Hi all,
This is my first review ever so bare with me if I don't hit all the points that matter to you. I consider this a work in progress and I will update it as needed.
Alright then, with that out of the way, lets begin from the beginning (how's that for redundant?). I put in my order on a Tuesday, and I received a confirmation email within about a half hour after that. On Thursday I received an email that my order has shipped. Not bad, however I am in Minnesota so it took exactly 1 week for this baby to make it to half way across this great land of ours.
All in all, not a bad ordering experience at all. Hardest part is waiting. Here are the specs:
Chembook 2030 -V
14" WXGA (1280x768) Wide-Screen Active Matrix Display
2.0 GHz Intel Pentium-M (760) Processor (Sonoma / 2 MB L2 Cache / 533 FSB)
Upgrade to Artic Silver 5 (AS5) Thermal Cooling CPU Compound Paste
64MB Dedicated nVidia GeForce Go 6400 Video Card
1256 MB 333 MHZ / PC2700 SDRAM (256 on board + 1 GB)
80 GB Hard Drive (5400 RPM)
Internal 4X DVD¡ÓR/RW / CD-RW Combo Drive w/ Software
Internal 56k (V.92) Data/Fax Modem
Internal IntelPRO Wireless Ethernet/LAN (802.11 a+b+g)
Smart Lithium Ion Battery, 6 cell (3.0+ hours battery life)
S-Video, VGA, 1 IEEE Firewire Port, 4 USB 2.0 Ports
300K pixels CMOS camera built in to display
4-in-1 card reader (SD, MS / MS Pro, MMC, XD)
AC Adapter w/ power cord
Free Deluxe Carry Case
No Operating System Installed, drivers included on CD-ROM
2 yr ChemUSA warranty w/ 1-way paid shipping (lifetime tech support)
Cost - $1605 shipped. With this review I hope to recoup the shipping charge of $25
.
Since my only frame of reference (laptop wise) is my Dell Inspiron 5150, I will post its specs so that if I compare something against the Dell you have an idea of what the comparison is to.
I5150 specs
3.06 GHz Pentium 4-M
533 MHz fsb
768mb PC2700 333 MHz ram
40 GB 5400 rpm
DVD-CD/RW 24x
15inch UXGA 1600x1200
nVidia go5200 w/ 64mb discrete ram
802.11b/g dell built-in wireless
9 cell battery
I took some pictures of the box it came in next to the Roomba to give you an idea of how small the package it came in is. The Inspiron's box was easily twice the size of this bad boy. Also took a few pics of how it looked inside when I opened the package up, to give you an idea of how it was packed. In my opinion, it was packed very well.
It comes with a bag of sorts, which is nice but nothing really special. If you didn't already have a bag for your laptop, then it would be very handy. But it is really more of a sleeve than a bag. You wouldn't be able to carry much of anything in it with the laptop and the power brick. Maybe a pda and a few pens so keep that in mind. If you are banking on carrying your school books with the laptop in the bag that comes with it, sorry, not going to happen.
First thoughts as I took my first look at this laptop. Very nice. The weight is unbelievable. You have to understand that I have been using an Inspiron 5150. It is close to about 11 lbs with the power brick.
The laptop is white for the most part with silver accents (touchpad, etc. see pics). Even the keys on the keyboard are white. It makes me feel like I am using a Powerbook, and I still haven't decided if that's good or bad.
Oddly enough though, the bottom of the laptop is black. Also, the top has these grey random swirlies, so it's not a perfect white. It's not bad and definitely not ugly or anything but I would have preferred a more uniform pearl, satin white.
I have been using the laptop for sometime now and so far I am very pleased. All is not great though, there are some less than perfect "issues" too, but more on that later.
Installing Win Xp Pro on this thing wasn't that hard and for the most part uneventful. I then popped in the drivers CD and loaded up all the drivers. Then ran windows update what must have been like a gazillion times to get all the updates and everything up to date.
In comparing the general feel and "zippiness" if you will, w/ my I5150, it feels that they are about the same. It doesn't really feel like the Chembook has anything over the I5150 except in the game department, thanks of course to its nVidia 6400 card.
The keyboard is very firm and "in place". It is definitely better than the I5150. It feels more solid than the I5150's and no discernable flex. The keyboard is a full size keyboard so there are no sacrifices in this department w/ this particular notebook.
Adjusting to it though has been a little frustrating since there is no Ctrl button on the right side and Home and End have been moved to the top right corner. Also, the right side Alt button says "Alt Gr" and I don't know what that's supposed to mean
.
