If you've seen one, you've seen them all, or so the rationale goes when it comes to the notebook computers. This may well be true of a large number of machines, but occasionally a system stands out from the crowd. Over the past two years or so, this has been true of such machines as Hewlett-Packard's OmniBook, IBM's Butterfly (or ThinkPad 701), and Digital's Hi-Note Ultra. A technology writer can spend years reviewing machines such as these and a variety of other run-of-the-mill systems. Some readers may hang on every word we write, and even go off and buy some of the machines we write about. Others - the smart sceptics - may well wait until after we have put our money where our mouths are. Despite having toyed with innumerable computers over the years - and been impressed by a fair few - I have personally only managed to do this twice with notebook computers. Just over a year ago - right after HP launched its OmniBook 600C - I was in the market for a notebook and was sufficiently impressed with that machine (and unusually flush with cash) to buy one. Size was my primary concern and although Digital launched the Hi-Note Ultra soon after, the OmniBook did the trick for me. It was smaller, lighter, and significantly less expensive. As it transpired it also had a lot less storage capacity, and although HP has improved on this in later models of this subnotebook, it has not done quite as much as Digital has with the latest release of its notebook, the Hi-Note Ultra II. Last month the HiNote screen was enlarged and then integrated the new microprocessor from Intel, the 150MHz Pentium designed especially for notebooks.
