Product Reviews

With their Intel Inside stickers and annoying jingles, Intel's marketing gurus certainly have a lot to answer for! Thankfully, though, the chip giant's latest Big Thing - its Centrino mobile technology - is more than just a pretty logo. Find the purple and blue sticker on a laptop, and you're guaranteed speed, decent battery life and wireless support in one go. Centrino made an impressive debut at Buyer last month , in the shape of the Acer TravelMate 800. The Pegasus CT has a lot to live up to.

And competition is fierce, with every notebook maker under the sun in a panic to bring out Centrino machines. Centrino notebooks from Rock and Samsung grace the pages of Computer Buyer this month. At over two thousand quid, the Samsung is aimed at the seriously well-heeled. But for a more reasonable £1,399, Rock trying to tempt buyers away from the stylish Acer.

It's a brave move - especially when the Acer's 1.6GHz Pentium-M processor raced through our 3D benchmarks. The same, unfortunately, can't be said for the Pegasus CT.

The Acer came with turbocharged graphics from ATI - making it more than a match for most 3D games. Rock, on the other hand, has stuck with Intel's integrated graphics. Not only does this swipe 32MB of the notebook's main system memory, but it also turns the detailed textures of modern games into a kind of jerky slideshow. With a score of 1,845 in 3DMark 2001 SE, you can forget newer games like Unreal 2. The future looks even bleaker for next year's releases.

Obliterating 3D monsters isn't everyone's cup of tea, though, and the Pegasus is quite happy when it's doing the usual stuff in Windows XP. The 1.5GHz Pentium-M processor

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certainly helps out, as does the 512MB of DDR memory. With a 2D benchmark score of 972, you won't find the Rock dragging its feet over ordinary stuff like word processing or Web browsing.

The Rock lasted 1 hour 38 minutes in our demanding battery test. For this, we turn Intel's power-saving SpeedStep technology off - with power-saving enabled, you can expect much better battery life. The Rock will easily last you the average train journey. In any case, it's only 13 minutes off the excellent 1 hour 51 minutes we got from the Acer.

But decent battery life is what you expect from a Centrino notebook. What you don't expect is a cooling fan that's more annoying than the Chuckle Brothers.

Imagine you've been asleep for an hour or so. You're just sinking into a pleasant and comfortable snooze and then someone comes in and starts using a hair dryer. That's what the Pegasus CT's fan is like. It sits there quietly waiting for when you're really trying to concentrate, and then it starts whirring in the most intrusive way possible. It doesn't help that the fan is mounted on the underside of the PC, so you get a gust of hot air on your lap to accompany the racket.

Thankfully, Rock has been more sensible with the rest of the design. The screen, for example, is superb. It has a resolution of 1,024x768, ideal for a 14.1in screen. It's also nice and bright - especially compared with the Acer's dull offering.

Likewise, the keyboard feels reassuringly solid. The keys don't have quite enough depth to be fully satisfying - at times, you feel as if you're typing against a brick wall. Otherwise, it's comfortable enough.

Even the ports have been well thought-out, with two USB 2 ports on the left and one on the right - great for easy access. At the front are five handy shortcut buttons, together with a switch for turning the built-in wireless networking function on and off - useful for saving battery life if you're not using it. Basically, as long as you're not pushing the Pegasus CT, it'll be fine.

But you expect far more for £1,399, even considering the free leather carry case. With its superior keyboard, great 3D performance and unobtrusive cooling system, you'll find the Acer TravelMate 800 a better buy for the money.