Arima k730/Targa companion 811 review with pics

Recieved friday my new own Arima 730!!!

Object:
The notebook is an Arima k730, branded by the german company "targa".
Specs:
CPU:
AMD® Athlon® 64 3000+
ram:
2x 200 Pin SO-DIMM-Slots, internal populated with 1 512MB Dimm (my config: 1GB internal 512MB external both kingston dimms.)
Display:
15,4" WXGA (1280x800) TFT
Graphic subsystem:
ATI® Mobility® Radeon® 9700 - 128 MB DDR
hd (only one: 2.5" internal):
60GB 4200rpm (my config: 60GB 7200 rpm Hd)
Optical:
Toshiba multiformat 4x DVD+R/RW, DVD-R/RW, CD-R/RW writer
write:
4x DVD+R
2,4x DVD+RW
4x DVD-R
2x DVD-RW
10x CD-RW
16x CD-R
read:
24x CD(R)
8x DVD
2x DVD-RAM
Audio:
AC 97 realtek 3d audiochip.
Stereo speakers
I/O:
4 x USB 2.0, 1x Firewire (IEEE 1394), Mic-In/ Speaker-Out, 1 x 15 pin externer Monitor, 1 x S-Video Out, Modem (RJ11), LAN (RJ45), 1 x PCMCIA TYPE II, 7-in-2 Card Reader. Optional internal miniPCI 801.2g wireless card.
Keyboard:
19 mm keys, Windows® Keys, 6 multimedia keys.
Touchpad:
integrated with left/right mouse buttons and separated scroll area.
Battery/power supply:
100-V- to 240-V-Netzteil (120 Watt) autoswitching power supply, Akku Li-ION battery with average 3 hrs recharge time.
Power modes:
APM 1.2 & ACPI 2.0 Suspend / Resume Modes 1802Mhz - 800Mhz cpu downgrades.
Dimensions:
355 x 45 x 265 mm
Weight:
3,6 kg battery included
Warranty:
2 years. Pick-Up-And-Return-Service.
Security:
Password lock up, Kensington-Lock-Sicherung
Software:
Microsoft® Windows® XP Home Edition (german)
Pinnacle Instant DVD
Cyberlink Power DVD
Symantec Norton Antivirus 2004

Package:
Packaging is essential but effective: short multilanguage paper manual, Windows Xp Home CD OEM (german in my config), One-step-Recovery and drivers CD, Power DVD OEM CD, Pinnacle studio 8 LE and instant write CD, AOL germany CD. Battery, Power supplier, SVHS to Video Cable fill up the rest of
the package. The notebook (in my config) doesn´t come with a mouse or any sleeve at all (not a problem for me)


Notebook:

Build quality is average. Design is good, but the bi-coloured scheme is just painted over the same black-cheap plastic. Feel ain´t bad at all, but paint would probably scratch sooner or later. Nice touch are the side plastics, which are shiny and a little transparent. Screen latch is the usual, with two point hooks and right-to-open movement.
Note: the hooks are probably going to scratch the silver coating sooner or later, so be prepared.


Keyboard is indeed of good quality, doesn´t flexes and has a good sound to it.
Layout is the usual (german in my case) with the Fn key on bottom left. Spacebar is kinda small, and you´ll probably find yourself hitting the <> key instead. But this is probably due to the german layout. 6 Multimedia keys on top right, three for the cd player and three for internet: nothing to write home about... the feel is clumsy and three keys for volume control and music is just a waste of space.
Power key has transparent plastic ring that turns on when the computer is operational and blinks when in standby. Not bad.
All the other leds are on the bottom of the touchpad (plugged - wireless - capslock - locknum - HD activity). While nice (everything is blue coloured) there´s definitely a design mistake that shows up when closing the lid: If you keep the lappy on the plug, the first led would remain lighted even if the lid is closed, showing some weird light effect. Having the leds on the inside clearly forced arima to locate another two leds in front of the lappy, just to make sure you have battery indication when the lid is closed. While not as elegant as it might be, it´s definitely annoing when on standby, as the three leds (power - plugged - front plugged) tend to blink with different speed, giving the all thing a strange psychedelic feeling.
Touchpad is very good, fast and precise, with scrolling side separated from the rest by a small relief. Buttons are ok if a little bit noisy.
Overall port location is fairly good with two USBs and the usual card readers on the left and two more USBS + Enet SVHS and modem on the back. The DVD+/- burner (toshiba) is on the right of the lappy and gives the usual conflict when operating the mouse on the right side. But this is just so common we´ll probably have to deal with that. Speakers comes up to the front, sound is medium (harman kardon do sound a lot better even on a notebook). Screen is wide and while resolution sucks (WXGA 1280x800... you know already I´m going to tweak that and changed it with a wsxga) luminosity and angles are pretty good. A nice touch is a keyboard cover supplied directly by targa in order to minimize the possible damage on the display by the keyboard.

