• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

Best 486 laptop?

T

Tiberian Fiend

Veteran Member
Joined
Mar 1, 2009
Messages
563
Location
Central Florida
I'm in the market for a 486 laptop, probably DX4/100, and I was wondering, which laptop was the pinnacle of the 486 era? Opinions? Experiences?
 
The ABSOLUTE best 486 laptop to buy is one with a WORKING battery that holds a charge!! I can't count the number of times I have purchased a vintage laptop only to find that I need another $189.99 to buy a replacement battery.

So, wall wart gets plugged in, laptop get tested to see if everything works, wall wart is unplugged and laptop sits.
 
I don't know if there's any one 'best' due to the rich variety of features available. What's best is whatever is best suited to your particular needs. That said, as far as quality, there are many very good brands, and just as many opinions about which is the best, but for the inexperienced buyer, you can't go wrong with good ol' IBM. Try to find a ThinkPad that has features that are important to you. It'll take a bit of comparison, but it's better that way because the shopping is a learning experience as well.

--T
 
I've always liked the WinBook XP, just because Microsoft stole the name from it.

http://www.winbookcorp.com/support/xp/xpspecs.htm

winbook.jpg
 
Chuck(G) said:
I'm curious--why a 486 specifically?

Why not a 386 or P1?
Click to expand...

I'm looking for a cheap laptop, and the first computer I ever owned was a DX4/100, and it was the last generation before the 3D era. I considered a Pentium 90 or Pentium 100, but then I figured I might as well go Pentium II if I went there (and I may, but they're expensive relative to other old laptops because they're on the fringe of modernity and can run XP).
 
Anything with a real 486 in it plus a nice TFT screen and a working battery works for me. I do have a 486slc2 laptop with a DS mono screen (640x480) and a dead battery.
 
How can we forget the IBM ThinkPad 701-series with "butterfly" keyboard? It's probably the most collectible and sought-after 486 laptop.

thinkpad-butterfly.png
 
i have a P100 color laptop in my for sale listing...

i am currently testing the battery to see if it will take a charge...
 
If this will be for DOS gaming mostly, then any laptop that:

1) Has a working battery, of course (as many have emphasized)
2) Has built-in audio (Sound Blaster compatible preferably...most were) and a CD-ROM drive (multi-media laptop)
3) Has a TFT color screen and a video chipset that is capable of displaying 640x480/800x600 in 256+ colors (1MB VRAM or more). Preferably one that has VESA support.
4) A decent amount of HDD space (some older laptops were painful to take apart in order to swap hard drives...You want all the space you can get.)

I believe that most DX4 class laptops had these features standard. Anything prior to DX4, depending on when the specific model hit the market, might lack some of the above features.

IBM ThinkPads of the era were among my favorites. Toshiba made great 486 laptops as well.
 
EddieDX4 said:
I believe that most DX4 class laptops had these features standard. Anything prior to DX4, depending on when the specific model hit the market, might lack some of the above features.

IBM ThinkPads of the era were among my favorites. Toshiba made great 486 laptops as well.
Click to expand...
There were also some laptops with the transitional 5x86 chip. IBM used the Cyrix-sourced 5x86, which was a Pentium-class CPU scaled down to fit 486 architecture, while most others used the AMD 5x86, which was basically just a speeded-up 486 with a larger internal cache.
 
My gripe with early laptops is the terrible display (in comparison to today's displays).

That being said, I've got a P75 Dell kicking around here that I'd be willing to sell cheep.
 
Yikes, from experience I'd stay away from Cyrix systems. I knew atleast two computer repair shops that would throw away any cyrix chip they came across. Every system they sold would come back due to crashes and other problems which made them a huge monetary loss.
 
barythrin said:
Yikes, from experience I'd stay away from Cyrix systems. I knew atleast two computer repair shops that would throw away any cyrix chip they came across. Every system they sold would come back due to crashes and other problems which made them a huge monetary loss.
Click to expand...
Well, my dad's Cyrix MII-based Compaq Presario desktop has been in constant use for ten years with no such problems... and it was a bargain-basement model costing less than $400 (in early '99) when he got it.

