The New Portable, Finally

This item snuck in just a few minutes before our deadline. Apple announced today that a new, backlit version of the Macintosh Portable is available to order. Unfortunately, the new backlighting reduces the battery life to between three and six hours. For those of you with Portables already, an upgrade consisting of a new screen and a ROM card will be available in early March. A few other changes have also been made, but the weight should remain about the same. The new model only comes with a 40MB hard drive and either two or four MB of RAM, expandable to eight meg. The new RAM is pseudo-static, which the original Portable can’t use it, and the new Portable can’t use the static RAM from the original model. Oh yeah, prices. The Feb-40 model will list for $4199 and the Apr-40 model will list for $4699. The screen upgrade will be pricey at $1095, but those active matrix screens are expensive. No idea what the real street or discount prices will be yet, sorry.

Information from:
Mark H. Anbinder — [email protected]