So yesterday, after some delay, my new laptop showed up. Ryoh-ohki II (aka Ryoh-chan) is the US version of the Sharp Mebius MT1 — a Sharp Actius UM32W. Slightly bigger HD (40 gig instead of 30), faster processor (1 GHz), onboard 802.11 (one less dongle to carry), Firewire, USB 2.0, various other bits and pieces. Her chassis is exactly the same size as Ryoh-ohki’s, her weight just a shade more (about three pounds).
The only thing that’s slightly off is the case, which is plastic rather than (as in the older machine) metal, and feels less…reassuring, somehow. It’s also going to be less forgiving of scratches and so on…which is a nuisance. But I may be able to do something about it. If I’m not mistaken, there was a slightly older version of this machine which Dynamism carried for a while before Sharp started marketing the “Actius” line (just the Mebius “Muramasa” machines rebadged) directly into the US. I’m betting that the Japanese version had a metal shell, and (if it did) I’m going to see if it’s possible to send the new one to Japan to be recased. We shall see…
Jeez, look at me, finding fault with the poor thing before it’s been in the house for even a day. Oh well…don’t have much time to worry any further about it: I have this book to finish before the week’s out. While I busy myself with that, Ryoh-chan is undergoing a “brain transplant” from Ryoh-ohki via PC Relocator. This should take another couple of hours to finish, according to the countdown clock. After that, Ryoh-ohki gets wrapped up in the new machine’s packaging and sent off to Dynamism to get that poor sake-soaked keyboard taken care of…
Anyway, the big machine is not so much “over” its disk crash as it’s had most of the important things replaced. It remains to get some data recovered from the crashed hard drive, which is going to cost mucho dinero, unfortunately…but it needs to be done. Sigh…
