Acer recently launched some updated laptops with Windows 7. For that matter, just about every laptop manufacturer out there has new laptops sporting Windows 7, but we're going to start our coverage of mobile press releases with Acer since they were kind enough to send us the pertinent details. (Ed: This blog may be a bit long, but we'll try to do them more often going forward so we can keep it short.)

Our intention going forward is to do more blogs on product announcements, letting you know what new items might be worth a look… or perhaps which ones you should skip. These blogs are not reviews, since we don't have hardware, but we'll try to cover the important details and let you know what we think of the various laptops. And if you're a PR representative from a different manufacturer and you have product information, send me an email. We don't have time to cover every laptop/netbook launch, but the more information we have to pass along, the better informed we can keep our readers.

We recently looked at ASUS' latest foray into the mobile world, the "UnLimited" UL80Vt. It uses a Core 2 Duo SU7300 CPU overclocked to 1.73GHz by default, plus giving users the option to switch between discrete and integrated graphics. The design and features of the UL80Vt are very good, but what if you don't want to spend $820, and what if you don't have a need for discrete graphics? If you're interested in some other options, Acer might have what you're after. Let's take a quick look at the latest Acer product launches.

Acer Timeline

The more interesting launches from Acer are going to be the updated Timeline models. Acer has now models ranging from the new 11.6" Timeline up to the larger 15.6" AS5810TZ. All of the models we'll be discussing now include Windows 7, and we see no reason to even consider Windows Vista on a laptop at this point. Windows 7 definitely beats Vista in both performance and battery life. Windows XP battery life is similar to Win7, but that's only if you're willing to live with the old XP UI. Of course, we understand that some people still prefer XP, but we'll focus on the new Win7 models.

The Timeline 1810 is the newest edition of the Timeline series, with a netbook-sized 11.6" chassis. Unlike the typical Atom netbook, however, Acer uses a Core 2 Duo SU7300 -- the same CPU as the ASUS UL80Vt. Or at least the more expensive model uses the SU7300, while the slightly cheaper option uses the Pentium SU4100. The two CPUs have the same 1.30GHz clock speed, but the SU7300 has 3MB shared L2 cache compared to 2MB L2. For $50, the upgrade probably won't make that much of a difference, but the 8638/8679 also include 4GB RAM instead of 3GB. The 1810 comes with a 6-cell battery and weighs just over three pounds. Battery life should exceed 8 hours in light operations, while more intense workloads like x264 or DivX video playback will probably be closer to 5 hours.

Like all of the Timeline series, the LCD is LED backlit and has a resolution of 1366x768. That resolution might be a bit low on the larger models, but it works well on an 11.6" LCD. Unfortunately, we don't have details on what LCD is being used -- we asked, but Acer wasn't able to provide that information. The 1810 is available in either black or blue at present, with what appears to be a brushed aluminum palm rest. If you want an alternative to a netbook that doesn't cost an arm and a leg, the Timeline 1810 will fit the bill. Performance of the SU7300 is going to be at least twice as fast as any Intel Atom netbook, and the GMA 4500MHD is likewise a large step up from the aging GMA 950 (or the GMA 500). H.264 video decode works with the 4500MHD as well, so the only drawback relative to ATI and NVIDIA solutions is gaming/graphics performance. What you're getting is essentially over twice the performance of a netbook for about twice the cost.

The Timeline 3810 is virtually the same specs as the 1810, but with a 13.3" chassis. Models with the SU7300 and SU4100 are available, but memory is DDR3-1066 instead of DDR2-667. Prices are slightly higher for the base model 4078, or $750 at present for the 8737. Both come with 4GB RAM while the retail chain version (the 4925) comes with 3GB. For the extra $100, there doesn't appear to be a good reason to choose the 8737; the SU7300 shouldn't be more than about 5% faster than the SU4100 (thanks to the added L2 cache).

The Timeline 4810 is again virtually the same specs as the other models, only you can find older models with Vista (and even XP), the CPU is always the Pentium SU4100, and it uses DDR3-1066 RAM. Other than the slightly larger 14.0" chassis, the big change relative to the 3810 is that Acer includes an optical drive. That makes the 4810T virtually a direct competitor to the ASUS UL80Vt. You basically lose some of the performance and features of the ASUS UL80Vt but save over $200. The 4810 provides a slightly slower (stock CPU), but no overclocking; it doesn't include discrete graphics; it has a slightly smaller battery (6-cell vs. 8-cell); and it also weighs about half a pound less than the UL80Vt. $600 for a moderate sized laptop that will provide over twice the performance of any Atom-based netbook is a reasonable option. Again, we don't know much about the LCD, but it's likely going to be a low contrast option. The retail-only 4120 includes a 500GB hard drive, but we were unable to determine pricing; it's likely going to be about $50 more.

Finally, the 5810 is the largest version of the Timeline series, although it still targets "8+ hours" of battery life with a 6-cell battery. Remember that battery cell sizes aren't all the same, so it may actually have more battery capacity to keep run times consistent with the other Timeline models. Like the 4810, it includes an optical drive -- no surprise with the 15.6" chassis. The only change worth noting relative to the 4810 (other than size) is that the 5810 includes a full keyboard with 10-key pad. Available in "espresso brown" or aluminum, the 5810 with Windows 7 is priced at $650.

Acer Aspire 5738

The other new product line Acer recently announced uses the basic 15.6" Aspire chassis, but with a few additions. Several models are available, with prices ranging from as little as $480 to as high as $760. The least expensive model 5738Z-4111 uses DDR3-800 RAM and Intel GMA 4500M graphics and targets "up to 3.5 hours" of battery life. The AS5738-6444 and 6969 are the same as the 4111, but they use DDR2-667 and the GMA 4500MHD. There's also a 500GB HDD on the 6969 for about $20 extra. We're not sure why these models are supposed to get "up to 4.5 hours" of battery life, given that DDR2 uses a higher voltage than DDR3. Here are the detailed specs.

The more interesting options for most people are going to be the 5738PG and 5738DG. The PG includes a multi-touch LCD. We asked for details on the manufacturer and LCD specs but did not receive an answer from Acer. Hopefully it's at least not a glossy LCD, given the coating most touch LCDs have that reduces brightness and contrast relative to other LCDs. It's worth noting that the 5738PG is not a tablet, which limits the usefulness of the touch LCD in our book, but others may feel otherwise. It's also the most expensive option, but it includes a discrete HD 4570 GPU.

The specs for the 5738DG are identical to the 5738PG, but it doesn't have a touch-sensitive LCD. Instead, Acer includes a "TriDef 3D screen" with polarized 3D glasses. The 3D mode can be enabled and disabled at the press of a button, and the feature is supposed to work with both 2D and 3D content. How well does it work? Without using one in person, we really have no idea. We asked about the LCD and technology but have not received any answer. We don't know if the basic premise is like older 3D displays that appeared to flicker a lot, or if the DG uses a 120Hz LCD, or if this is something new. We're very hesitant to recommend purchasing any 3D product (outside of a GPU) without testing out the feature in person. In the past, such technology has been prone to cause headaches and discomfort after a few minutes to an hour or more. NVIDIA's 3D Vision is perhaps the best 3D offering we've tested, and even it only delivered lackluster results in most instances. Still, we're intrigued that anyone would even consider making a 3D laptop LCD. Now you can wear your "sporty and stylish 3D polarized glasses" while on the road as well!

A couple weeks ago, we posted our review of the Acer 751h. The claim to fame of the 751h is that it uses the Poulsbo chipset (US15W) with integrated GMA 500 graphics. We definitely experienced some growing pains with the 751h, in particular trying to get the integrated graphics to properly support HD video decoding required some effort. Once configured properly, however, we felt that the 751h was a viable alternative to other netbooks.