I´ve to say a little bit pissed to change the existing display.. quality is good and no dead-pixels at all... If it wasn´t for the rez....
Overall the design of the laptop is average but definitely not bad: there seems to be some design quirks here and there, but the general impression is neat and simple. Size is ok and weight is not an issue. The only sad note is the power supply: while it comes with a very long cord (almost 4 meters) it is clumsy, big and heavy.


Booting:
Windows XP home in german is quite nice. If only I could understand a thing.
Standard installation comes with two partitions: the main and a 2GB partition for recover/drivers/manual/temp. The impression is that while every piece of software that came with the lappy was already installed (like the annoying pinnacle instant dvd, norton AV or AOL), the system was not overwhelmed by stupid stuff by default, and the overall feeling was of a fast and stable environment.

Another nice touch by the folks at targa (or the folks where I bought the lappy) was that almost every driver came in the latest offical revision, and everything (windows included) was up-to-date to most recent and stable version. Another nice thing was the second partition with all the infos and
software packages ready to be installed again if something went wrong (just like: hd boot failure.

Boot with the cd then check this second partition for help or tools to recover data instead of wiping everything).
Ok enough with sentimentalism. Let´s WIIIIPEEEEEE!!!!

Installing:
Standard installation for Windows XP Pro went flawlessly. No problems at all.
A few devices were misconfigured as usual, but nothing to be worried about as the main thing kept working well and I could connect to the internet (VIA LAN) and download the latest drivers. (The drivers on the CD are nearly up to date, but I preferred to download the latest/modded directly from the internet.) In the end the system was configured as the following:

1) main system partition (10GB - winXp Pro)
2) failsafe system partition (2 GB -winxp pro): I always install a clean version of Windows into another partition as a failsafe...
3) virtual memory partition (1.5 GB): call me crazy, but I really don´t want XP to mess up with my data just for it´s goddam swap file.
4) Main data partition (42,5 GB)

This configuration is the same I use in all my desktops. It simply saved me a lot of times in case of trouble with my Hd, it´s fast and you won´t get too much fragmentation (once you install the apps, the system partition is almost unused).

Standard operation:
The lappy is fast, that´s without any doubt.
The processor (mobile athlon 64 3000+ with 1MB cache) is on par with the desktop counterpart, but with all the powernow features activated. While not the fastest athlon 64 around, the chip gives enough rough power for high-end apps (3ds max and Photoshop for example), while giving enough battery life to work away from the plug (2 hrs on first battery charge under intensive hd usage: installing apps and downloading from the net). The graphic card (ati 9700 with 128MBram core: 391.50 - ram: 189.00) helps much especially in 3dsmax, but drains the battery a little more (and heat too). More benches on the battery next week.
Hd played certanly its own role in the whole impression: with 32MB/s in the sandra File system benchmark (9ms access times, buffered read-write 92-89MB/s, seq read-write 36-36Mb/s, casual read-write 27-26Mb/s ), while not as fast as a SATA or Raid config, the drive won´t disappoint too much,
with fast boot and reliable operation using hd-intensive applications (like photoshop).
Ram is on par with the rest of the system, with two kingston DDR333 sodimms for a total of 1.5GB of ram (standard config comes with 1 512MB SODIMM).
The screen is better than previously tought. Details are crisp and response time permit some decent farcry bashing without too much headaches. Add the good contrast and the high brightness and you´ll probably be happy about it for everyday use. The only two issues are the resolution (WXGA 1280x800
which is too low) and the blacks: I really prefer the new glossy screens instead of the classic dull ones as the darker hues tend to be much more penalized on the latter. Apart from the darker tones, color rendition is accurate if somewhat cold. View angles are good. No leaks, no banding, no dead pixels.
Lan is as fast as it should be. Sure a Gigabit ETH would have helped, but currently the K730 only support the 10/100 standard. I´ve choosen not to configure the lappy with a wireless card (Wireless lans are not very common in my country and everybody is pushing the UMTS for remote operation... so I
guess I´ll have to buy me that UMTS PCcard when the network gets full coverage) so I can´t provide any data about reception or other issues.

