The Pioneer DreamBook Power 900 is a locally built monster – this isn’t a desktop replacement, it’s a desk. It sports serial, parallel and PS/2 ports along with the only DVI output in the roundup. It also has a single analog TV tuner, but no antenna, letting you record from TV.
On the test bench it went off like a frog in a sock thanks to the most powerful processor and graphics card in the line-up. It is the only notebook to run Doom3 at the highest quality by default. It is also the only one to run Windows XP Media Center but, aside from PowerDVD, there’s little extra software to speak of. A digital clock readout accompanies the multimedia and volume buttons on the front of the unit, but unfortunately the full size remote control can’t be hidden even within this enormous chassis. The 1680 x 1050 display does a fine job with DVD playback, but isn’t quite up to the gaming speeds this monster can generate. The rich sound from the HD audio has to be cranked up to be heard over the whine of the fans, which gets even louder when you run multimedia.
Along with the ability to record from external sources, the Pioneer can sport a built-in webcam (missing in our review model) and even face recognition software to bar unwanted users and email you their mugshot.
Thanks to the benchmarks, the Pioneer blew away the competition to win this roundup. If you can stand the noise and weight, this is a true high performance, multimedia beast.
This article appeared in the August, 2005 issue of PC Authority.
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