Unfortunately, we experienced some instability and we have heard complaints from a few users stating that stability on the 751h is, in a word, horrible -- that quality control at Acer must be practically nonexistent. Obviously, frustrated users are more likely to post complaints, but there are definitely people out there looking for an alternative. One alternative would be the ASUS 1101HA, which offers the same basic components but allows overclocking up to 1.73 GHz on the Z520 processor. Today, MSI has announced the Wind U110 Eco with immediate availability.

The U110 Eco has a lot in common with the Acer 751h and ASUS 1101HA. It uses a Z-series Atom processor, this time going with the faster Z530 (1.60GHz compared to 1.33GHz on the Z520). It still uses the US15W chipset, which means with the appropriate video codec you can get accelerated H.264 decoding. One notable difference is that it uses a 10.1" 1024x600 LCD instead of an 11.6" 1366x768 display. MSI also ships the U110 with a large 9-cell battery, stating that you can get up to 15+ hours (!) of battery life. The weight remains acceptable at 3.2 pounds, so the only question is whether you're okay with netbook performance. Overall, this should certainly be a better multimedia netbook than other GMA 950 10.1" designs, though it sticks with the smaller LCD and its lower resolution.

You can currently buy the MSI Wind U110 Eco direct from MSI for $430, or ExcaliberPC has it starting at $400. Below are the detailed specifications as well as the text and images from the press release.

MSI US Announces New Netbook - Wind U110 ECO
The U110 features best in class battery Life - up to 15 + hours of untethered computing

CITY OF INDUSTRY, CA - September 21, 2009 - MSI Computer, a leading manufacturer of computer hardware products and solutions, is excited to announce the new netbook -Wind U110 ECO. The Wind U110 weighs just 3.2 pounds, features the Intel Atom Processor Z530 (1.60GHz), a 160GB HDD and an ultra efficient best in class 15+ hours battery life (9-cells).

Despite being just 1.24 inches thick at its widest point, the U110 is a multimedia powerhouse. The ultra mobile U110 features a 10" backlit LCD with a crystal clear 1024x600 resolution, high definition web cam, 2 speakers, built-in mic, a reliable 802.11 b/g/n LAN, and is Bluetooth ready for constant connectivity.

MSI offers a 1-year limited warranty with the U110 and extended customer service hours at 1-888-447-6564.

If you're a regular reader of AnandTech -- and my articles in particular -- you may already know that I use speech recognition for writing the vast majority of my content. About five years ago, after a wonderful spree of typing like a madman on an article, my hands and fingers started going numb. Yes, I have the dreaded carpal tunnel syndrome. I tried to type less, and that helped a little, but what I really needed to do was cut out typing as much as possible. After reading about some options, I decided to try Dragon NaturallySpeaking. That was version 8, and I've never looked back.

A couple years later, version 9 was released and I began using that. I didn't notice any major improvements in accuracy or speed, but it did seem like it was a little better. I believe version 9 also added support for Office 2007's ribbon interface, but since I still have no problem using a mouse I haven't bothered with using Dragon to send commands much. Version 10 came out last year and I've been meaning to write a review for a while now. That keeps getting pushed aside, so rather than a full review I'm going to do a quick update on Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10.

Unlike version 9, version 10 definitely has some noticeable improvements. For one, it simply seems to be faster at recognizing speech -- Nuance said that the latest version is optimized for dual-core processors, which would certainly account for the difference. Accuracy is still a very nebulous concept, and I'm not sure if Dragon has gotten better with the latest version or if I just adapted to using Dragon over the years. Whatever the case, I'm quite happy with the level of accuracy NaturallySpeaking provides, and version 10 is the best so far.

The other major change with version 10 -- not initially, but as of March this year -- is that we finally have a version of NaturallySpeaking that works with 64-bit Windows. It was a long time in coming, and I'm not sure what the holdup was, but with the latest patch you can now use Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 with Windows Vista 64-bit. Hooray for progress! Windows XP support is limited to 32-bit versions, however, and I haven't taken the time to test naturally speaking with Windows 7.

Some of you are probably wondering how Dragon NaturallySpeaking compares to the built-in speech recognition in Windows Vista. I discussed that in my speech recognition article several years ago, and frankly I still haven't been able to invest a significant amount of time in using Microsoft's "free" speech recognition. It looks like Microsoft may actually do a little better for sending certain commands to your computer, but in general the speech recognition interface they provide just isn't nearly as seamless as NaturallySpeaking. I haven't looked at Windows 7 to see if anything has changed, but I somehow doubt that I would actually make a switch at this point. It's a lot like using Windows and Microsoft Office; you can get open-source alternatives for free and run Linux and OpenOffice, but ultimately you find yourself wanting to go back to Microsoft.

So why this blog post now? I just received an email from TigerDirect with a link to Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 Standard, which allows you to purchase the application for $50 instead of $100. 50% off a great application is certainly a worthwhile investment, and for those that are willing to jump through the hoops you get a $20 mail-in rebate. That brings the total cost down to $30. $30 for what is arguably the most important tool I use? Sign me up! (Incidentally, Nuance sent me the Professional version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10, but I pretty much limit myself to use of the Preferred feature set. You might want to check out the datasheet for specific details on what features may not work with the Standard version. Note that Microsoft Office is listed as a feature of Professional; you can still use Standard to dictate in Word, but you can't issue specific Word/Excel commands.) Note: The link above is a direct add to your cart, and TigerDirect says it's a "limited time offer", so I don't know how long the link will remain active. If you have an alternative deal for Dragon NaturallySpeaking, please post it in the comments!

The only thing you need beyond the software is a microphone, and my experience is that you don't even need a great microphone. However, there's more to it than just getting a microphone that works; if you plan to use speech recognition on a regular basis like me, you'll also want a microphone that's comfortable… and I prefer something that doesn't go over the top of my head, since I don't want to mess up my hairdo. ;-) I got the Sennheiser ME3 with Andrea USB Pod from emicrophones.com back in 2006, and it was definitely a nice upgrade to the Logitech headset I was using. You can find less expensive microphones with a similar style, but I would suggest getting some sort of USB sound pod and bypassing your soundcard; I don't know if it works that much better, but it's great if you ever have to use your microphone on a different PC. Since I routinely switch between my desktop and a laptop, the USB adapter is a godsend; integrated audio on some laptops can be particularly bad, and don't even think about using the built-in microphone on your LCD!

If you've never tried Dragon NaturallySpeaking, you really ought to. With a modern PC, it's really quite awesome being able to dictate to a computer and have everything come out accurately… well, at least with around 98% accuracy, give or take. My only real problem with NaturallySpeaking is that there are a few quirks I still encounter. It's nothing drastic, but sometimes the program crashes and any updates to my dictionary that I've created are lost and need to be reentered. I use a lot of custom phrases for computer products; for example the Gateway NV52 required that I put "envy fifty two = NV52" into my phrase list. I also have just about every AMD and Intel processor number in my list, so when I add 10 processors and forget to save my user files and Dragon crashes a few hours later, it can be annoying. My other gripe is with the "we need more hard drive space" dialog routinely appearing. Regardless of what I do, that dialogue seems to stick around and pop up every few weeks.

Perhaps the biggest challenge is that Dragon NaturallySpeaking is so accurate that you start to get lazy; homonyms can still throw the program for a loop, so if you don't read what it transcribes carefully, you're likely to come up with some grammatical/spelling errors from time to time. That's actually high praise for the program: it's so accurate that you come to expect everything to work out properly and stop paying attention. Just try not to do that when you're writing an important female, or the results might be a little embarrassing! (Ironically, Dragon just screwed up that sentence. I truly did say "email" and Dragon thought I said "female" -- see what I mean about embarrassing?)

Final tally: Over 1200 words and I only had to correct around ten actual mistakes (i.e. not counting mumbled words). Yes, Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 truly can achieve 99% accuracy.