Last few Notes:
Bad things:
The first bad issue is the cpu throttling. The two fixed speed are 1804.1Mhz/800.2 Mhz with 1.550 and 1.1 volts. No dynamic cpu downgrade, no clockgen no speedswitch no nothing. The only thing that "works" is the common PowerNOW trick which gives you the possibility of having 1.8 Mhz on battery. But nothing more (no dynamic scaling at all).
Second bad issue is the lack of bluetooth support and the lack of the parallel/serial port. Sure everything can be added with the right addon, but...
Third issue is the lack of some jukebox function when the laptop is in stanby/powered off.

Good things:
Fn+F1 turns off all the leds. It´s a nice touch since the leds are quite bright and tend to distract when playing/working at night and when watching dvds.

The machine is really silent and fan kicks in (but quietly) only when the 3d card/cpu are stressed enough (farcry anyone?)

Neutral things:
The DVD+/-R unit comes with a small activity led. While being a good thing, I really wonder who´s gonna watch aled on the side of the lappy. Who knows.

Final considerations:
The Companion 811 comes with enough power to be considered a desktop replacement while giving some good battery life too (2-3hrs). Built quality is average but the design is better than most notebooks out there. Features are good and the only real drawbacks are the WXGA resolution and the lack of more I/O options (bluetooth, Gig ethernet and serial/parallel). Overall it´s a good laptop if you need some really good power for the money and you don´t care much of fancy accessories.

Pros:
Great overall Speed (Amd64, HD and ram speed)
Good Screen quality
Great Video card
Good Keyb & Touchpad
Overall design & appearance
Good battery life

Cons:
Cpu doesn´t scale down dynamically.
WXGA resolution sucks.
Lacks more I/O options. (lacks Gig ethernet, parallel, serial, bluetooth)
no frills (no remote control, no sub woofer, no camera, no jukebox keys)
Bad sound.

It is, but apart form the voodoo (which comes with the WSXGA but is incredibly overpriced), all the rest comes with the radeon 9600...
http://www.northgate.com/content/pro...book/Ai730.cfm
http://www.acompinc.com/ppf/iid/204150/smoreinfo.asp
http://www.voodoopc.com/systems/m860.aspx

My noteboom is substantially the M860 by voodoo with a wxga screen. As soon as I'll replace the screen I'll have the M860 at almost half the price (at least for a european)

sorry for the incredible delay, I've been on holiday!

1) camera is an old kodak DC290. Quite old and resolution is average but color is pretty good.

2)Upgrade to WSXGA would cost another 400 euros. Problem is: I really don't know if this requires a different enclosure.. let's hope not.

3)Design comparison: dunno. I don't own a uniwill... to me the arima seems a little bigger. Fact is, I know I can swap the LCD with a WSXGA on the arima.. while on the uniwill.. who knows?

4) Cracked hinges galore!!!!!! yuppie!! I'll return the notebook as soon as don't use it. Still, I have to say that the customer service is OK. They even phoned me home (international call) to ask if I wanted to return the notebook right now or wanted to wait a little further (as I told them)

5) silver paint got scratched everywhere. I already told you so in the review. Exactly where it was supposed to happen. Screen latches and corners.

well. that's for the catchup with your questions. More on the screen change as I get to get one.

Got my lappy from notebookshop.de . Cost was 1600 Euros with the above configuration and I didn't have to pay the tax (As I had a VAT account in italy. Dunno if you don't. Just ask, they're all very kind.) As for the keyboard, I really don't know. German keyb is ok, at least compared to the italian one. There's a few misplaced keys in both layouts and the spacebar is too small anyway. Layout aside, the quality of the keyb is good.

I told the guzs at targa that I had screen issues too (that's true unfortunately, sometimes it flickers. probablz some consequence of the craked hinges or some battery problem) LET'S HOPE THEY REPLACE MY SCREEN WITH A NEW BRILLIANT VIEW ONE!!!!!!!! fingers crossed

Sorry I can't post them now, I'm in a hurry, but if you seach this forums, you'll find a thread for the emachines with the same isssue. I can guarantee that the visual effect is the same.
As for the rest: they told me this problem was concerning the first shipment of visionary and companions, and that new one have a stronger and better cover. Let's hope. (can't confirm it tough)
Anyway I'm waiting for a call from their support, so I can return the lappy. I'll let ya know.