New notebooks power into market

Micron Electronics Inc. on Tuesday announced the release of two new desktop

replacement notebooks, the TransPort GX and TransPort GX+.

"The TransPort GX offers the ultimate in power, performance and flexibility,

all in a surprisingly lightweight, manageable form factor," said Jay White,

notebook products marketing manager at Micron.

White also highlighted the TransPort GX's government-specific security

benefits, such as a removable integrated modem and networking. Micron also

offers a tool-free hard drive removal option for users who, for example,

need to lock the hard drive in a safe overnight.

The notebooks weigh less than seven pounds and feature three-spindle

design, allowing simultaneous use of the hard drive, floppy drive and a

third bay that is hot-swappable and accepts a host of peripherals.

The only difference between the two models is the display. The TransPort

GX features a 14.1-inch XGA display and the TransPort GX+ comes with a 15-inch

SXGA+ display. Both feature S3 Savage IX graphics with 16M of synchronous

graphics RAM (SGRAM). They support up to 1400 pixel-by-1050 pixel LCD resolution,

which is the highest-end graphics solution in the mobile market.

Another important benefit of the TransPort GX is its backward compatibility

with a previous model, the TransPort ZX. Customers can use TransPort ZX

peripherals such as the port replicator, batteries and AC adapter with the

TransPort GX. Such compatibility "underscores Micron's commitment to provide

a stable mobile computing solution," White said.

A TransPort GX with an 850 MHz Intel Corp. Pentium III processor with

SpeedStep Technology, a 20G hard drive, 128M of SDRAM and an 8X DVD-ROM

drive costs $3,500. The TransPort GX+ with the same configuration costs

$3,600.