. Pulling back on two plastic latches is all that is required, and the keyboard pops right off. An added benefit is that in a computer designed for students, it's conceivable that keyboards will be worn out more quickly than on a computer designed for business executives, and the removable keyboard of the iBook is far easier to replace than the rigid-mounted keyboard on the 12" PowerBook.

Apple's Pismo and Lombard PowerBooks also had easily removable keyboards, and they also flexed - but not as much, as those were professional models with stiffer keyboard bases. The old 100-series PowerBooks had solidly mounted rigid keyboards, while the 500 series and 5300 had flexible boards that mounted rather loosely. My opinions of each were likewise adjusted by the quality of their keyboards.

Next, the Bulk

Another element of bad design is bulk. I understand that components have a certain size and weight that cannot be avoided, but sometimes manufacturers don't even try to keep things slim. When building to a low price, that's understandable, but on a premium product there's no excuse.

Apple has been good about keeping weight down since the Dual USB iBook came out, which was very light for its time at 4.9 lb., but with the MacBook I fear Apple is heading back in the direction they went in 1997 with the WallStreet, emphasizing features at the expense of tidy packaging. The MacBook is beautiful and slim, but it's heavy for a machine of its size.

My current portable is a great example of a machine that mixes excellent and horrible design elements, but still ultimately passed the test. It's a Toshiba Portegé M400 tablet PC with a 12" screen, a keyboard that I will call "above average", and two design flaws that almost caused me to return it.

First off, I'll say what is right with the design. Despite having a swivel mounted screen that converts it from a conventional laptop into a tablet, the M400 actually weighs less than the very small 12" PowerBook at 4.5 lb. Its keyboard isn't quite as good as the PowerBook's, but it's far better than the one on the old iBook. Its screen, despite having a Wacom digitizer built-in, is bright and has excellent color and contrast and a wide viewing angle. While some tablet screens have even better viewing angles, they get them at the expense of contrast, which is just as good as on a conventional laptop with the M400. It's also much like the MacBook screen in that it's glossy, but textured just enough to remain usable in most lighting conditions.

Those two fatal flaws I mentioned? First, it has a removable keyboard, which is the reason for the flex I complained about above. It has a rigid metal base, but still its borderline acceptable for me, and I honestly thought long and hard about returning it and buying the otherwise lower-tech ThinkPad X41 tablet instead. I will say that while slightly flexible, the layout and key feel are excellent, which is why I ultimately decided to keep the computer.

The next flaw is that you must remove the keyboard to install memory, Bluetooth, or upgrade the wireless card. This is normally not that big of a deal, as such upgrades are only done once or twice over the life of a computer, but on the M400, removing the keyboard requires removing a very delicate bezel that is easily damaged. I upgraded my RAM and actually broke the Esc key, which caused me to have Toshiba replace the entire keyboard - almost at my expense, as they list memory upgrades as a "service center only" procedure.

So you see, it's a balance. I look at the positives of a given design, factor in the negatives, and in the end decide yes or no. The M400 is right on the line, but what tipped it in favor of ownership is how the design works in actual use. The tablet feature is something I've come to depend on for court work, but I can't do without a sturdy keyboard as part of the machine instead of an add-on accessory. I need USB ports where I can reach them, convenient docking, at least three hours of real-world (not spec sheet) battery life, and a light travel weight.

Weigh Your Needs

There are very few machines on the market to satisfy my list of requirements.

Your list is probably just as restrictive if you think about it. Do you want a machine with good sound and a large widescreen for movies - but need it to work well in harsh lighting? There are many large widescreen laptops out there, but how many of them are available without the glossy screen?

Do you need something very small and light, but you can't do without a built-in optical drive? Very few ultra-portables have the optical drive built-in, eliminating most of the choices in that market.

Do you need something at a low price point but still need certain features? You can see how difficult this can be, and when you add in a quality keyboard or a dual-battery or docking requirement, your choices are further restricted.

Examples of Poor Notebook Design

In my previous article I gave a few examples of excellent laptop designs; now I'd like to give the opposite list, a few machines where the flaws were simply too much to overcome.

I already mentioned my current tablet PC and last year's iBook - and how their flaws put them on either side of the acceptability line. Here are a few that aren't in the running at all.