The whole laptop is very solid, and holding it by the corner and wiggling it up and down produces no discernable flex whatsoever. You have to press hard on the top of the notebook to see the screen flex on the other side. The screen is definitely well shielded from an above average blow to the top cover, but I can make the picture displayed on the screen warp if I apply enough pressure (read: quite a bit) with my fingers.
No dead pixels thank God. The USB ports are on the sides (2 on each side) and that is kind of annoying because wherever you decide to plug in a mouse, the cord will be a nuisance. There's 1 Firewire port on the right hand side, and the DVD burner is on the right as well. The main cooling vent that expels the warm air is on the left hand side, safely away from 80% of the population mouse wielding hands (us right handed folks).
The air coming out is barely warm, during normal operation, but is quite warm under heavy duty gaming. Also, you can barely hear the fan during normal operation. It does kick in of course, under gaming or stressful computing, but even then it is not as obtrusive as my I5150. That thing sounds like a jet taking off. I kid you not, when that thing blows full force I have to turn up the volume on my TV. It¡¦s that loud.
The DVD burner on the other hand is irritatingly noisy, but it¡¦s mostly when you first pop a DVD or CD in. There's these weird noises like something's being calibrated, but after that when it spins up its still loud like the I5150 but sounds normal like what a laptops CD drive would sound under normal use. I have been around a few laptops (friends, co-workers..etc.) and they all pretty much sound the same. I have yet to hear a "quiet" laptop drive.
Next is the touchpad. This thing has been the bane of my existence since I've started using this laptop. I HATE IT! My I5150's Synaptic touchpad runs circles around this monstrosity of an input device. It is not as smooth as the Synaptic. The drivers that come bundled with it are crappy, and do not work perfectly. There is this weird bug were, you have to run the mouse settings dialog, for the persistent holding functionality to get enabled.
Also, and this is the really annoying quirk, whenever I use the scroll up/down t-pad buttons in Internet Explorer, just one click will scroll all the way to the end of the page. It will then keep trying to scroll down until (I assume) it times out or something and while it's trying to scroll you can't use the pc. You can't do anything until the scrolling times out. This only happens in IE. The rest of the time the scroll buttons behave themselves and do what they're supposed to do (scroll 1~3 lines at a time) in all other applications that I have used them in.
Also, the touchpad's buttons are small compared to t-pad buttons on laptops generally. However, the tpad itself is also widescreen shaped, so that is a welcome bonus and the dedicated scroll buttons are a very nice touch and extremely handy (when they work properly).
I have yet to burn any DVD's so I'll update this when I do. I ordered a 50 pack of +R's and should be getting them in the mail any day now. This laptop does get warm more on the right hand side than the left but is very lap friendly and definitely wouldn't cause any discomfort even if you had shorts on. I need to make it clear here that this applies when the lappy is running at full throttle, during gaming etc.
I have Centrino Hardware Control running and when its on Dynamic Switching and thus running a majority of the time at 800 MHz the heat is absolutely not an issue whatsoever. The screen is gorgeous. I am still adjusting to the lower resolution; moving from a 15 inch UXGA (1600x1200) is a little frustrating, but its not that bad.
I took a few pics with both laptops side by side displaying the same 1600x1200 sized wallpaper to give you an idea of how much real estate you are potentially losing if you are like me, moving from a 15 inch UXGA to a 14 inch WXGA. The picture is small and may not be very clear so I apologize.
The HD is very quiet. No complaints and it is very zippy. I have not run any benchmarks between it and the I5150's but it seems to be much faster than the Inspiron's (subjective I know so take it with a grain of salt
).
Battery life has been a little disappointing however. With wireless on and screen brightness at its highest, and Centrino Hardware Control set to Battery Maximized, I am getting a shade over 2hr 40mins. With wireless off and screen brightness half way (which is plenty, the screen is very bright at its highest setting) I get about 3hr even.
Suffice it to say, I cannot wait for the high capacity battery to go on sale.
All in all, I am very satisfied with this lappy. I really like it a lot. If I had any say in assembly I would definitely drop the current touchpad in favor of Synaptics, add buttons for volume control (they already have 5 buttons for CD/DVD control, go all the way and add volume as well, right?), add a Ctrl button on the right hand side, and bring the Home and End buttons next to the arrow buttons (because I'm used to that from the I5150 layout).
I hope that this review will answer at least some questions and remove some of the guess work if you are considering a Chembook 2030. I will try to update this review as I get more time and anything else comes up. Please feel free to post questions and I will try my best to answer them in a timely manner. You can send me pm's as well if you wish.
This is my first review ever so bare with me if I don't hit all the points that matter to you. I consider this a work in progress and I will update it as needed.
