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CL56 Review (by PC mag)

post #1 of 14
8/1/04 at 8:17pm
Thread Starter 
I already own one, so I don't need convincing, but I was in Barnes and Noble yesterday and saw that they gave the CL56 the highest rating of all the notebooks they reviewed for back to school.

The one they reviewed is by Velocity Micro... and not a bad config for the price.. Here's the link:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1625638,00.asp

and a quote for the (extremely) lazy:
Quote:
Bottom Line:
Best deal for the price, with a cool design and top-notch hardware components, all in a thin and light system. Our one disappointment was its poor wireless performance.
The wireless was there only "con" to the CL56. But perhaps they're not using the best card at VM?
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post #2 of 14
8/1/04 at 10:24pm
i just bought a chembook 2056 (CL56) and they used the intel pro 2200 and it seems to work fine (with the exception of winxp being a stupid, but win2k solved all those problems)
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post #3 of 14
8/1/04 at 10:34pm
I believe PC Mag's gripe was with performance at 120 and 160 feet. So you might not notice any issues as you haven't pushed the envelope of the range yet.
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post #4 of 14
8/1/04 at 10:50pm
Ive heard the intel cards have shorter range than some of the others. I am pretty much a newb to the whole wi-fi scene though.
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post #5 of 14
8/1/04 at 10:51pm
There is better performance by other notebooks using the same WiFi solution...it may just have to do with where the antenna is placed and/or any interference related to that placement.
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post #6 of 14
8/1/04 at 11:36pm
I just bought this exact notebook (before the review came out) and am very pleased to see it win the PCMag editor choice. One thing I am concerned about though...

It includes PC2100 memory (probably to save them money)...will I be able to notice a slowdown/bottleneck because of this?
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post #7 of 14
8/1/04 at 11:37pm
Somewhat, but it won't be huge...you're only talking about a difference of 66MHz of bandwidth. Lemme guess, you got your CL56 from Mwave?
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post #8 of 14
8/2/04 at 2:35am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Unleaded
Somewhat, but it won't be huge...you're only talking about a difference of 66MHz of bandwidth. Lemme guess, you got your CL56 from Mwave?
Alright good...no, I bought the campus edition from velocity micro...the exact one reviewed in PC Mag.
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post #9 of 14
8/2/04 at 2:50am
I just don't understand why any vendor puts 2100 memory in these systems. The price differential between that and 2700 is so nominal that I just can't fathom why they would care to alienate customers by configuring with less than optimal components.
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post #10 of 14
8/2/04 at 3:03am
What I think is that, they can probably get the 2100 for a much lower price than the 2700? I mean, for the retail price it might seem close to each other. Maybe if you buy it in bulk, they make a huge difference?
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post #11 of 14
8/2/04 at 3:10am
That or they are just pushing out excess existing inventory.
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post #12 of 14
8/2/04 at 3:50am
It's not a problem if one were to combine PC2700 and PC2100 memory, correct? Each would perform at its respective speed?
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post #13 of 14
8/2/04 at 8:05am
No, weakest link applies. Both would run at 2100 speed.
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post #14 of 14
8/2/04 at 12:56pm
by the way you forgot that the iBook also got editor's pick
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