The most exciting of the new models is the EasyNote TR series, which takes a leaf out of Apple and Sony’s books by concentrating on design just as much as hardware. And it’s not just any old in-house designers who are putting together these latest laptops, either – Packard Bell has enlisted the help of Italian design house Pininfarina to make sure that the TR can match up to the best in the business.

A glance at the chassis reveals that the experiment has paid off: the TR is stylish without being garish and includes several neat touches. While the lid is finished in a glossy black that’ll surely become a fingerprint magnet, the interior boasts a good-looking matte coating that brings to mind the far more expensive, and revered, Sony VAIO AW-series.

Sound design

The speakers, meanwhile, seem to be totally original: while they still sit above the keyboard, they sweep upwards when the laptop is open, meeting the edge-to-edge screen in a seamless curve – it’s a good look, and we were pleased to note that the curved speaker didn’t protrude from the laptop when the lid was closed, although this did make the back end of the machine feel a bit bulkier than your average 15.4in notebook.

We’re also assured that the Dolby technology inside the curved speakers will make the TR sound as good as Toshiba and HP’s premium machines, which come with harmon/kardon and Altec Lansing speakers respectively and are routinely best-in-class for audio quality.

The keyboard has flat rather than traditional bevelled keys and, in the short time we had to try them out, the individual keys felt comfortable with a reasonably positive typing action – although, like the new range of netbooks, the base of the keyboard still felt a little spongy.

The trackpad was better: wide, responsive and with two good buttons, it includes the multi-touch functions that are also incorporated into the new series of netbooks: move two fingers towards and away from each other to zoom in and out, for instance, and rotate a finger from a right-hand corner to the centre of the trackpad to scroll a document up and down. The same motion from the left hand side rotates a document or picture, and swishing two fingers horizontally across the pad skips to the next picture in a series.

Inside, the Packard Bell is a little less exciting: Core 2 Duo processors, Nvidia GeForce GT graphics chips and decent-sized hard disks and allocations of RAM are the order of the day – so it sounds as if the new TR series will be a stylish and comfortable notebook without really innovating on a hardware level.

T is the magic number

As well as the new TR series, Packard Bell also introduced a few more notebooks. While the EasyNote NJ, TJ and LJ-series machines don’t benefit from the Pininfarina design that made the TR look so special, they’re reasonable-looking machines that also have multi-touch trackpads, decent keyboards and what felt like solid build quality – although, during our brief time with the machines, the screens did appear to be a touch too reflective and a mite too pale for our liking.

Inside, again, little has changed – with Core 2 Duo processors, Nvidia graphics chips and all the requisite bells and whistles, we can expect these notebooks to be good performers without excelling themselves in our comprehensive benchmark suite.

Packard Bell isn’t resting on its laurels, either, after its buyout by Acer earlier this year. We’ve been assured than an 18in version of the TR-series will be released in time for Christmas, and that the majority of the new machines will be available in several colours and configurations, ranging from 14 to 17in screens and white, black, blue and red exteriors.

These new notebooks could make a return to form for a revered old brand, then – one that’s been around since 1926 but, recently, has been delivering merely average notebooks that don’t stir the soul in the way that those from Sony, Apple or Dell manage.

It’s looking up for Packard Bell, then, and we’ll deliver our definitive verdict as soon as we get our hands on any of these new notebooks in the PC Pro Labs.

A glance at the exterior suggests that little about the classic netbook formula has changed: the 11.6in screen has a native resolution of 1,366 x 768, the trackpad is small but has a decent pair of buttons and supports multitouch functions, and the keyboard is reasonably spacious but also felt quite spongy. Three USB ports, an Ethernet socket and D-SUB output aren’t exactly groundbreaking, either.

Peek under the hood, though, and Packard Bell’s latest looks far more interesting than the average Atom-based products that have flooded the netbook market.

For a start, you need not choose an Atom at all – instead, Packard Bell is giving customers the choice of an AMD Athlon L110 processor, running at 1.2GHz, and the usual 1.6GHz Atom N280. While the Intel part means that the standard netbook specification of 1GB of RAM, a smaller hard disk and integrated graphics remains, opting for the AMD CPU means that an ATI Radeon Express 1270 chip is included instead, alongside 2GB of RAM and a 320GB hard disk.

While this means that performance should receive a welcome boost, that isn’t the only benefit that Packard Bell were touting at yesterday’s launch. The model we saw was running Windows XP but, because the new dot m doesn’t comply to Microsoft’s strict licensing specifications – such as an Atom CPU and 1GB of RAM – Packard Bell is free to install whatever OS it likes. Whispers of Vista were mentioned at the event but, sadly, nothing beyond XP was confirmed.

Packard Bell gave the price of the dot m as £349 inc. VAT, but also wouldn’t confirm which version this applied to – the Intel and XP flavour, which is presumably cheaper, or an AMD variant. We were also told that 3 and 6-cell batteries will be available and that some variations of the new netbook will have integrated 3G. Suffice to say that the 6-cell probably won’t be bundled with the dot m at launch, and we haven’t been told if the 3G modem will be locked to any one provider.

Packard Bell’s latest netbook, then, holds as many mysteries as it does cold, hard facts – while we’ve seen the AMD-based model and been told that Intel versions will follow, the final specification could change before the dot m arrives in the PC Pro Labs in the next few weeks. Suffice to say, whatever eventually turns up, we’ll be giving it the full review treatment.

