MCJ's m-Book SW321MC and SW730MP laptops
By Ryan Block 
posted March 30th 2005 10:17AM
posted March 30th 2005 10:17AM
MCJ (no, not the Midwest Conservative Journal) busted two sweet new machines on their non-American customers, the m-Book (wonder where they got the inspiration for their name and design?) SW321MC and SW730MP. While we have no idea who MJC is or whether we'll ever see these laptops this side of Asia, both are Sonoma Centrino-based machines with a Celeron M or Pentium M (in the SW321MC and SW730MP, respectively), 256MB or 512MB RAM, 40 or 60GB drives, and three USB 2.0 ports, 802.11a/b/g, Ethernet, an SD/MemoryStick reader, and a 12.1-inch WXGA display. But our favorite part? It's got all that, and is still only 11.9 x 8.9 x 1.1-inches and 4.0-pounds, significantly smaller and lighter than, you know, that other laptop.
Actually, it's about the same size as the 12" iBook, which weighs in at 11.2 x 9.06 x 1.35, but it is a full pound lighter (iBook is 4.9lbs).
However, this does not appear to include an optical drive, firewire, or S-video/composite video out (for fairness, the iBook doesn't include a memory card reader). The lack of an optical drive (much less a CD or DVD burner) squarely puts this in the subnotebook category, whereas all of Apple's laptops are full-fledged (been using an iBook as my only computer for years).
Joshua, read the specs again. Both of them say this:
"DVD (DVD+R DL)"
which makes it sound to me like not only do they have optical drives (that much is clear) but they are probably dual-layer DVD+R burners to boot.
Firewire is not a standard port on PC's (though my laptop has it), so that's not a big deal unless you're going to be controlling a camcorder or something. But you either need it or you don't, and most people don't.
TV output... eh, who uses s-video anymore?? (I kid; I have my one of my PC's hooked up with s-vid all the time.) S-video's a legacy port, though; it's irrelevant for HDTV, and in 3 or 4 years I doubt even many good video cards are gonna have it. I do see what *looks* like a VGA port in this pic, but DVI would be better and I don't see that listed.
Actually, if you look at the specs on the homepage (in japanese, but you can see see the standard alphabet soup if nothing else):
http://www.mouse-jp.co.jp/m-book/0504/sw730mp.htm
(USB2.0?/IEEE1394?)
you can even get it without an OS, *wonders how well linux will run on it*
Looks like the MSI Mega Book S260 to me.
http://www.msi.com.tw/program/products/notebook/nb/pro_nb_detail.php?UID=607
Wow - in that case color me impressed.
Gomen nisai.
It also has a PC card slot which iBooks and the 12" PowerBook sorely need
"Looks like the MSI Mega Book S260 to me."
Indeed, that is the exact same notebook. It somehow looks cooler with a Japanese keyboard, though, doesn't it?