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At 08:50 AM 4/5/98 , Robert Dewar wrote: ><<I still love the size -as well weight and feel of the 701 and eye those >laptops that are even smaller. I liked this computer the first time I saw >it and had a chance to lay hands on it. I think that IBM probed the limits >However, it is certainly the case that IBM market research indicated that >most of the market feels the way I did, that screen size is a crucial >parameter, and that 10.4" was too small, and that is why they abvandoned >the form factor. There are a lot of partial-truths in this thread... The larger truth above & beyond all of this is IBM simply took too long bringing the 701 on-line into the market. By the time they did, market trends *were* indeed scooting toward the spectrum of features that Robert describes. Another issue is price. Long before the fire sale prices, the 701's sold for a *huge* premium--one of the most expensive models. IBM blew it on that one. When the 701's were *first* introduced (early 1995), there was quite a "wow" factor and they did rather well, except for price (which I recall being over $5K). The problem is that at the same time, Pentium portables started to come on-line. That meant a *really* big squeeze for the 701's after only a few months--too big, as it turned out. Meanwhile, IBM couldn't keep up with early demand and manufactured these things like crazy--only to have demand suddenly disappear and be left with a huge overstock that they later dumped at firesale prices. The 701's story is really one of design & manufacturing delays and then being a little too late to market to have a real "life" in it. Had it been introduced a year or even just 6 months earlier (and perhaps at a more reasonable price), nobody would dare to call it a failure. The feature set it had was second to none for that time--including that "dinky" 10.1" TFT screen. Lest we all forget, that *was* the largest screen available at the time! And IBM did a fine job of making machine no larger than the largest available screen for the time. They placed their bets on a form factor--and I think it was a good bet, given the information they had. It just took them too long to make it reality. By the time they did, larger screens were just around the corner, and larger screens were what the buying populace would soon want. To their credit, they came up with the "kite"--the 560--to answer that demand. The 560 has been wildly successful in the marketplace, so much so that others have simply copied the basic design idea. In my view, IBM created this new "Thin and Light" class starting with the 560. Bigger than a subnote, maintains many features from the full-featured notebooks, yet remains relatively thin and light like a subnote (in fact, thinner than most--thinner than the Portege's and the 701). ------- Randal J. Whittle whittle@usc.edu (213) 740-7775 Director, Electronic Commerce Program Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California