68kMLA

this looks like a machine you open today and the hinges explode into ten thousand pieces

You betcha. I have one and it's holding up but it's only because I added a boatload of epoxy inside of the display housing, and it's still slowly cracking.
It's not like the PowerBook they were comparing it to holds up THAT much better though.

i've had that happen to me on way too many pc laptops... i've completely written them off at this point.

other than thinkpads and vaios. they haven't hurt me yet

I would write them off if I knew better...but I don't. And I like the fun of it all
ThinkPads are generally better but there's plenty of them that do the same thing... 365XD and similar come to mind.
That WinBook XL is actually a pretty sweet PC from its day, hinge problems aside. It's quite well suited for DOS games and overall the hinge issue is really its only major flaw.

That's only if you can find one that isn't a bottom of the barrel config with a passive matrix screen, which most are. Mine isn't thankfully and is pretty much identical to the one compared to the 3400c.

Battery lasted only 2 hours. Probably why they didn't "compare" it. Spunky little PC laptop, though. I don't know why, but I like the "WinBook" name.

They should have just compared capacity, to capacity. The WinBook does beat the 3400 in that field, even if it’s misleading.
Did you have one of these new? I couldn’t find any reviews of this specific config so I can’t get numbers for what it got new. My battery is fried of course, I think i got it to run for around 5 seconds when I first got it.

The original 1993 WinBook was one of, if not the first laptops designed around running windows, so the name fit. The first two generations were somewhat custom designs, it’s a shame they switched to just rebadging generic Taiwanese ODM/white label laptops after that. The XL is just a Twinhead laptop. A pretty good laptop still, but not unique. Sharp sold basically the same system.

No, I never owned one.