To review or not to review: that is the question. As you might imagine, we get a lot of press releases sent our way, along with review opportunities. As the notebook reviewer, one product category I hear about on a regular basis -- from the vendors at least -- is ruggedized notebooks. For example, Getac and GammaTech both sent me press releases during the past couple weeks. This is not a category that we normally review, but I thought I would take this opportunity to ask you the readers whether or not you would be interested in seeing a review of this sort of system. There’s a poll below where you can answer, and as always you can leave a comment explaining your choice.

The press releases for these sorts of systems almost read like another language, and that’s saying something considering we routinely throw around acronyms and buzzwords here at AnandTech. MIL-STD 810F and IP54 standards for ruggedness? I suppose I could look up what those standards mean, but essentially they say these laptops can take a beating and withstand harsh environments without failing. I’m not even sure we’re equipped to test these things properly, at least in terms of ruggedness, as pounding on a laptop until it breaks and doing so in a repeatable manner is beyond the scope of our reviews. (Maybe we could take six months and run around in Iraq or Afghanistan, then report our results?) In that sense, the reviews almost write themselves: list the various standards a laptop meets, give the spec table, and we’re done. We would of course perform some standardized benchmarking, so we could find out what sort of differences there are in terms of display quality, battery life, and performance. So again, we ask: are ruggedized laptop reviews something you would like to see?

To go along with that question, here are some details about a couple recently announced ruggedized notebooks. First up we have the spec sheet from the GammaTech Durabook R13S/RTV7 (the focus is on the R13S, with the RTV7 being a tablet design).

See what we mean about the various standards for ruggedness? Outside of the rugged aspect, however, it should also be readily apparent that these are not high-performance notebooks by any stretch of the imagination. The Core 2 Duo U7500 runs at a paltry 1.06 GHz. That should still outperform the Intel Atom processors (by a pretty wide margin in some cases), and it should help with battery life, but you wouldn’t want to do any CPU intensive work on such a slow system. We should also note that GammaTech appears to be first and foremost a supplier of government notebooks. Let’s take a look at another company that caters more to end-users rather than large businesses/corporations/governments.

Getac specializes in ruggedized notebooks and PDAs. They’ve recently updated their V100, which already included some interesting features. One item that immediately jumps out as being different from any other notebook I’ve ever tested is the LCD, with LED backlighting rated at up to 1200 nits! As a point of reference, that’s over four times brighter than the brightest notebook I’ve ever tested (the Dell Studio XPS 16) and over twice as bright as any desktop LCD I’ve tested. Brighter doesn’t necessarily mean better in terms of color accuracy and contrast ratio, but if you plan on working outside (in a bright desert environment as an example), a 1200 nits LCD would almost be required. Yes, I also have to wonder what that will do to battery life.

Most of the other upgrades correspond to the availability of newer parts -- bigger hard drives, 802.11n wireless, more RAM, and a faster processor. The original V100 supported up to a U7600 (1.2GHz, 2MB shared, 533FSB, 65nm) and the new version now supports the SU9400 (1.4GHz , 3MB shared, 800FSB, 45nm). ExpressCard is also available now. The complete press release for the updated Getac V100 follows. We expect pricing to be in the realm of $3000 or more, depending on options.

GETAC UPGRADES ITS POPULAR V100 NOTEBOOK/TABLET PC WITH SEVEN NEW PERFORMANCE ENHANCING FEATURES

Extra Memory, Storage, and Communications Upgrades Adds Performance to Fully-Rugged Mobile PC with Super Bright 1200 NITS LED Display

LAKE FOREST, CA. June 2, 2009 -- Getac Inc., a leading innovator and manufacturer of rugged computers that meet the demands of field-based applications, is upgrading its popular V100 fully rugged convertible with seven new features. The latest enhancements to Getac’s V100 fully rugged convertible include processor and memory upgrades, greater storage capacities and enhanced bandwidth and wireless capabilities.

“The V100 fully rugged convertible has been very popular because of its advanced feature set and super bright 1200 NITs screen,” said Jim Rimay, president, Getac, Inc. “With better performance, memory, storage and wireless capabilities, the new Getac V100 is more advanced and flexible as ever and even better suited for mobile field workers and users of rugged notebook PCs.”

The new performance enhancing features include a processor upgrade from 1.2 GHz Intel Merom to 1.4 GHz Intel Penryn. The front side bus has been increased from 533 MHz to 800 MHz; and the 2MB L2 cache has been increased to 3MB. Memory on the V100’s RAM has increased from 2GB to 4GB. Storage capacities have been increased from a minimum HDD of 120GB to a minimum of 160GB and a maximum capacity increase from 250GB to 320GB. In addition, the computer’s wireless networking capabilities have been upgraded to include draft 802.11n and the V100 now offers an ExpressCard slot in the standard configuration.

In addition, the Getac V100 has been UL 1604 certified by Underwriters Laboratories, an independent lab that tests products to ensure public safety. The optional UL 1604 certification allows safe, spark-free use of the V100 in potentially explosive environments typically found in the oil and gas, petrochemical, aviation and other industries.

The transformable Getac V100 features a swiveling LED screen for the ultimate in portability. It also features a Magnesium Alloy design, shock mounted hard disk drive and sealed I/O caps and doors to prevent damage from solid particles. Although it weighs a mere 4.9 pounds, the V100 is rough-and-tumble enough to withstand even the harshest working environments. It is fully compliant with MIL-STD 810F and IP54 standards for ruggedness including the ability to withstand heavy rain, airborne dust and debris. For further protection, the convertible notebook/tablet PC has a removable hard drive that is shielded by a special mechanism to prevent damage during operation; anti vibration compounds, which serve as a shock absorber during transport; and an anti-shock housing to further protect it if bumped or dropped.

The V100 also offers its Sunlight Readable Technology and can be upgraded to an industry-leading super-bright 1,200 NITs display, which provides unmatched outdoor viewability and screen brightness while decreasing reflectivity thus preserving battery life. Combined with an active anti-reflective process based on circular polarization to absorb reflective light, the V100’s Sunlight Readable Technology enables viewability that is more than six times better* than competing solutions and creates a mercury-free solution. Other features include 10/100/1000 Ethernet, integrated GPS and Bluetooth. It also features a waterproof keyboard and an SD card slot.

Okay, on to the poll that I mentioned earlier. There are two questions I want to ask, and they are not necessarily related. The first deals with ruggedized notebooks and whether you would like to see us review such a system (or systems). The second question deals more with laptops/notebooks in general. I’d just like to know specifically what type of laptops you are most interested in seeing us review, including ruggedized notebooks as an option. As always, feel free to leave a comment explaining your choices, particularly if our options don’t exactly match what you’re thinking.

Many people have no desire for anything other than a moderately fast laptop -- in fact, these people are certainly the majority by a huge margin. They would rather have reasonable performance and improved battery life, preferably in a package that doesn't weigh as much as a small car. On the other hand, there are users out there who want as much performance as possible in a mobile workstation. If you happen to be a member of the latter group, various companies are about to launch a substantially faster mobile behemoth.

The first we heard of this new laptop is courtesy of Eurocom, who will begin shipping their new Phantom-i7 sometime in April. We snagged images off their website, which you can see in the following gallery.

If that laptop looks familiar, you might recognize it as the descendent of the Clevo D901C that we first looked at in August 2008. While the exterior looks about the same, the inside has received some notable upgrades. In place of desktop Core 2 Duo/Quad processors, the new D900F will support Core i7 desktop processors, up to and including the Core i7 965. That means in addition to a quad-core processor -- able to run eight threads courtesy of with Hyper-Threading -- you also get triple-channel DDR3 memory support via three SO-DIMM slots capable of supporting up to 12GB of DDR3-1333 memory. In addition, graphics have been upgraded to support the latest mobile NVIDIA GPUs, including dual GTX 280M cards in SLI.