Toshiba Portegé 3490CT

Toshiba Portegé 3490CT (2001). I love ultra-portables, and this is one of the best, so you might ask why it's included in the failed design list? The answer is simple and comes down to two flaws in the design that severely limit its usefulness.

First, while equipped with a generous 128 MB of built-in RAM (this was 2001, remember), its add-on memory slot was of a nonstandard "Micro-DIMM" type that was only shared a few very small Sony laptops. The slot was about half the size of conventional laptop memory modules, and modules were never made in larger than 128 MB capacity. So while the computer had a then-powerful Pentium III at 700 MHz and a decent video card, it could never accept more than 256 MB of RAM. (There were 256 MB modules made for the Sony that are extremely rare and expensive - and they work just fine in the Toshiba, and as it used a standard Intel 440BX chipset it could recognize even more if such a conventional slot was provided.) Sadly, there was plenty of room in the case for a conventional memory module, so this was just a bad choice.

The other flaw was the keyboard, which was properly rigid and had excellent feel, but a layout so screwy that I had to take the draconian step of disabling many of the navigation keys in order to type on it. These flaws ruined what was otherwise an extremely nice laptop.

PowerBook 5300

Moving to more familiar ground for Low End Mac readers, lets take a look at some of Apple's design gaffes over the years. I'll start with a machine that many have enjoyed pointing fingers at, the PowerBook 5300 (1995). I owned one of these and liked it quite a bit (before becoming the keyboard snob that I am today), but it was crippled by design flaws that had nothing to do with what most people point at as their faults. 5300s are maligned for brittle case plastics, instability, and motherboard issues, but most of those faults were corrected during the production run, solved by updated versions of the Mac OS, or repaired under an Apple Repair Extension.

What ruined that model for me was - surprise surprise - the cheap, flexible keyboard and the idiotic decision to make a swappable drive bay that was too narrow to accept a CD-ROM drive.

PowerBook 3400c

My final example is the PowerBook 3400c, a machine that was praised as the fastest laptop of its time (1997). These are very well made machines based on the 5300 design, and as such they share the flawed keyboard, but what is unforgivable is how in stretching the machine to accept a CD-ROM drive, they kept on stretching it to allow a fancy three speaker sound system (that still didn't sound very good).

The 5300 was liked by its users for its compact footprint and moderate weight, two of its good qualities that the 3400c proceeded to completely negate.

100-series PowerBooks

I mentioned the 100-series PowerBooks in my previous article, and those had a fatal flaw as well. The ports were covered by a plastic door that also covered the power button, and this door was extremely delicate and tended to break off after a few months of use. With the door, it was inconvenient to access the power button. Without it, your computer would turn itself on as it moved in your bag and your ports were unprotected. Not good.

IBM ThinkPad 570

Finally, I'll give an example of another machine that I really wanted to like, but in the end had to get rid of quickly. Strangely, it was an IBM ThinkPad, a series usually known for outstanding design. This one was the ThinkPad 570, a semi-ultralight that weighed 4 lb. and relied on a dock for its optical and floppy drives.

Back in 1998 this was perhaps the most desirable "executive" type laptop on account of being under 1" thick, having the legendary ThinkPad keyboard and build quality, and including a large 13.3" screen.

The flaw was the power switch that was located on the side of the computer. Since its predecessor, the 560 model, had a well-criticized tendency to turn itself on (or off) as it was inserted and removed from computer bags, IBM put a locking button in the middle of the power slider, making it difficult to use - and if the lock button broke, as mine did, impossible.

The Landscape Today

Where does that leave Apple's current models and their competition? Well, most manufacturers have learned their lessons well. You'll still find horrible keyboards on the cheap "Best Buy" consumer models, but the days of proprietary RAM slots, strange keyboard layouts, and buttons in the wrong places are mostly a thing of the past.

Apple, particularly, seems to have standardized on sound ergonomic design in its portables, though as I've lamented before, they have abandoned the ultra-portable market (which they invented with the Duo) and not bothered to enter the tablet field.

Today's notebooks have memory modules that are easily accessible (except in my Toshiba), hard drives that can be easily removed (not in a MacBook Pro), and power switches that are protected by the screen itself. Plastic doors are largely a thing of the past on higher-end machines, though the cheapies still have plenty of them.

These are things that most people tend not to think about when shopping, but they can save you a lot of disappointment and annoyance during the years that you use your new notebook - or the days before you return it.