Alright then, with that out of the way, lets begin from the beginning (how's that for redundant?). I put in my order on a Tuesday, and I received a confirmation email within about a half hour after that. On Thursday I received an email that my order has shipped. Not bad, however I am in Minnesota so it took exactly 1 week for this baby to make it to half way across this great land of ours.
All in all, not a bad ordering experience at all. Hardest part is waiting. Here are the specs:
Chembook 2030 -V
14" WXGA (1280x768) Wide-Screen Active Matrix Display
2.0 GHz Intel Pentium-M (760) Processor (Sonoma / 2 MB L2 Cache / 533 FSB)
Upgrade to Artic Silver 5 (AS5) Thermal Cooling CPU Compound Paste
64MB Dedicated nVidia GeForce Go 6400 Video Card
1256 MB 333 MHZ / PC2700 SDRAM (256 on board + 1 GB)
80 GB Hard Drive (5400 RPM)
Internal 4X DVD¡ÓR/RW / CD-RW Combo Drive w/ Software
Internal 56k (V.92) Data/Fax Modem
Internal IntelPRO Wireless Ethernet/LAN (802.11 a+b+g)
Smart Lithium Ion Battery, 6 cell (3.0+ hours battery life)
S-Video, VGA, 1 IEEE Firewire Port, 4 USB 2.0 Ports
300K pixels CMOS camera built in to display
4-in-1 card reader (SD, MS / MS Pro, MMC, XD)
AC Adapter w/ power cord
Free Deluxe Carry Case
No Operating System Installed, drivers included on CD-ROM
2 yr ChemUSA warranty w/ 1-way paid shipping (lifetime tech support)
Cost - $1605 shipped. With this review I hope to recoup the shipping charge of $25
.Since my only frame of reference (laptop wise) is my Dell Inspiron 5150, I will post its specs so that if I compare something against the Dell you have an idea of what the comparison is to.
I5150 specs
3.06 GHz Pentium 4-M
533 MHz fsb
768mb PC2700 333 MHz ram
40 GB 5400 rpm
DVD-CD/RW 24x
15inch UXGA 1600x1200
nVidia go5200 w/ 64mb discrete ram
802.11b/g dell built-in wireless
9 cell battery
I took some pictures of the box it came in next to the Roomba to give you an idea of how small the package it came in is. The Inspiron's box was easily twice the size of this bad boy. Also took a few pics of how it looked inside when I opened the package up, to give you an idea of how it was packed. In my opinion, it was packed very well.
It comes with a bag of sorts, which is nice but nothing really special. If you didn't already have a bag for your laptop, then it would be very handy. But it is really more of a sleeve than a bag. You wouldn't be able to carry much of anything in it with the laptop and the power brick. Maybe a pda and a few pens so keep that in mind. If you are banking on carrying your school books with the laptop in the bag that comes with it, sorry, not going to happen.
First thoughts as I took my first look at this laptop. Very nice. The weight is unbelievable. You have to understand that I have been using an Inspiron 5150. It is close to about 11 lbs with the power brick.
The laptop is white for the most part with silver accents (touchpad, etc. see pics). Even the keys on the keyboard are white. It makes me feel like I am using a Powerbook, and I still haven't decided if that's good or bad.
Oddly enough though, the bottom of the laptop is black. Also, the top has these grey random swirlies, so it's not a perfect white. It's not bad and definitely not ugly or anything but I would have preferred a more uniform pearl, satin white.
I have been using the laptop for sometime now and so far I am very pleased. All is not great though, there are some less than perfect "issues" too, but more on that later.
Installing Win Xp Pro on this thing wasn't that hard and for the most part uneventful. I then popped in the drivers CD and loaded up all the drivers. Then ran windows update what must have been like a gazillion times to get all the updates and everything up to date.
In comparing the general feel and "zippiness" if you will, w/ my I5150, it feels that they are about the same. It doesn't really feel like the Chembook has anything over the I5150 except in the game department, thanks of course to its nVidia 6400 card.
The keyboard is very firm and "in place". It is definitely better than the I5150. It feels more solid than the I5150's and no discernable flex. The keyboard is a full size keyboard so there are no sacrifices in this department w/ this particular notebook.
Adjusting to it though has been a little frustrating since there is no Ctrl button on the right side and Home and End have been moved to the top right corner. Also, the right side Alt button says "Alt Gr" and I don't know what that's supposed to mean
.The whole laptop is very solid, and holding it by the corner and wiggling it up and down produces no discernable flex whatsoever. You have to press hard on the top of the notebook to see the screen flex on the other side. The screen is definitely well shielded from an above average blow to the top cover, but I can make the picture displayed on the screen warp if I apply enough pressure (read: quite a bit) with my fingers.
No dead pixels thank God. The USB ports are on the sides (2 on each side) and that is kind of annoying because wherever you decide to plug in a mouse, the cord will be a nuisance. There's 1 Firewire port on the right hand side, and the DVD burner is on the right as well. The main cooling vent that expels the warm air is on the left hand side, safely away from 80% of the population mouse wielding hands (us right handed folks).
The air coming out is barely warm, during normal operation, but is quite warm under heavy duty gaming. Also, you can barely hear the fan during normal operation. It does kick in of course, under gaming or stressful computing, but even then it is not as obtrusive as my I5150. That thing sounds like a jet taking off. I kid you not, when that thing blows full force I have to turn up the volume on my TV. It¡¦s that loud.
The DVD burner on the other hand is irritatingly noisy, but it¡¦s mostly when you first pop a DVD or CD in. There's these weird noises like something's being calibrated, but after that when it spins up its still loud like the I5150 but sounds normal like what a laptops CD drive would sound under normal use. I have been around a few laptops (friends, co-workers..etc.) and they all pretty much sound the same. I have yet to hear a "quiet" laptop drive.
Next is the touchpad. This thing has been the bane of my existence since I've started using this laptop. I HATE IT! My I5150's Synaptic touchpad runs circles around this monstrosity of an input device. It is not as smooth as the Synaptic. The drivers that come bundled with it are crappy, and do not work perfectly. There is this weird bug were, you have to run the mouse settings dialog, for the persistent holding functionality to get enabled.
Also, and this is the really annoying quirk, whenever I use the scroll up/down t-pad buttons in Internet Explorer, just one click will scroll all the way to the end of the page. It will then keep trying to scroll down until (I assume) it times out or something and while it's trying to scroll you can't use the pc. You can't do anything until the scrolling times out. This only happens in IE. The rest of the time the scroll buttons behave themselves and do what they're supposed to do (scroll 1~3 lines at a time) in all other applications that I have used them in.
Also, the touchpad's buttons are small compared to t-pad buttons on laptops generally. However, the tpad itself is also widescreen shaped, so that is a welcome bonus and the dedicated scroll buttons are a very nice touch and extremely handy (when they work properly).
I have yet to burn any DVD's so I'll update this when I do. I ordered a 50 pack of +R's and should be getting them in the mail any day now. This laptop does get warm more on the right hand side than the left but is very lap friendly and definitely wouldn't cause any discomfort even if you had shorts on. I need to make it clear here that this applies when the lappy is running at full throttle, during gaming etc.
I have Centrino Hardware Control running and when its on Dynamic Switching and thus running a majority of the time at 800 MHz the heat is absolutely not an issue whatsoever. The screen is gorgeous. I am still adjusting to the lower resolution; moving from a 15 inch UXGA (1600x1200) is a little frustrating, but its not that bad.
I took a few pics with both laptops side by side displaying the same 1600x1200 sized wallpaper to give you an idea of how much real estate you are potentially losing if you are like me, moving from a 15 inch UXGA to a 14 inch WXGA. The picture is small and may not be very clear so I apologize.
The HD is very quiet. No complaints and it is very zippy. I have not run any benchmarks between it and the I5150's but it seems to be much faster than the Inspiron's (subjective I know so take it with a grain of salt
). Battery life has been a little disappointing however. With wireless on and screen brightness at its highest, and Centrino Hardware Control set to Battery Maximized, I am getting a shade over 2hr 40mins. With wireless off and screen brightness half way (which is plenty, the screen is very bright at its highest setting) I get about 3hr even.
Suffice it to say, I cannot wait for the high capacity battery to go on sale.
All in all, I am very satisfied with this lappy. I really like it a lot. If I had any say in assembly I would definitely drop the current touchpad in favor of Synaptics, add buttons for volume control (they already have 5 buttons for CD/DVD control, go all the way and add volume as well, right?), add a Ctrl button on the right hand side, and bring the Home and End buttons next to the arrow buttons (because I'm used to that from the I5150 layout).
I hope that this review will answer at least some questions and remove some of the guess work if you are considering a Chembook 2030. I will try to update this review as I get more time and anything else comes up. Please feel free to post questions and I will try my best to answer them in a timely manner. You can send me pm's as well if you wish.
While idle, and maybe clocked at the lowest speed possible, does the fan turn on and off once in a while, or does it (or do they) stay turned off or at a hardly audible level? Any input you could give me on this matter would be greatly appreciated.
