External Appearance I
The picture doesn't really do the finish of the outer casing justice. It's sort of like automotive paint, a matt silver effect and very classy in my opinion. It's not titanium or magnesium alloy, just a plastic lid and outer chassis. So it's slightly slippery to hold and it's hard to get good purchase on it when lifting it up which, combined with the heavy weight, can make moving it a problem.
The picture doesn't really give its dimensions away much either. The lid houses a 15.1" LCD display with thin bezel (you'll see more of that in upcoming pages) so the square dimensions are quite large, but it's the thickness that dominates. It's over three inches thick with the lid closed, close to four at the fattest point, making it as large as you'd reasonably want it to be. Any larger and you're moving into uncomfortable territory when lifting it with one hand, especially if you have girly hands like I do. Regardless of what it weighs, nearly 4" is a lot to be getting on with.
Time don't actually specify a weight for the unit, either in website literature, shipped literature or anywhere else that I can see. I guess they don't want to advertise the fact that it's 3.7kg (just over 8lbs in old money). It's not light but, if this makes sense, it's not that heavy either. That's a subjective opinion of course, but after stuffing it in a rucksack and taking it out with me a couple of times, it wasn't that bad when strapped to my back. In your hands? Forget it, unless you're some daft weightlifter. It's no 12" Apple Powerbook or thin and light Centrino-type, it's a desktop replacement and that kind of weight doesn't let you forget it.
Let's move round the exterior and see what kind of stuff we get.
That's the front lid edge and the ports underneath. The lid catch is plastic and quite highly sprung, something I like. A lid that takes no physical effort to open is one that's going to come open during transit, over time. It takes effort to open it, a good thing. On the bottom front edge, the first thing we come across is the WiFi on/off toggle button. This foxed me for a good couple of hours after turning the Time on, trying to get it onto my WiFi network. The adaptor appears in Windows and you can configure it, but unless you depress the button, causing it to light up, the transciever doesn't kick in and you can't access a thing. If you use WiFi, make sure that button lights up blue.
Volume control for the line output is next, feeding from the CMI9738S, a competent, if slightly uninspiring onboard audio solution. However in a usage situation like a laptop, it shines. All it has to do is drive a pair of stereo speakers and it does that rather well in this case. Mic input follows, used for hooking up the microphone part of the Sennheiser cans you get with the bundle, more on those later. Unpowered FireWire400 port next, followed by the multi-talented card reader, able to access and read a wide variety of flash memory types.
Lastly on the front edge of the unit is the IrDa reciever, used for hooking up to mobile phones and IrDa modems, futher enhancing your mobile connectivity. I was easily able to use the internet at a stunning 9600 baud, using my Nokia 6210, by way of the IrDa transciever, confirming it works perfectly out of the box.
All in all, a good start. The audio ports are where you'd ideally want them for hooking up a set of headphones on the move, the flash memory reader within easy reach for manipulating those digital camera photos and loading more tunes onto your MP3 player's flash memory.