Other areas remain essentially unchanged from the D901C. Three 2.5" hard drives are still supported, along with RAID 0/1/5, allowing up to 1.5 TB of storage with the latest laptop hard drives. Sadly, the keyboard also remains unchanged, which means you get perhaps the most unintuitive 10-key layout we've ever used. Clevo seriously needs to rethink the keyboard design -- Dell's XPS M1730 layout would be a good place to start.

Is this sort of notebook overkill? For some, certainly, but if you happen to need the ability to perform demonstrations of CAD/CAM/CAE, 3D rendering, video processing, or other professional applications away from the office on a regular basis, a mobile workstation is far more convenient than trying to haul around a 30+ pound desktop chassis. Pricing has not been announced, but it's a safe bet that these notebooks will start at well over $3000. You can view additional details of the system on Eurocom's website. The full text of the press release is included below.

UPDATE: So apparently there was some confusion on my part with the information sent. I'm leaving the original text, but there's plenty of errors that need to be corrected. First, the images above are NOT from the D900F but instead show the original D90xC chassis. Changes have been made, which means that the final product will look different from the above and have some other spec changes. Eurocom informed me that they are looking to support four physical hard drives, but it's not clear if that will really happen. Second, the D900F will have an HDMI port (presumably along with DVI) and an eSATA port. Finally, the D900F is not yet confirmed to support SLI (or CrossFire). Below is an image courtesy of Gophn at the NotebookReview forums. Now if you'll pardon me, I have some egg to wipe off my face....

An actual picture of the D900F

March 1, 2009

Eurocom launches World's First i7 Notebook with Intel i7 Quad Core and Xeon Processors; 1GB NVIDIA GeForce Go GTX 280M or Quadro FX3700M; 1.5TB of storage with RAID 0/1/5 for On-the-Road Mobile Workstation or Mobile Server use.

The World's First workstation and server-class notebook with Intel i7 Quad Core or XEON processor; 1.5 Terabytes of storage, RAID 5 and internal 1 hour Battery!

Eurocom, the world's leading developer of highly personalized, high-performance notebook PCs and energy efficient All-in-One PCs, introduced the EUROCOM D901C PHANTOM-i7 Mobile Workstation/Server powered by Intel's newest line of Quad Core and XEON LGA1366 processors.

EUROCOM PHANTOM-i7 provides workstation and server-caliber capabilities with 1.5 Terabytes of storage with three physical SATA-300 hard drives and RAID 0/1/5, super-powerful 3.2GHz Intel Core i7 Processor Extreme Edition I7-965; 3.2GHz XEON X5580 processors running at 2x 6.4GT/sec bus speed or 2.93GHz Intel Core i7 Processor I-940 running at 4.8GT/sec with 8MB L3 cache, Gigabit Ethernet port on-board, HDMI, eSATA, DVI ports, with a 17" WUXGA LCD display and full size keyboard.

Featuring workstation-class or server-class Intel Core i7 or Xeon Processor and up to 16GB of DDR3-1366 memory, the D900F PHANTOM-i7 also features the largest storage capacity on the market today - a whopping 1.5TB with RAID 0/1/5 - making it the perfect mobile workstation or server laptop for users who demand extra-large capacity storage and reliability for true portable server / workstation experience.

EUROCOM PHANTOM-i7 supports most of 64-bit operating systems available on the market for XP Pro 64-bit, Vista 64-bit or Microsoft Server 2008 and Red Hat.

Driving the system is Intel Core i7 the newest 130W 3.2GHz Extreme Edition i7-965 processor with bus speeds of up to 2x 6.4GT/sec and 8MB of L3 cache, which delivers exceptional multi-tasking and multi-threaded performance. It also supports the newest line of Intel Core i7 Xeon processors X55xx series.

The PHANTOM-i7, which measures 15.8" x 11.9" x 2.05" and weights under 12lbs, also supplies tremendous SATA-300 storage (up to 1.5TB using three hard drives). Customers may also choose between RAID 0, RAID 1 or RAID 5 for the ultimate transfer rates and application load times or redundancy.

"It's a server or workstation-caliber computer complete with built-in Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS) in a 12pounds notebook form factor," said Mark Bialic, President of Eurocom. "This is one extremely fast notebook that offers server or workstation caliber capabilities. It is designed to replace traditional desktop based workstations. It offers incredible high ROI by allowing companies to be more productive and offer new "on the go" CAD/CAM services while greatly reducing overall IT management costs".

Definition of Mobile Workstation

Mobile Workstation is a new category of notebooks designed to replace a desktop-based workstation for a professional user. With unrivalled power, unsurpassed features and portability, the Mobile Workstation is the ultimate evolution of the Desktop Replacement notebook. With the release of mobile workstations, Eurocom has taken the next step in the evolution of the desktop replacement by combining workstation like features, power and flexibility with desktop replacement technology. Mobile Workstation is the most powerful notebook on the market. With the arrival of 64-bit Operating System technology, mobile workstations run two times faster 64-bit applications than 32-bit desktop PCs. Featuring the most innovative computer technologies, they are engineered for the highest quality, best performance, long-term stability and serviceability. As a single computing solution, mobile workstation provides a perfect alternative to a traditional workstation class desktop computer system.

EUROCOM High-End Mobile Workstations

EUROCOM mobile workstations are designed specifically for high-end professional and graphics users demanding maximum performance and power when running professional applications such as CAD/CAM/CAE, 3D animation, 3D simulation, engineering, financial simulations, math, forensic, 3D imaging, mapping and charting, satellite image processing, GIS, or medical software, or graphics work.

Key Benefits of Mobile Workstations

• Reduced IT Management costs (one piece of equipment to move around)
  
• Improved Productivity (anytime, anywhere)
  
• Increased Revenue Growth (allows introduction of new services, i.e. CAD/CAM/CAE consulting/training on-the-go)
  
• Improved reliability of data (internal battery = built-in UPS)
  
• Reduced equipment cost (single computer solution)
  
• Reduced litigation costs due to intellectual properties rights (out-of-the office consulting)

Specific Vertical Markets:

• Aerospace (CAM/CAE/CAD)
  
• Car Manufacturing
  
• Architecture
  
• Education (Departments of Architecture, Engineering, Geography, Animation, Video Production; GIS)
  
• Financial sector
  
• Forensic (i.e. FBI)
  
• Governments (Department of Fisheries and Oceans; Army; Navy; Public Works/Engineering; GIS)
  
• Military (Mapping, Charting, Imaging, Navigation)
  
• Medical (Imaging)
  
• Software Development (Databases, CRM, Operating)
  
• Training

Mobile workstations feature the most advanced computer technology, such as:

• High-performance Processors: Intel Core i7 Extreme Edition or XEON processors
  
• 64-bit hardware and multiple operating systems support (Windows Pro 64, Vista64, Server2008, Red Hat)
  
• 16 GB of high performance memory,
  
• Up to 1.5GB of storage with multiple high performance SATA-300 hard
  
• RAID 0/1/5 for extra performance, data redundancy or automatic backups
  
• High performance VGA graphics including NVIDIA's SLI GTX 280M
  
• Up to 1GB of video and the fastest graphics with OpenGL NVIDIA Quadro FX3700
  
• Large displays (17" or 18.4") in a portable form factor
  
• Blu Ray and DVD Burning on the go
  
• High Performance 1 Gigabit LAN on-board and support for 2nd 1Gigabit LAN interface
  
• 102-key desktop-like full size keyboards with separate numeric keypad
  
• Multiple I/O Ports: 4 or 5 USB 2.0 ports, FireWire ports, serial and parallel ports, DVI ports for multiple external monitors, S-Video In ports for digital video cameras, media card readers, Optical digital and analog audio I/O, built-in microphone and stereo speakers
  
• Excellent Wireless: internal up to 450Mbps WLAN 802.11a/b/g/n and Bluetooth 2.0
  
• Internal battery allows uninterrupted operation in case of power failure.
  
