With the slow Australian take-off of the Centrino platform, higher spec, slightly larger form factored units are making their way into the marketplace. Intel's Pentium-M processors are ramping up in speed, now available in 1.7GHz values and still impressing.
Performing substantially lower than its identically and similarly clocked counterparts - the Hi-Grade Notino C6700 and Dell Inspiron 8600 (Issue 71, page 44/45) - it managed 20 fewer overall SYSmarks than both units, both of which had additional video memory.
As with many of the Centrino notebooks available now, legacy connectivity such as serial and parallel ports are no longer included, as a result, this unit features three rear-mounted USB 2.0 ports and a single four pin FireWire port on the left hand side of the chassis. Also included is a single Type II PCMCIA expansion slot.
At the cost, we think this represents great value for a single spindle 1.7GHz mobile processor notebook, offering connectivity and portability without the usual exorbitant Centrino price tag.
A few issues presented themselves during testing, namely the polarisation of the display on even narrow tilt and swivel angles, making this display really only effective when being viewed directly front-on - not one to crowd around in the boardroom. Inclusion of 32MB of shared graphics means the display is capable of 2D and very basic 3D applications. Don't be expecting to game on this unit; if you're after a Centrino with enough grunt to game, look towards the more expensive Inspiron 8600 with its dedicated NVIDIA GeForceFX Go 5650 128MB DDR graphics adaptor.
Although not the highest spec Centrino unit we've seen to date, it has plenty of sensible inclusions, stopping the price from hitting the $3000 and above mark we've come to expect from this platform.
Road warriors will like the just-short-of-three-hours of full productivity battery use before needing to head back and top up the juice. If performance is your all-consuming drive, this might not be for you, but for the budget Centrino market segment looking to get mobile it represents value and portability without forking out as much as we've seen in the past.