Pah. Old review thread glitched out. Here's the real deal.
This is my review of the Fujitsu Siemens Amilo D 1845 notebook. As I understand it, the specs of my machine differ slightly from the norm, so here they are.
Pentium 4 HT 3.20GHz with 800MHz FSB
1024MB RAM (2 x DDR 512MB PC333)
80GB HD
128MB Mobility Radeon 9700
3 x USB 2.0; IR; FireWire; LPT1; CRT; S-Video; Headphone out/SP-DIF; Line-In; Mic In
Onboard WLAN 802.11g
DVD+-R/RW
Windows XP Home
First Impressions:
Out of the box, it all looks good. Once all the plastic wrap has peeled away, what you've got is a nice, big laptop which isn't too chunky. Mine was in almost perfect condition, no scratches or chips or whatnot. Later on I noticed that the plastic covering the right hinge was slightly loose. It was hardly noticeable, so just about full marks for quality here.
The keyboard is a pleasure to type on. The keys are quiet, springy and entirely responsive. The only complaint here is that when I'm typing, my thumb tends to brush the touchpad. However, I intend to buy a mouse so that won't be a problem.
The notebook came with XP Home already installed with a bunch of extra junk already taking up a lot of space. I decided to format and reinstall using the included Windows CD. I may or may not make a linux partition later on. Depends on how I feel.
Performance: After a clean install, I installed all the relevant drivers and dipped into my games collection as a preliminary benchmark.
Hitman: Codename 47
Here i just cranked the details up to full and the game ran like a dream. Ultra-fast loading, no slowdown, perfectly running at even full AA/AF
Hitman: Contracts
Again, it ran just about perfectly with all settings cranked to full.
Halo
Halo is one hell of a resource hog, and this machine struggled even at medium settings. However it was very playable.
GTA:VC
Vice City ran almost perfectly at full settings. Everything was crisp and clear. The only fault was the occasional pause while accessing the CD, but that's not a problem with the notebook.
Splinter Cell:
Ran perfectly at full detail.
Then I ran a few actual benchmarks.
3DMark01: 10661 3DMarks.
3DMark03: 3100 3DMarks
3DMark05: 1212 3DMarks
I was expecting a lot lower, but was quite pleasantly surprised. This is an excellent notebook for gaming, if you like wide screens.
Noise: The fans on this notebook are moderately quiet. I wasn't expecting silence on a machine this powerful, but the volume is quite decent. The hard drive does tend to make a bit of noise when installing, but it's tolerable.
Cooling: Running under normal circumstances, this laptop is fairly cool to the touch. However, anything 3D will warm it up pretty quickly, especially under the left palmrest, where it is comparable to say, the outside of a polystyrene cup of coffee - just warm. It never gets too hot to stand having your hand on it.
LCD: The screen is top notch. It's a bright, vivid WXGA display, with excellent viewing angles, minimal motion blur and a sharp, crisp display. There were no dead pixels. Wouldn't expect anything less from Fujitsu.
Portability: This is not designed to be a hugely portable machine. It is fairly weighty, but easy enough to carry around for a while. Mine came with a nice little Targus case, as well. The other concern here is battery life, which is about two hours of normal work like wordprocessing or a DVD, and perhaps an hour of Half-Life. I haven't bothered with any heavy-duty things on battery power, since this is pretty much a desktop replacement.
All in all I think this a fantastic notebook, and certainly one which should be on the top of anyone's list when choosing a desktop replacement. It's a nice alternative to an Alienware if you want to save cash, and it runs pretty much anything (I'll edit this post or something when Half-Life 2 is released).
Anything else you guys want to know?
This is my review of the Fujitsu Siemens Amilo D 1845 notebook. As I understand it, the specs of my machine differ slightly from the norm, so here they are.
Pentium 4 HT 3.20GHz with 800MHz FSB
1024MB RAM (2 x DDR 512MB PC333)
80GB HD
128MB Mobility Radeon 9700
3 x USB 2.0; IR; FireWire; LPT1; CRT; S-Video; Headphone out/SP-DIF; Line-In; Mic In
Onboard WLAN 802.11g
DVD+-R/RW
Windows XP Home
First Impressions:
Out of the box, it all looks good. Once all the plastic wrap has peeled away, what you've got is a nice, big laptop which isn't too chunky. Mine was in almost perfect condition, no scratches or chips or whatnot. Later on I noticed that the plastic covering the right hinge was slightly loose. It was hardly noticeable, so just about full marks for quality here.
The keyboard is a pleasure to type on. The keys are quiet, springy and entirely responsive. The only complaint here is that when I'm typing, my thumb tends to brush the touchpad. However, I intend to buy a mouse so that won't be a problem.
The notebook came with XP Home already installed with a bunch of extra junk already taking up a lot of space. I decided to format and reinstall using the included Windows CD. I may or may not make a linux partition later on. Depends on how I feel.
Performance: After a clean install, I installed all the relevant drivers and dipped into my games collection as a preliminary benchmark.
Hitman: Codename 47
Here i just cranked the details up to full and the game ran like a dream. Ultra-fast loading, no slowdown, perfectly running at even full AA/AF
Hitman: Contracts
Again, it ran just about perfectly with all settings cranked to full.
Halo
Halo is one hell of a resource hog, and this machine struggled even at medium settings. However it was very playable.
GTA:VC
Vice City ran almost perfectly at full settings. Everything was crisp and clear. The only fault was the occasional pause while accessing the CD, but that's not a problem with the notebook.
Splinter Cell:
Ran perfectly at full detail.
Then I ran a few actual benchmarks.
3DMark01: 10661 3DMarks.
3DMark03: 3100 3DMarks
3DMark05: 1212 3DMarks
I was expecting a lot lower, but was quite pleasantly surprised. This is an excellent notebook for gaming, if you like wide screens.
Noise: The fans on this notebook are moderately quiet. I wasn't expecting silence on a machine this powerful, but the volume is quite decent. The hard drive does tend to make a bit of noise when installing, but it's tolerable.
Cooling: Running under normal circumstances, this laptop is fairly cool to the touch. However, anything 3D will warm it up pretty quickly, especially under the left palmrest, where it is comparable to say, the outside of a polystyrene cup of coffee - just warm. It never gets too hot to stand having your hand on it.
LCD: The screen is top notch. It's a bright, vivid WXGA display, with excellent viewing angles, minimal motion blur and a sharp, crisp display. There were no dead pixels. Wouldn't expect anything less from Fujitsu.
Portability: This is not designed to be a hugely portable machine. It is fairly weighty, but easy enough to carry around for a while. Mine came with a nice little Targus case, as well. The other concern here is battery life, which is about two hours of normal work like wordprocessing or a DVD, and perhaps an hour of Half-Life. I haven't bothered with any heavy-duty things on battery power, since this is pretty much a desktop replacement.
All in all I think this a fantastic notebook, and certainly one which should be on the top of anyone's list when choosing a desktop replacement. It's a nice alternative to an Alienware if you want to save cash, and it runs pretty much anything (I'll edit this post or something when Half-Life 2 is released).
Anything else you guys want to know?
