Soldato
Picked up my laptop last week, and thought I'd post my thoughts on it after having it a few days.
Aesthetically it's a really nice looking machine, it feels well built enough (certainly doesn't feel cheap).
The keyboard is pretty nice to type on, the layout is decent enough and there's not too much flex in it. The trackpad took a while to adjust too, and is a little over sensitive - but overall it's pretty good. It's no a synaptics pad, it's Elan and the multitouch drivers aren't quite that of synaptics - but 2 finger scrolling and double/triple finger tap all work well.
Screen viewing angles aren't great, but I normally find myself looking straight onto it, so not a huge concern for me. Brightness at 50% is more than adequate for me, compared to the LED screen of a Dell XPS M1330 it's much brighter IMO, I have it set to about 35% most of the time.
This version has a Celeron SU2300 with 3gb RAM and performance seems about on par with what I was expecting, flicking between media player, Chrome and Photoshop snappy enough. Although the SU7300 version is probably moreso. It seems to play 720p MKV's (H264) fine at around 50% CPU load, Flash HD I haven't got playing smoothly yet as Flash 10.1 BETA is a bit laggy for me in general useage so I've taken it off for now.
Battery life is great for me, exactly what I wanted it for. I'm managing at least 8 hours before I need to charge it - this is surfing on WiFi with brighness down to 35-40%. Even after several hours use, it's only warm to the touch so it's not going to set your lap on fire, and the fan noise is minimal.
A nice plus was the charger is pretty small, about the size of 2 Mars bars back to back - so not big at all.
I paid £399 for it (also got £20 Quidco), I was also considering the Acer 1810TZ and Toshiba T130 which both start about £460 so this was a bit cheaper than both, has better battery life than both of those and IMO the best keyboard and trackpad combos. I also think it looks better than either of those two.
Pics:
Aesthetically it's a really nice looking machine, it feels well built enough (certainly doesn't feel cheap).
The keyboard is pretty nice to type on, the layout is decent enough and there's not too much flex in it. The trackpad took a while to adjust too, and is a little over sensitive - but overall it's pretty good. It's no a synaptics pad, it's Elan and the multitouch drivers aren't quite that of synaptics - but 2 finger scrolling and double/triple finger tap all work well.
Screen viewing angles aren't great, but I normally find myself looking straight onto it, so not a huge concern for me. Brightness at 50% is more than adequate for me, compared to the LED screen of a Dell XPS M1330 it's much brighter IMO, I have it set to about 35% most of the time.
This version has a Celeron SU2300 with 3gb RAM and performance seems about on par with what I was expecting, flicking between media player, Chrome and Photoshop snappy enough. Although the SU7300 version is probably moreso. It seems to play 720p MKV's (H264) fine at around 50% CPU load, Flash HD I haven't got playing smoothly yet as Flash 10.1 BETA is a bit laggy for me in general useage so I've taken it off for now.
Battery life is great for me, exactly what I wanted it for. I'm managing at least 8 hours before I need to charge it - this is surfing on WiFi with brighness down to 35-40%. Even after several hours use, it's only warm to the touch so it's not going to set your lap on fire, and the fan noise is minimal.
A nice plus was the charger is pretty small, about the size of 2 Mars bars back to back - so not big at all.
I paid £399 for it (also got £20 Quidco), I was also considering the Acer 1810TZ and Toshiba T130 which both start about £460 so this was a bit cheaper than both, has better battery life than both of those and IMO the best keyboard and trackpad combos. I also think it looks better than either of those two.
Pics:
