MaximumPC 2004 08

Measuring

less than an

inch thick

and weighing

a mere two

pounds,

Sharp’s new

Actius is the

epitome of

petite.

I

f you’ve followed our on-and-off
love affair with Transmeta CPUs
you know the relationship hasn’t
been so passionate since Intel’s lovely
Pentium M caught our eye. In fact, we
wondered whether Transmeta’s procs
would ever capture our hearts again—
at least until we saw Sharp’s sexy
Actius PC-MM20 notebook featuring
Transmeta’s new 1GHz Efficeon CPU.
The Actius definitely has the
looks—and the size. At its thickest
section, it measures less than an inch.
With its standard battery, the Actius
tips the scale at two pounds and makes
even the diminutive Sony PCG-TR2A
we reviewed in May seem bulky.
The price of such a dainty profile is
storage—the Actius eschews an optical
drive and floppy. Its lone hard drive is
a 20GB Travelstar, which is simply too
small for modern computing.
Ergonomically speaking, the
keyboard is a tad cramped and cer-
tainly not as comfortable as Sony’s
PCG-TR2A, but there are no horribly
misplaced keys like on Fujitsu’s P5020
series. We were dismayed by the pres-
ence of a switch above the keyboard

that lets you toggle between two dif-

ferent performance speeds—mobile

and normal—as a way of dictating

power consumption. A switch seems

silly when modern CPUs should

be capable of intelligently adjusting

power settings. We’d much rather see

a switch for turning off and on Wi-Fi.

We are pleased, however, with

Sharp’s unique Connection Cradle.

With the included SharpSync soft-

ware you can sync files between your

desktop and portable automatically.

This makes the lack of an optical drive

more tolerable. Still, power users are

going to find themselves bumping up

against the Actius’ 20GB hard drive

ceiling in no time.

Transmeta says its Efficeon CPU

offers 50 percent more performance

in most applications, and as much as

80 percent in multimedia apps when

compared with its older Crusoe CPU.

This jibes with our experience, as the

1GHz TM5800 Crusoe could barely

run Windows XP. But the Efficeon’s

competition isn’t the Crusoe, it’s the

ultra-low voltage version of Intel’s

Pentium M—known as Centrino.

While it’s impossible for us to

isolate the CPU and chipsets from

their respective notebooks, we can say

that the Efficeon/Actius PC-MM20 is

inferior to the 1GHz Centrino/Sony

TR2A combo we reviewed in May. The

Actius ran about 14 percent slower in

our applications test, SYSmark 2002.

The Actius also trailed Sony’s TR2A

by about 20 percent in the Premiere

6.0 and Photoshop 7.0 benchmarks. In

gaming, the PC-MM20 barely pushes

the five-year-old Quake III Arena,

despite the its ATI graphics badge.

Because the PC-MM20 doesn’t

ship with an external optical drive, we

tested its battery life by playing back a

ripped DVD from the hard drive. The

Actius’ ultra-slim battery provided

about 95 minutes of power. When

we switched to the bulkier extended

battery, however, we could watch 289

minutes of a movie, which is great—

albeit a 50 percent weight increase.

The Efficeon may not be the

fastest mobile CPU, but this doesn’t

mean it’s not highly advanced.

Transmeta was the first to introduce

an x86 CPU with an on-die memory

controller, not AMD. The Efficeon

builds on this development by also

integrating a 4x AGP controller

in the processor. Consequently,

Transmeta eliminates the necessity

of a traditional north bridge chip.

This allows some performance gain,

but the primary objective is to save

power, space, and cost.

As an ultra-portable, the Actius

PC-MM20 does a good job of cram-

ming a lot of computing into a wee

package for a reasonable amount

of cash. The performance won’t floor

you, but with this formfactor, perfor-

mance takes a

back seat to

portability.

—GORDON

MAH UNG

UNDER THE HOOD

DISPLAY

Video chip ATI Mobility Radeon

LCD 10.4-inch 1024x768

STORAGE

Hard drive Hitachi Travelstar 20GB DK14FA-

20 4200RPM

BUNDLE

Windows XP Home

THE BRAINS

CPU 1GHz Transmeta Efficeon

TM8600 with 1MB of L2 cache

RAM 512MB DDR400

I/O ports Two High-Speed USB 2.0, VGA

out (with dongle), Fast Ethernet

(with dongle), headphone

Modem V.92 PC Card

LAN Express 8.02.11G, RealTek

RTL8139 Fast Ethernet

SOUND

Audio chip RealTek AC97

Lap weight 2 pounds

Carry weight 2.1 pounds

TIPPING THE SCALES

BOOT: 25 sec. DOWN: 15 sec.

It doesn’t get much thinner or lighter than this.

BULLSEYE SAUCE

BULIMIA

No onboard modem. Requires the use of too

many dongles.

$1,700 (w/ extended battery)

http://www.sharpusa.com

MAXIMUMPC VERDICT 8

Sharp Actius PC-MM20

Fueled by Transmeta’s new Efficeon CPU, this ultra-light

mini-laptop still gets outperformed by Centrino

AUGUST 2004 MAXIMUMPC 59

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Our zero-point notebook is a Dell Dimension 8200, and includes a 1.7GHz P-4M

CPU, 256MB DDR266, a 64MB 128-bit DDR GeForce4 Go graphics chipset, and a

5400rpm IBM Travelstar 60H hard drive. *Our notebook Photoshop 7.0 test differs

from our new desktop Photoshop test.

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