]]> http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/2009/05/28/first-lookthe-new-116in-packard-bell-netbook/feed/ 8 http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/2008/12/05/all-the-weeks-reviews-3/ http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/2008/12/05/all-the-weeks-reviews-3/#comments Fri, 05 Dec 2008 17:26:30 +0000 David Bayon http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/?p=4524 Free laptops for life, monitors sprouting mini offspring, Toshiba’s first netbook and an open source media player from the chaps behind Firefox – it’s been a busy week for reviews.

Firefox vs iTunes

Surely the most interesting release of the week was from Mozilla. Although its been in development for a few years, Songbird finally saw an official release, with a media player and browser in one. Darien was hopeful it could finally give him an alternative to iTunes: “Since it’s open source, freely extensible and unfettered by corporate interests, Songbird’s future looks bright.” Try it and let us know what you think.

Not just for christmas

Fujitsu stole the headlines with its offer of a free laptop every three years forever, and Jon reckons “if you’re a cheapskate and don’t mind being tied to one brand for the rest of your life it’s got to be worth looking into”. If the best you can get is the Fujitsu Siemens Lifebook S7720, however, you’ll probably be turning them down on their kind offer.

Dell’s Inspiron 1318 is a much more tempting proposition, with a price tag of just £383 exc VAT putting it dangerously close to netbook territory. Sasha was impressed by the ”portable chassis with great ergonomics and fine battery life – a potent combination”, and more than enough to earn it an award. 

Sideshow 2?

Sideshow never caught on, largely because it was rubbish. But the concept of a smaller screen by your main display has merit if it’s actually an extension of your desktop. Samsung’s 2263DX comes with a 7in supplemental screen that clips anywhere on its frame, and you can drag anything you like onto it. It’s certainly a novel twist, and we can see it catching on – but only if the price drops.

The Navigon 1210 doesn’t have the same stumbling block, as it’s a satnav that costs just £85. But far from being a cheap and cheerful bargain, Jon found plenty of advanced features and solid navigation, and called it “a very good deal indeed.”

Another short throw projector arrived in the Labs, and the Acer S1200 proved every bit as good as – if not better than – the BenQ from a few weeks back. A huge 82in picture from just a metre away is phenomenal, and apart form a few focus issues the Acer came through our tests with a Recommended award that was well deserved.

Best of the rest

Toshiba finally entered the crowded netbook market with the NB100-11R but while Tim liked the screen and the light weight, he reckons it’s a missed opportunity for the laptop giant.

Lenovo’s T500 did much better, with Jon delivering a Recommended award, calling it a solid buy “if you don’t mind sacrificing sex appeal for comfort and reassurance”.

And the EasyNote RS65-M-700 had Matt gushing about it being “by far the most attractive Packard Bell laptop we’ve seen”, even if it wasn’t quite enough to gloss over a few other weaknesses.

In the business world, Dell’s PowerEdge T100 pedestal server walked off with a Recommended award, the iQStor iQ2850 iSCSI Storage System came mighty close, while Cyberoam launched its CR250i web filtering utility.

Laptop frenzy

We were intrigued by the Packard Bell EasyNote BG45-U-300, a portable laptop to take on the netbooks at less than £300 exc VAT – just £50 more than our A-Listed Samsung NC10. Matt reckons it’s perfect “if you’re after a little more oomph and a higher-resolution screen” than a netbook.

If your budget is significantly higher the UK’s first review of Toshiba’s brand new Portégé R600 ultraportable may be more your bag. Tim reckons it can trounce the Macbook Air on most specs – and he’s the editor so we can’t argue. It’s not the prettiest but “its price, integrated 3G modem and low weight all work in its favour.”

Completing our portable trio is the big, shiny and bold Pavilion dv5-1000ea, HP’s latest budget entertainment laptop. “While the HP is more gaudy haute-couture than timeless style,” mused Matt on its ergonomics, “it’s certainly a refreshing change.” Not quite refreshing enough for an award, but a “perfectly viable alternative” to our A List incumbents nonetheless.

Hard as nails

Ruggedised phones are always great to chuck around the office, and Getac’s PS535E didn’t disappoint. Dave Mitchell stopped playing MacGuyver just long enough to tell us about its “bulletproof feel” – so tough that he reckons it will even “work happily in our delightful British weather”.

He also tested the LaCie 4big quaddra, a huge 4TB DAS appliance with exemplary build quality, silent running, “a classy design and a good range of fault-tolerant features”. Which all adds up to another award-winning business product.

Two for the money

If one GPU isn’t enough, trust ATI to cater for your needs. This time the Radeon HD 4850 X2 isn’t the top-end part, but one which still offers hefty performance at a hefty price. “Is this high-end improvement worth two-and-a-half times the cost of the HD 4850, and just £50 less than a HD 4870 X2?” we asked? Short answer… no.

The Slingbox was a great device for watching your TV over the internet, but the SlingCatcher takes it a step further by allowing you to watch the streamed content on another TV, rather than just a computer screen. It’s a great idea, but the ever-skeptical Jon had his reservations.

Cowon’s O2 is the latest media player to take on Apple, and Jon was impressed by its broad file format support, memory expandability and built in speaker and TV output. Not a luxurious device, by any stretch, but one that’s well worth considering.

Last but not least, Iiyama – recently excelling at offering decent quality TFTs for ever lower prices – released its first 1080p 22in monitor. Whether we really need 1080p on desktop monitors is debatable, but if it appeals to your inner entertainment junkie you may be a little disappointed by the ProLite PLE2208HDS.