• Excellent Surround Sound System with SRS WOW technology
  
• Optional internal TV Tuner for Digital and/or Analog Video Input

Okay, let's get something out of the way right off the bat: I started work on a review of the Dell studio XPS 16 before CES 2009. Originally intended to go live at CES, I decided to hold off in order to conduct additional testing and send some questions to Dell. Ultimately, we ran into some problems with the sample laptop, which is a prerelease version with a few kinks that need to be worked out. Ironically enough, the one major complaint in involves a glitch with the LCD on the unit we received, but we didn't notice this problem on any of the other studio XPS 16 laptops at the show. Anyway, I'm holding off on the full review until Dell can provide a retail sample, which should occur in the near future. In the meantime, one of the initial test results was shocking enough that I felt it was time for a blog. That's right: it's time to talk about laptop LCDs again!

When Dell claimed that the Studio XPS 16 would have the highest color gamut of any current laptop, I was a bit skeptical. I mean, the best color gamut I've seen up to now was on the ASUS G2P, which managed a rather impressive 70% of the Adobe RGB 1998 gamut. The next best LCD I've tested happens to be the Acer 6920G 1080P model, coming in around 55%. Everything else is roughly 45% or lower. On their own, such numbers don't necessarily mean a lot, so let's give a point of reference. Desktop LCDs from several years ago typically scored around 70% to 75% -- in other words the best laptop LCD I've tested to date might be able to match the entry-level desktop LCDs.

Here are a couple charts from the most recent reviews for laptops and LCDs showing how things stack up. To say that the laptop LCDs are uninspiring is a gross understatement.

As you might have guessed, the reason for this blog is that I was just putting together the results from the Dell Studio XPS 16. Given that it has a 16" LCD with a 1080P resolution, I assumed Dell was using the same LCD panel as the Acer 6920G. It's worth noting that there are two LCD models for the Studio XPS 16, so perhaps the less expensive version is the same as the Acer laptop. As for the more expensive LCD... well, have a look at the following color gamut chart (courtesy of Gamutvision).

It's not just that Dell has managed to close the gap with desktop LCDs; they have actually surpassed what many of the best desktop LCDs achieve! A color gamut of 112% of the Adobe RGB 1998 standard is extremely impressive. The "secret sauce" in this recipe for success is that Dell uses RGB LED backlighting instead of the standard white or yellow LEDs (or CCFLs) found in most LCDs. Obviously desktop LCDs have managed better color gamuts prior to now, but this is the first LED backlit LCD I've seen that actually manages to provide a good color gamut. That bodes well for the future of both desktop and laptop LCDs based on LED backlighting -- good colors and lower power requirements all in the same package.

Unfortunately, there are still some major gaps between desktop and laptop LCDs. The biggest one is the native panel technology; I still haven't managed to procure any laptops that use something other than a standard TN (twisted nematic) panel. That's entry-level desktop LCD technology, and while it's certainly cheaper, I prefer to spend the money on S-PVA, S-MVA, or S-IPS panels (in that order). Frankly, I would love to see any of those technologies utilized in a laptop LCD! (On a side note, if you get a desktop LCD and you plan to use it in portrait mode, you absolutely do not want a TN panel!) Panel technology also has a big influence on color quality, and so far none of the laptops I've tested come anywhere near what we see on a good desktop LCD. There are always spikes in delta E up to 5.0 or higher, and the Studio XPS 16 doesn't appear to change that.

Let's wrap things up with a little bit of polling, shall we? I have my opinions on how important a good LCD is when it comes time to purchase a new laptop, but I'm curious to hear your feelings on the subject. Let's not restrict things to just discussing LCD quality, though; I've put together several questions regarding LCDs. I'd love to hear your input, and if you have any other thoughts on the matter you can post below in the comments or drop me an e-mail.

We're in the midst of testing quite a few laptops, but one of the more interesting developments of late that you may have missed is that NVIDIA has finally delivered on a mobile graphics driver that can be used with the vast majority of recent notebooks. While that may not matter a whole lot for the business user, anyone that does any gaming on a notebook knows what a pain it can be trying to find new drivers. In the past we have seen issues with some "gaming notebooks" utterly failing to run recent games because of the lack of updated drivers. Such problems will now hopefully be a thing of the past, although the first "mobile reference driver" did have one pretty noteworthy limitation: it was only for the GeForce 8M and 9M products. With their second mobile driver, NVIDIA addresses the large number of GeForce 7 users that may not have seen an "official" driver update in a long time. Here's the text of the press release:

Today NVIDIA made it possible for notebook owners with GeForce 7 Series graphics processing units (GPUs) to upgrade their systems with the click of a button. When NVIDIA changed the way notebook GPU customers received driver upgrades by putting a driver on NVIDIA.com, we promised quarterly driver updates for GeForce owners. As promised, NVIDIA delivered the second notebook driver release on February 11, 2009.

The first NVIDIA.com notebook driver was wildly popular, with over 1 Million downloads to date. The biggest complaint about that driver was the lack of support for the GeForce 7 Series. Today we are happy to deliver a driver to these customers. This driver also adds support for Hybrid SLI notebooks.

By providing notebook drivers to our customers, NVIDIA has extended NVIDIA CUDA™ technology to notebook GPUs for GeForce equipped notebooks. CUDA technology also moves physics processing to the GPU for new levels of realism in games and virtual worlds based on the market leading PhysX API.

With this second quarterly driver update, the NVIDIA.com notebook driver now supports GeForce 7, 8, GeForce 9, and DirectX 10-class Quadro NVS branded notebooks. Starting today, customers can download a BETA version of the drivers from NVIDIA

Besides bringing the mobile drivers up to current desktop standards, it's worth noting some of the extra features that are now available. Some of the big ones are CUDA and PhysX support; we may not have any killer apps for PhysX yet, but there are a growing number of CUDA applications and utilities so it's nice to see an official driver release. Many people are now ditching desktop computers completely, preferring the portability of laptops if nothing else, so while performance compromises still need to be made, laptops can be great developer platforms.

Our testing to date has shown improvements in many games, ranging from a few percent in many instances up to substantial boosts on higher-end (especially SLI) systems. It's also important to note that while hacked drivers have been available for NVIDIA laptops for a long time, performance has often been lower than even outdated official drivers – and the hacked drivers rarely worked properly with SLI configs without further hacking, and sometimes not even then. In fact, drivers can be so critical that with NVIDIA now providing quarterly notebook driver releases, it's pretty much impossible for us to even consider recommending anything else for a gaming notebook until the other GPU vendors follow suit.

With all the talk of quarterly mobile drivers, there are a few things we're still left wanting. In an ideal situation, we'd like to see NVIDIA just skip the separate mobile driver idea completely and provide one unified driver that will work with both desktop and laptop parts. As far as we can determine, there's a large amount of overlap between the desktop and mobile drivers already, and all that needs to happen is to modify the driver build/release process so that every driver will work with laptops. It might increase the final download size another 10-20MB, but bandwidth is cheap these days. Now that quarterly driver releases on the mobile side are happening, this really seems like a very small step to take, and we'll be surprised if it doesn't occur at some point in the next year or two. (Note: that's our opinion and not anything NVIDIA has specifically committed to providing.)

The other mobile topic to discuss is the fact that the top-end mobile GPUs are now rather outdated relative to desktops. The fastest current GPU is the 9800M GTX, which has 112 SPs and clock speeds of 500MHz core, 1250MHz shader, and 1600MHz (800MHz GDDR3) memory. What that means is that your fastest mobile GPU is currently at the level of the 8800 GT 512MB desktop parts. In fact, it's actually slower, since the 8800 GT 512 has clocks of 600/1500/1800, plus there's the wide availability of overclocked parts. What does all this mean? It doesn't take much effort to put things together and conclude that NVIDIA will be launching some new mobile GPU parts sooner rather than later. We don't have any specifics, but for anyone serious about mobile gaming it's high time that we see something more recent than a mobile version of a desktop card that launched in October 2007 - which was itself a cost reduced version of the 8800 GTX that came out all the way back in the fall of 2006. Couple an updated high-end GPU with something like the upcoming Clarksfield/Arrandale CPUs, toss in Windows 7 with its revamped power management features, and you have one seriously potent laptop that might even offer improved battery life over current options (in about a year, give or take).