Problems with Cyrix chips usually involved motherboards that did not properly support them and/or were unstable at the higher bus speeds that the 6x86 and MII chips demanded (Cyrix was among the first to push bus speeds above Intel's 66 MHz standard).
 
i haven't tried all 486 model laptops, but i absolutely LOVE my Canon Notejet 486C laptop with a 486 SX/25 and 4 MB of RAM (ouch, yeah... not good for win95. i am probably going to upgrade that memory)

excellent vivid color screen that you can even see outside in the sun. easily one of the best screens at the time. what makes it really stand out is that fact that it has a built-in Bubblejet!!!

:D

it's pretty slick, and it prints in surprisingly high quality. fast too. you load the paper one sheet at a time through the slot on the front, directly under the keyboard. it's good stuff, and an extremely unique laptop. iirc, you can get them with much faster 486 chips in them plus more RAM. i totally recommend these. here's a pic of mine:

notejet-small.jpg
 
Tiberian Fiend said:
I'm in the market for a 486 laptop, probably DX4/100, and I was wondering, which laptop was the pinnacle of the 486 era? Opinions? Experiences?
Click to expand...

Heck, this is a hard ask. There are hundreds of models and people have likes and dislikes of various features. I don't think there is a universial winner, but where people have tried models and found them good, I guess that's a start.

I can't quite remember the Toshiba 486 I used to own but I "THINK" it was a a 4750? It had a colour active matrix colour screen and LCD status diplays instead of the more common lights.

Anyway, I was pretty happy with it. I even liked using the trackball clip-on mouse until I started to get a bit of RSI in the thumb!

One thing it lacked was a resting place for the wrists. The front of the keyboard came right the end of the unit. This was common with a lot of machines those days.

I've had about 7 work laptops, starting with a "greyscale" 386 Toshiba bought around 1992 or so up to my present NEC E6100, which is now due for replacement.

Worst laptop I ever owned: An IBM Thinkpad (I think it was a P2 and I can't remember the model). Anyway, asthetically is was as square and ugly as a junkyard dog (compared to the sleek COMPAQ I'd had before), I didn't like the little joystick mouse, and it was slow (unfair, because this probably was due to Windows 2000) and unreliable.

Tez
 
Mike Chambers said:
i haven't tried all 486 model laptops, but i absolutely LOVE my Canon Notejet 486C laptop with a 486 SX/25 and 4 MB of RAM (ouch, yeah... not good for win95. i am probably going to upgrade that memory)

excellent vivid color screen that you can even see outside in the sun. easily one of the best screens at the time. what makes it really stand out is that fact that it has a built-in Bubblejet!!!

:D

it's pretty slick, and it prints in surprisingly high quality. fast too. you load the paper one sheet at a time through the slot on the front, directly under the keyboard. it's good stuff, and an extremely unique laptop. iirc, you can get them with much faster 486 chips in them plus more RAM. i totally recommend these. here's a pic of mine:

notejet-small.jpg
Click to expand...

http://cgi.ebay.com/CANON-NOTEJET-4...Z250367325597QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLaptops_Nov05

Then again, you'd have to hunt down the AC adapter and a hard drive for it...

But I have seen these before and I agree they're really nice. Canon actually put out decent products in the early to mid 90's.

I have an all black Canon Navigator HD, which is essentially an XT ~ 286 class machine (V30 processor) with a built-in grayscale EGA touchscreen CRT, FAX/Modem (it has a handset phone built-in also), 40mb HD, 1.44mb floppy drive, Canon thermal FAX printer...and came with a separate Canon bubble jet printer.

I got it for 99 cents on eBay a while back. Shipping was $50. :D

I know, off topic, but just trying to talk about the rare and cool products Canon came up with back in the day.
 
That Canon Notebook is pretty neat, I've never seen anything like it before (well, except for maybe the IBM 5140 with attached printer...but that has half the cool factor this thing does :D)

My Favourite 486 laptop so far is probably the AST Advantage! 486SX/25. Not too fast, and the Display isn't great. But it has a good feel to it (and a Trackball!). I've never gone wrong with any of the AST Notebooks I've had.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top