When Intel brought out the mobile Pentium II, they did raise some 'hoopla' towards the decreased voltage being used. Instead of the CPU using 2.0volts, mobile Pentium II's use 1.8volts (just like a Pentium III on the desktop). Don't let the PR fool you though. In a cold environment you could rest the unit upon your lap and easily survive a winter storm. Yes it does get that hot! The hard drive, DVD drive and the screen all dissipate heat - but none of them particularly well.

The design of the OMEGA is especially friendly for those of you interested in future upgrades. Only a single slot (there are three in total) was occupied with a 128MB SO-DIMM module (Small Outline Dual Inline Memory Module). 128MB is enough for any Windows 98 application but should you crave yet more power, the other two slots can be filled to a maximum capacity of 384MB.

Getting down and grungy and under the 'bonnet', Wintec has kitted out the OMEGA 5000ES with a medium-sized 6.4 Giga Byte EIDE hard drive. Unfortunately for mobile PC users, the 4200rpm 6.4GB IBM hard drive is only 60% of the speed of a desktop equivalent. It serves as the main bottleneck in this particular system as do all hard drives made for mobile PCs. and until the heat, power and space constraints found within the mobile environment can be mitigated, the situation isn't going to improve much. Having said that, at 6.4GB of space, the hard drive and its slightly slow 13ms seek time should be adequate for most end-users. Should you require more space, Wintec does provide upgrade options for hard drives as large as 14GB.