Before you totally discount the idea of "gaming" laptops, we also need to consider the potential that GPGPU computing has to revolutionize the way we use computers. For example, Adobe Photoshop CS4 already has some OpenGL support to dramatically accelerate certain tasks, and we've seen what GPUs can do for video decoding and - albeit to a lesser extent - encoding. Throw in the ability to switch between low power integrated graphics and high performance discreet graphics via Hybrid Power and we may soon be faced with the prospect of buying a laptop with a moderate CPU and a faster GPU as a viable way to improve performance in a variety of applications. Regardless of whether or you're interested in gaming laptops, though, the ready availability of regular driver updates for laptops is long past due, and it's great to see NVIDIA taking care of customers with older laptops.

One fly in the ointment, as some have already noted, is that not all laptops are supported. What's the point of a "generic" mobile driver that doesn't actually work with all laptops, and who is to blame? While we are disappointed by some of the missing SKUs - some of which are very popular brands - the main culprit appears to be the laptop OEMS. NVIDIA is only supporting laptops where the manufacturer has agreed to participate in this program, and it's on a product by product basis. As an example, Dell XPS and Precision notebooks are supported; Latitude and Vostro are not. The reason is that for certain lines, OEMs don't want the risk of non-qualified drivers - business laptops being a prime example. If you happen to own a laptop that is not on the supported list, you might want to contact your laptop support people and suggest that they rethink their decision, giving them some specific examples on when you have been affected by the lack of driver updates. Outside of gaming, we find it's difficult to come up with any situations where regular driver updates are critical, and most business and entry level consumer laptops can't handle many modern titles anyway. In that light, the "omissions" do make sense, even if it will still be a sore point for some users.

Dell's top-end LCD recently made headlines when it disappeared from the Dell website. There has been no official recall of 3008 LCDs already shipped, which leaves some users wondering if they might get stuck owning a $2000 v1.0 lemon. We first heard about the 3008WFP in late 2007, and quite a few were on display at the Dell CES 2008 booth. We've had a standing request in with Dell to get a review sample as soon as possible, but we're still waiting on that. We asked our Dell contacts about the status of the 3008WFP in order to get some clarification. Here's the official word:

"The Dell 3008 monitor has been well received since launch and has been very popular with customers. In February we experienced a small technical issue with the product that has been long resolved. Currently the monitors are on extended lead times and in order to manage demand, the 3008 is not available on dell.com. We are managing orders on a prioritized basis and hope to have the product available to all customers in the near future. The Dell 3007 and 2707 monitors, also very popular with customers, are available at dell.com."

Dell wouldn't go into additional details other than to state that the technical issue is resolved and they are currently playing catch up to fulfill the large demand for the 3008WFP. That is why they are managing orders on a prioritized basis and have (temporarily) removed it from their website. The older 3007WFP remains available, of course.

So what could have caused the problems and who does this affect? We'd love to know more about what may or may not be wrong with the earlier revisions; it could be that any technical issues were corrected before end customers actually started receiving product. [Ed: Speculation Alert! Take the following with a grain of salt.] The most likely culprit for problems would be with the new technologies incorporated into the 3008WFP. For starters, this is the first Dell 2560x1600 LCD to include a hardware scaler. That allows it to support multiple input options, rather than being limited to dual-link DVI. The hardware scaler may also introduce some input lag - something we will be sure to test when we receive our review sample. We do know that of the LCDs we've tested so far, the lowest input lag so far comes on the 30" LCDs we have.

The other new technology is DisplayPort, yet another digital video standard that takes the place of DVI/HDMI. Whether or not DisplayPort is actually necessary is something that can be debated, but as a long-term solution it does offer benefits over DVI. The current standard offers better bandwidth, with support for up to 10.2 Gb/s; that matches HDMI 1.3, and exceeds single-link DVI (3.96 Gb/s) and dual-link DVI (7.92 Gb/s) by a substantial amount. DisplayPort is a packetized protocol, which means it is much easier to increase the bandwidth and capabilities in the future. Perhaps most important is that it is a license-free and royalty-free standard, unlike HDMI, and it still supports audio, unlike DVI. The drawback, of course, is that as a new standard it will require new displays and graphics cards and will likely introduce a short-term price premium relative in devices that support the technology.

All that talk of DisplayPort being a potential cause for the delays does have some other circumstantial evidence to back it up. We received a Dell 2408WFP for review about two months ago - another LCD that supports DisplayPort. Before we could complete the review, however, Dell requested that we send the sample back as it was a pre-production model and the retail versions were not identical. Was this another "technical issue" causing delays? Dell would not confirm; all we know is that the pre-production display performance was "slightly different than what is shipping to customers". However, it did take two months before we received an updated 2408WFP for review. We are happy to report that we now have the 2408WFP and several other 24" LCDs, and we are hard at work on a 24" LCD roundup. [Ed: /speculation]

While we're here talking about Dell's 3008WFP, it's probably a good idea to give our overall take on the 30" LCD market. While the added flexibility of multiple inputs may be useful to some people, if you only plan to connect a 30" LCD to a single PC you're probably best off saving money and buying one of the currently shipping 30" offerings. Unfortunately, we have yet to receive review samples of many of the 30" LCD offerings. However, our favorite so far - in terms of price and features - is the HP LP3065, since you get three dual-link DVI inputs for a reasonable price of $1200-$1300. That's a slight price premium relative to the Dell 3007WFP-HC ($1150-$1200), or you could opt for the more expensive ($1700) Gateway XHD3000 with support for multiple video inputs, similar to the 3008WFP. The Dell and HP LCDs are S-IPS, which we feel puts them at the top of the totem pole in terms of overall quality. However, the Gateway uses an S-PVA panel, and since we haven't used it in person we'll withhold judgment for now.

Shuttle contacted us and other press to invite us to attend a media event with the unveiling of an "exciting new product". If you've followed the industry news at all, you're probably aware that Shuttle has had a difficult time of late, so we were certainly curious to hear about what they might be planning. Part of the difficulty stems from the fact that Shuttle basically staked their fate on the Small Form Factor (SFF) market that they created back in 2001. Interest in SFF computers has been on the decline, in part due to high prices and in part due to reliability concerns. We can say for certain that Shuttle has a new product that addresses at least one of those areas; reliability unfortunately is something that's difficult to gauge in the short-term.

The big announcement is that Shuttle is launching a new product line called "KPC" to compliment their current XPC SFF systems. (The K stands for "Korporate" - because it's kewl to spell words with a K apparently.) The KPC will be available both as a barebones unit as well as a fully functional system. The reason this unit is exciting is that it's the first SFF from Shuttle that can actually qualify as affordable. The barebones case will run $99 while the complete system will cost a mere $199. There's a catch, of course: there's no support for an optical drive (other than via USB), and there are no expansion slots. The removal of these features allowed Shuttle to reduce the size slightly, but while we can probably live with the GMA 950 graphics for basic computer work, the lack of an optical drive is a serious issue. "Hey, let's go out and buy that new Shuttle KPC that costs $99 - all we'll need is a $50 USB optical drive to get our OS installed!" We'd rather have a $50 slim DVDR integrated and pay $150, and we told Shuttle as much. Still, if you're willing to get the pre-built unit you can avoid that hassle. In that case you get a Celeron 420 (1.6GHz 1MB L2), 512MB RAM, 60GB/80GB HDD (because they can't make up their mind), and the Ubuntu OS. Since we appreciate the korporate naming, here are some Shuttle-provided images of the KPC and other Shuttle SFFs.

