Intel’s push on Centrino notebook branding has only made it so far in the six months since its introduction. So far prices have been high for Centrino notebooks, although Emagen looks set to change this mindset, now offering the N1000 model as a cost-effective alternative option to top of the line name brand notebooks with all the bells and whistles.
Housed in aluminium and with a magnesium alloy cover, this notebook is rugged and capable of taking the day-to-day knocks road warriors and business users expect when travelling. The small form-factor chassis only allows for the essentials, Emagen has taken the bold step of removing all legacy PS/2, serial and parallel ports from the rear of the machine, replacing them with three USB inputs. Side mounted FireWire, audio inputs and a single PCMCIA slot do allow for some expansion, although in this day and age of integrated systems, realistically there isn’t too much more you’re likely to need from a business-focused PC such as this.
The cheapest Centrino branded notebook we’ve seen to date, this model managed a mere 155 minutes of battery life under MobileMark2002, 13 minutes behind the Dell Inspiron 8600 (reviewed on this page). This was disappointing, given the low-voltage nature of the Pentium M processor in this machine, we were expecting three or more hours of operability.
SYSmark2002 results were also a little down on our expectations in the performance department, with an overall score of just 150; 20 marks behind Dell’s 170 overall point offering. The inclusion of only 256MB of DDR RAM along with Intel’s Extreme Graphics, which shares 32MB of this memory, could partially account for this low score. The Extreme Graphics chip is more than adequate for driving the onboard LCD display and basic 3S applications, though this certainly isn’t the be-all-end-all of notebook graphics and definitely not one for gamers.
Despite the above-mentioned shortcomings and slightly bulky weight at a shade over 2.5kg, the very reasonable price of this notebook gives it a lot to crow about; finally offering consumers after a Centrino validated laptop a chance to experience the Intel hype of hotspot access.