I’m sick of reading all of the VB system “reviews” found on the Web that not only exaggerate the VB’s effect on the eyes (when the LED displays are actually better for the eyes than LCDs, and it’s the artificial 3D that makes people feel dizzy), but say the VB isn’t portable. So today I’m going to compare the VB to a common electronic appliance… a laptop computer.

Let’s go.

The VB weighs around 800 grams.
Most laptops are heavier than that.

The VB can only live on batteries for a few hours. (reportedly – I have always run mine from a power adapter)
No laptop I have ever seen (except the Apple eMate 300 and netbooks) could run on its battery for more than three hours.
And besides, the VB uses standard AAs, and not some weird proprietary batteries.

The VB requires a steady surface to be used as comfortably as possible.
Laptops also require some sort of surface, and even then, the ergonomy is horrible.

So why are laptops considered portable and the VB is not?

A good point, especially regarding battery life, using just standard AA you get at least 6 hours from a VB, even using recharables i was getting 3 or 4hours.
I wouldn’t want to play it in a moving car, or on a bus, or even a train (well not one in the UK, they are rubbish trains here) as the motion might affect the spinning mirrors, but I would love to get out the VB on a plane, it would be great to see if it caused some kind of international security incident, I mean how many people on that plane would know what a VB is, so to see someone with thier face stuck in a head unit might freak out a few.

Well… my 15.4″ screen Dell laptop gets well over 3 hours battery life (9 cell battery and lots of power saving setting tweaks when on battery), but I don’t really think that matters.

I think what makes the VB less portable is that you can comfortably sit back and look at a laptop on your lap, while it’d be very hard to put a VB on your lap and actually play it. But yes, laptops are much less portable than something like a Gameboy, but I think people understand the difference between the two, and expected a “portable” video game system to be “portable” in the sense of the Gameboy.

DogP