WinBook J1
The WinBook J1 was WinBook's consumer laptop for the end of the Pentium III era. The J1 is unique in that it uses soldered desktop Pentium III "Coppermine" CPUs, something I've never seen in another laptop. My own J1 actually has a 1.1GHz Coppermine chip in it, which is apparantly just a rare CPU in general. Too bad they're soldered down, but it's still really neat.
The J1 was manufactured for WinBook by Alpha-Top Corporation, and was known by Alpha-Top as the model Green720. While I believe the Green720 was exclusive to WinBook, it is only a lightly modified Green799, which was sold by other companies. The J1 is a little larger though, and by far the most common version of this laptop.
The J1 has some compelling features - the keyboard is good, it has good I/O, it's a 3 spindle system, the speakers are good, and the rear LCD housing is made of aluminum, which should greatly reduce hinge failures. Still, it has a lackluster graphics card, so its gaming performance is limited.
Specifications
| Spec | Details |
|---|---|
| CPU | Uses soldered Socket 370 chips. - Intel Pentium III "Coppermine" @850MHz, 1.0GHz, or 1.1GHz - Intel Celeron @700MHz or 1.0GHz |
| RAM | 2x PC100 SDRAM slots (one on the bottom, one under the keyboard) - Officially supports up to 512MB, but 1GB will likely work. |
| Hard Disk | - IDE 2.5" - 10 or 20GB Standard - Uses Proprietary adapter (same as Dell Inspiron 5000) |
| Display Options | 12.1", 13.3", or 14.1" TFT LCD, all @1024x768 |
| Graphics Chipset | Trident CyberBlade i1 w/ 2-8MB shared (SMA) VRAM |
| Audio | VIA VT1611A, AC97, Sound Blaster, Direct Sound, WDM compatible |
| Main Battery | - Lithium Ion 3600mAH - NiMH 3800mAH |
| CMOS Battery | Proprietary Lithium, buried under the motherboard requiring a full teardown to get to. |
| Power Supply | Barrel Jack, 19V |
| Disk Drives | 3 Spindle - Fixed Optical Drive (CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, or combo CDRW/DVD-ROM) - Fixed 3.5" 1.44MB Floppy Drive |
| PC Cards | 1x Type II PCMCIA/CardBus Slot - ZoomVideo Support Texas Instruments PCI-1410 Controller |
| Networking | Modem Standard, Optional Ethernet |
| Other I/O | - 1x Serial - 1x Parallel - 1x VGA Out - 2x USB 1.1 - Line Out - 1x Mic In |
| BIOS | PhoenixBIOS 4.0 |
| Pointing Device | Trackpad |
Resources
 Drivers |
 User Manual |
Archived Support Pages |
|---|
Common Faults & Maintenance
The J1 seems to be a fairly reliable machine. As the J1's rear display housing is made of metal, hinge failures should be greatly reduced. The plastic is definitely becoming brittle though - one part to watch out for is the clutch cover above the keyboard. I bunch of the clips broke on mine when I took it off. The J1 is generally a huge pain to take apart, and you have to do a full teardown to get to the proprietary Lithium CMOS battery.
Gallery
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Also shows a peek at the Z1 and X1 notebooks.
Page last updated (MM/DD/YYYY): 09/06/2024
Update Reason: pages consolidated
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