Another Shuttle product on display is the now-shipping SX38P2 Pro barebones, which is also sold as a complete system with the P2 3800 moniker. It comes with Vista or XP (choose your flavor), dual-core or quad-core CPU (up to QX9650), 1GB to 8GB DDR2, optional 1GB TurboMemory, support for up to three HDDs, CD/DVD/Blu-ray, and a GPU starting at a single HD 3850 and going as high as a single 8800GTX. An updated version sporting the X48 chipset and DDR3 memory will ship in the coming months, although we're not sure why X48 is really necessary. The X48 model will also come with water-cooling for the GPU and CPU. Load up the system and you're looking at prices that can approach (and even surpass) $5000, with 25-50% markups on most of the components. The KPC seems a lot more attractive after pricing out one of these units.

Shuttle also showed a system using the 780a NVIDIA chipset and running a Phenom 9500, a new "surveillance SFF" for the paranoid users, some multimedia systems, and a prototype with a touch-sensitive display and an iPod dock on top. The latter is not ready for shipping and may change significantly before its release, so they would not allow us to take photos. We snapped photos of everything else, including a couple photos of the interior of the X48 unit. We know that Shuttle was anxious to hear our input on their various new designs, and while we provided it we're sure they'd be interested in hearing what our readers might have to say as well. If you've got any comments you'd like to pass along, please do so!

ASUS is most well known in the computer enthusiast market for their motherboards, but they're making headway in the mobile market as well. As part of our CES coverage, ASUS loaned us five of their U1E ultraportable systems, and while we've struggled with slow internet access (Ed: It seems a few hundred thousand others think they need access to the internet as well…), we've been very pleased overall with the user experience the U1E offers. Specifically, it offers a very small and easy to carry device that provides a reasonable keyboard - much better than the too-tiny Eee PC's keyboard - and perhaps most importantly we've been getting over five hours of battery life. It also comes with a convenient suede carrying case and a Bluetooth wireless mouse. But the U1E is yesterday's news, so let's talk a bit about the new ASUS laptop offerings.

The U1E now has a younger sibling that's getting all the attention, the U2E. The glossy exterior is gone, replaced by a much more fingerprint resistant leather surface. The U2E also comes with 32GB of solid state storage, along with the other features present on the U1E like a fingerprint scanner, TPM, 11.1" LCD (1366x768), LED backlighting, 1.5GB RAM, and a webcam. Pricing for the U1E starts at around $2100, and we would expect the U2E to cost even more, but if you want an alternative to the Dell, HP, and Apple laptops everyone else uses and if you like the leather palm rest and exterior, the U2E (and the U1E) are worth a close look. The 1.8" HDD and Core 2 Duo U7500 (1.06GHz) definitely won't set any speed records, but there are many times where battery life trumps raw performance. Black and brown leather coverings are available (and possibly others as well).

ASUS laptops run the gamut from the ultra-expensive Lamborghini model with gold or platinum highlights (yes, real gold or platinum!) through the most powerful gaming laptop ASUS has ever released, the G70 with 8700M GT SLI. The G70 also includes dual HDD drive bays (2x200GB) and a Penryn-based laptop CPU; while the G70 does include a 17" WUXGA LCD, this is not your typical 17" chassis; this is by far the largest 17" chassis we've seen, with a lot of extra space around the borders of the display and keyboard. Other new laptop models include systems with Mobility Radeon HD3650 and GeForce 9500M GS, and the M50 and M70 multimedia models are now available with two Hitachi 500GB 2.5" drives, providing the potential for up to 1TB of total storage. Then there's the updated Eee PC that's in the works with integrated WiMAX support, more storage, and a larger LCD.

Chances are, if you need a new notebook, ASUS has something that will meet your requirements. Note that all of the ASUS laptops (other than the Eee PC) come with a two year warranty with overnight shipping and a zero bright dot LCD guarantee.

One company that many of our readers are likely unfamiliar with is DisplayLink. We received a press release from them prior to CES and decided to stop by and see a demonstration of their products. The concept is pretty simple, and it's not something everyone will benefit from, but if you've ever wanted to add a second display without worrying about upgrading video cards you'll appreciate what they've created. DisplayLink provides technology that allows you to hook up additional displays via a standard USB connection. DisplayLink also has partners like Samsung where the technology is integrated directly into a display - a 19" LCD was released in June with this functionality and more offerings are planned.

If you're quick at math, you're probably already wondering how they manage to deal with the limited bandwidth. DisplayLink says that they're currently doing well with around 200Mbit of throughput, though they are able to scale down quality if necessary. What they have is a software display driver, and they only transmit actual updates over the connection. Ideally, everything is done with lossless quality, but the technology is intelligent enough to deal with reduced bandwidth. Lossy compression comes next, followed by a reduction in color depth, and finally frames are dropped if necessary.

They demonstrated systems running anywhere from one to many additional displays, with static images, animated desktops (running a script), and streaming video content. Depending on the intensity of the content being shown, the experience ranged from very smooth to slightly choppy at times, but for desktop usage patterns we definitely didn't see anything unacceptable. Video streaming even worked reasonably well at moderate resolutions, with full screen 1680x1050 showing some definite loss in quality.

Besides wired USB connections, DisplayLink works with other companies to provide wireless display connectivity. DisplayLink uses WiMedia as the physical UWB (Ultra Wide-Band) communications layer, and on top of that they run the Wireless USB protocol. This isn't something where you'll be able to transmit your display content throughout a large house, but they are working at providing wireless display support within the same room (approximately 15 feet). Throughput within the same room is getting around 120Mbit with the potential for up to 200Mbit. Theoretically, 480Mbit (Wireless USB) is possible, but just like regular USB and WiFi you can't actually get the full bandwidth. Note that WiMedia's maximum bandwidth is #ff0000, but most likely they won't get more than 300Mbit in ideal circumstances. They told us that 802.11x WiFi support didn't work out well due to inconsistencies in throughput - it's not uncommon to get 100Mbit one moment and 30Mbit the next with 802.11n, for example, so they turned to WiMedia and found that the bandwidth consistency was much better.

Resolution support is currently somewhat limited, though more than sufficient for most users. They currently support 1600x1200 maximum (or 1280x1024 on a lower end chip). They are working at providing 1920x1200 with a new chip, which is due to be released later this year. While it's still in beta status, they did provide a live demonstration of 1920x1200 output. Another upcoming development they demonstrated is that Intel has been extremely impressed with their work so far, and since Intel doesn't have any discrete graphics market to protect they worked with DisplayLink to integrate the necessary code directly into some test GMA X3000 drivers. With the improved performance brought about by this change, they were able to demonstrate 720p content with little if any loss in quality.

For our greedy readers (Ed: you know who you are!), you're probably wondering how far you can push this technology in terms of display count. As an example of the extreme end of the spectrum, they had a demonstration of a laptop running six displays (via a single connection to a USB hub). There was definitely a bottleneck in terms of bandwidth in this configuration, but if you aren't planning on streaming video to multiple displays you could easily have multiple monitors all displaying different content. Remember: as long as nothing changes on the display in question, no bandwidth is used. So if you wanted to have a second (or third or fourth…) LCD showing a static document while you work on the main display, this would be a perfect solution. This particular configuration was consuming about 100MB of memory for the DisplayLink software, ~33% of the CPU time (on a Core 2 Duo T7100), while Windows Media Player used another 15-20% to play a video on one of the displays.

Let's get a few other things out of the way now by explaining what DisplayLink does not do very well. For one, gaming support that requires a discrete GPU is basically out of the question. The DisplayLink adapter is a virtual display device with its own resources. It works well enough in Windows - XP and Vista are supported - but certain content obviously has more difficulty running well. Video streaming was demonstrated and it worked well enough, but in full-screen mode at 1680x1050 you can definitely see some choppiness and compression artifacts. We tried to get a demonstration of doing two simultaneous video streams (on Windows Vista - XP only supports overlay mode on one screen at a time, so it's not possible there), but we were unable to do so in the time we had at their suite. However, we do have some hardware to test, so we will look at other options in the near future. DisplayLink also has a version of their software scheduled to come out for OS X in the next few months.

