P1 Faq

1. Who is Portable One?

Portable One (formerly Laptopsinc), is a reseller based in Morgan Hill, California (in the northern half near the Bay Area).

Known for selling Asus notebooks and whitebooks, they are also authorized resellers of Apple, Sony, HP, and Palm products. What this means is that in addition to being a vendor, they are authorized in the repairs of these notebooks, thus giving consumers the option of not having to deal with the manufacturers themselves, such as Sony, when trouble arises.

www.portableone.com
or
www.laptopsinc.com


2. What is a whitebook?

A whitebook is a highly configurable notebook that is often sold with
just the chassis and vital components such as the motherboard, screen,
battery, etc. What's missing is the software, CPU, RAM, Hard Drive,
Bluetooth, and occasionally optical drives. Often, resellers
give consumers the option of having them install these components for them,
or allowing the consumer to purchase it as a barebone should he/she decide
to install these component themselves. As such, whitebooks can often end up costing
much less than their name brand counterparts. In addition, most American consumers
are able to avoid hefty sales tax, provided that they purchase a whitebook from a reseller residing in a different state.

In Portable One's case consumers outside of California do not have to pay sales tax and may be eligible for free shipping depending on models. In addition, certain models also come with an UVA screen options.

3. Portable One model list
EX Series: 2006 built on Compal HGL30
FX Series: 2007 built on Clevo M590KE
MX Series: 2005 built on Asus W3V, 2007 Asus A8js
SR Series: 2005 built on Twinhead NR15B
SX Series: 2006 built on Asus Z35f, 2007 built on Asus S37s
UX Series: 2006 built on Clevo M520
WX Series 2007 built on Asus Z84j

 

One question we get a lot is about the Sony Z Optimized images we offer... are the P1 images as limited as the Sony XP images?

A: No! We've been successful in enabling functionality that Sony discloses won't work with their Z XP images. Chalk one up for our engineers!

Most frequently asked question #1...

When is P1 coming out with new models?

A: Q1 2009 - just in time to make up for those disappointing non-techie christmas gifts! Stay tuned... more to come!

 

Just wanted to introduce myself and let you know we're still around and healthy for the long haul!

We're in the early stages of development of some new P1 notebooks and would like to hear from you - what have been been looking for in a notebook, but haven't been able to find?

 

I value build quality in notebooks. I like a metal chassis, and nice classy metal laptop lids. The dell precision M6300, and the dell latitude D830 would be examples. Also the MBPs (but they are way too expensive, and they focus too much on thinness).
The Asus M70 line has the right look, I cant tell if they have a metal chassis.
I would like this fact to be advertised if so.

The most important component is the screen for me. I require high resolution, high contrast LCDs. I really love the old thinkpad IPS screens.
I'm now waiting to get my hands on dells RGBLED screens to see how they fare (I suspect they will be inferior to the IPS screens, but they should be good enough).
At 17", I require a minimum of WUXGA resolution.
at 15.4" I srongly desire a WUXGA (with a WSXGA+ a minimum).
I'd recommend you look into RGBLED screens as they seem to be the best on the market.

To offset the price increase due to the high quality screens, I would like an option to downgrade the GPU to 512MB VRAM ones. I am not a gamer.

Again, "build quality" is important to me. I want the notebook to feel "solid" no creaks and no flex. The palmrest should not wear out. There should not be any cheap plastic parts.

 

I want something with just about all the features of the Dell M4400 - 15.4" LED backlit WUXGA display and backlit keyboard, but with AMD CPU+GPU. I have an HP dv5z which came with a 1680x1050 screen; I tried to replace that with a 1920x1200 screen from an HP 8530W and it basically doesn't work (the image is jittery and totally unstable) so I've kind of given up on this. I also tried to replace the keyboard with the backlit keyboard from a dv3, and basically given up on that too since the mounting holes don't line up.

I don't want a 16x9 screen, and I don't want anything with less than WSXGA+ resolution, and I don't want something as big as a 17" - these 15" are about the biggest I can reasonably fit into my luggage when I travel.

At this point all of these "wants" are "must haves" / dealbreakers now. I've ditched the dv5z and am looking for a new machine but won't buy until I get all of these features. Can you help?

 

Hey there - sorry for the delay - that's a tough order to fill and we're not finding anything close with the brands we carry based on thier current offerings. Its the AMD CPU that's getting int he way. Are you really tied to AMD?

 

Thanks for the reply. I'm pretty morally opposed to giving monopolist Intel any of my money, otherwise I would just buy the Dell M4400. Looks like I'm not going to be buying anything new any time soon, too bad. Anyway, since you were asking what we're looking for, that's my wish list.

Also, I still like the build quality of my Asus M6Ne and the relative ease of opening it up and replacing components. Getting my HP dv5z apart takes a lot more time, way too many screws and snaps and other crap. It seems like I have to go with a whitebox model to have any hope of it being consumer-friendly for disassembly/cleaning. So again, for the wishlist - it has to be easy to get to the CPU fan to clean it. I've got 2 cats at home, and fan cleaning is an imperative...

 

I hear ya - Its a good shared dream. We'll continue to keep an eye out for it.

 

Hi Scott!!
i have done business with you all before and am interested in odering a new custom notebook. Unfortunately for the last couple of days when i try to access your site all i get is a blank page.... any ideas???

 

The P1 front page looks OK to me. Maybe there was a glitch. If it still doesn't load for you then try a different browser.

Or you send an email to scott at p1 dot com.

John

 

Hi Guys - Thanks for mentioning this. We noticed this behavior late last week as well and our techs believe they have an handle on it. Until its fixed though, you can try refreshing your browser and going back to the source page you clicked on before getting the white page results. It may take a couple attempts but once it starts working it will continue to work.

We should have this fixed shortly.

Thanks and sorry for the inconvenience!

 

Yes, Its true... We do have these in stock.

ASUS UL30VT-A1
ASUS U30JH-A1
1201N-PU17-BK Black
1201N-PU17-SL Silver

Thanks-