The primary target market appears to be businesses, particularly those looking to improve productivity by adding a second display. However, there are certainly many others that would be interested in using this sort of technology. We will try to get additional information on pricing and availability for the various products.

ASUS gave a live demonstration of WiMAX today at CES, complete with gaming and video streaming. The main concept behind WiMAX is certainly enticing: no more Internet Hotspots! Range of WiMAX should extend several kilometers in metropolitan areas, and as far as 50km in rural areas. Rather than worrying about installing multiple access points and/or repeaters at a business or home, there’s the potential now to have one WiMAX source that covers an entire town.

As an indication of the performance (and readiness) of WiMAX, ASUS used a second generation Eee PC (equipped with WiMAX) to watch a video over the network. There was no display corruption or stalls during the video streaming, but then we’re talking about a demonstration of one laptop at a time using the connection in a closed environment. What about latency? As a second demonstration, one of the presenters loaded up Call of Duty 4 online and was able to play (Ed: poorly – he died quite a few times) without any discernable lag.

Latency and bandwidth for a single laptop thus appear to be fine, but what happens when many people are sharing the same connection? That’s one of the questions that we’ll need to answer over time, but Sprint has obtained at least 30MHz of spectrum in all of the nodes where they are looking at deploying WiMAX. One number that was thrown out is up to 70 Mbits of bandwidth as an upper limit, but the goal is mostly to provide a guaranteed bandwidth per user. Right now, most locations are looking to guarantee between 3Mb and 5Mb of bandwidth per user, which is around 10X faster. Having just spent last night trying to upload/download files over a busy hotel internet connection (and struggling to even get 56K modem performance!), I have to admit to lusting after that sort of bandwidth right now.

ASUS is looking to push WiMAX and their partners (Intel and Sprint) are looking to push WiMAX heavily in the second half of this year. The plan is to get WiMAX into several new notebooks priced at under $1000. The updated Eee PC will also be available at “an attractive price point” – we’re guessing $500 or less, though we could be off. The updated Eee should be available in Q2’08. Their goal is to have 20% of computer users experience using WiMAX by the end of 2009.

As ASUS pointed out, they’ve done great in the motherboard market, but they were slow to jump on the laptop bandwagon. They are now aiming to correct the situation, and we have been quite happy with several of the ASUS laptops that we’ve used. ASUS was kind enough to provide AnandTech with several U1E 10” ultraportable laptops for CES, and we have been quite pleased with the performance and battery life these laptops provide. If we could get better Internet performance – and coverage from one source spanning the whole city – we would be ecstatic.

The other major question people want the answer to is pricing. Sprint did not provide exact details, other than to say they plan on making it “affordable”. What exactly does that mean? When pressed for details, Sprint indicated that they expect it to be equal to or cheaper than 3G internet access. Let’s hope they can err on the side of being less expensive, because we would love to see widespread, good performance internet access. Provided sufficient bandwidth is available and the price is right, WiMAX could prove extremely interesting.

Behold, the power of a single button! It's amazing how much trouble you can cause with something so simple. Wars have been started (okay - mostly fictional), people have died, and computer hardware has refused to work… all because of a little round object yelling "PUSH ME!" But I'm getting ahead of myself; let me back up a bit. This weekend was pretty interesting in terms of computer problems. One issue turned out to be minor, affecting one person; the other was quite a bit more painful and affected many people. Naturally, I'm going to comment on the one that affected the single person, in part because I'm the one person, and in part because I just don't know enough about the other issue. It all started Friday evening….

I have two systems that I use on a regular basis, my work computer and my play computer. Neither system is a slouch, but sometimes it's just a bit safer to keep work separated from play. The work computer contains a CrossFire X1950 XTX graphics configuration running in a 975X motherboard, paired with an overclocked QX6700 (10x333 = 3.33GHz), so the system is obviously capable of running games. The gaming computer on the other hand runs a single 8800 GTX on a P965 motherboard with an overclocked E4400 (9x333 = 3.0GHz). Bolth systems are running Windows Vista 32-bit with 2GB of memory. Despite the fact that I just called these my work and play computers, the problem occurred on my work system, and it involved running a game.

It begins with CrossFire; for whatever reason CrossFire never worked properly on the system, at least under Windows Vista. At one point, I actually thought I fried one of the graphics cards because whenever I enabled CrossFire mode I experienced severe graphical corruptions - flickering blue or green spots, often an indication that memory is failing. I decided I would try the latest AMD ATI Catalyst drivers (upgrading from version 7.8) to see if things were any better. The good news is, CrossFire now appears to work on the system (more or less) and I'm no longer experiencing graphical corruption. Not surprisingly, after loading up a game for a quick test (Half-Life 2: Episode Two), I ended up staying a bit longer.

While gaming, I eventually noticed that the audio didn't sound correct. I checked the audio settings and configured the game for 5.1 audio, then I exited the game in order to fix my Windows speaker settings. As expected, Windows was configured for two speakers, which I corrected. And that's where the trouble started.

Windows Vista includes a little audio which it that lets you verify the speakers are working properly. You click on a picture of a speaker and it makes a sound. Four of the six speakers worked properly; the center speaker and a subwoofer... nada! I also checked a few games, and discovered that there were definitely some problems. In F.E.A.R. for example, I could hear music but I couldn't hear any of the weapons fire or explosions. (I noticed this while verifying that CrossFire was working.) If my brain were functioning, I wouldn't be writing this blog entry, but even the best of us make mistakes on occasion. Being a complete electronics nerd, I naturally overlooked any simple explanation and started trying to troubleshoot things. (KISS - that's "Keep It Simple, Stupid" - is only for wusses, right?)

My first thought: maybe the overclock is causing problems. Restart, enter BIOS, update settings, save and exit... nope. I recently moved, so the next guess was that I had connected my speakers improperly, so I began fidgeting with the wires on the subwoofer. I eventually determined that all of the speakers were working, so obviously the problem had to be the integrated audio on my motherboard.

Now, I had a Sound Blaster X-Fi card that I removed from this system when I upgraded to Windows Vista. For whatever reason, Creative's card really didn't like my motherboard, causing BSODs and/or a hard-locked system as soon as I installed the drivers. The latest Catalyst drivers fixed my CrossFire problem, however, so I was willing to give it a second shot. Thus began several hours of downloading drivers, installing them, watching my system crash, swapping around cards, changing BIOS settings, etc. I never did manage to get the X-Fi card to work properly, though I did hear corrupted audio playback a few times before the system crashed.

At this point, I was seriously flummoxed. I played quite a few games on this system several months ago - back when it was my gaming computer and I was using an Opteron 165 as my work computer - and I knew that there were no problems with the audio back then. Either I messed something up while moving last month, or I was overlooking something. I retraced my steps, re-examined my assumptions, and finally the light clicked on upstairs:

Does anyone else out there use Logitech Z-640 speakers? If so, you're probably laughing at me right now. Logitech, in their wisdom, included a "Matrix 3D" button on the center speaker. It takes stereo audio sources and plays them on all five speakers. I've never really cared for the effect, and truthfully I forgot all about this option. Unfortunately, Matrix 3D also appears to cause problems when you're not playing a stereo audio source, problems like your center speaker and subwoofer no longer making sounds. DOH! Apparently, the button got pressed during the move. Push button, reassemble computer (after removing the X-Fi card), and in less than a minute everything is back to normal… minus five hours of my life.

It's too bad that not all computer problems are as easy to fix. I'm sure our server admin would have been thrilled if the server issues we experienced early Monday morning could be fixed by pushing a button. Moral of the story: Don't forget to KISS and make up when your computer has problems; the real culprit might be staring you in the face.

Judging by comments I've seen on some forums, it seems like many enthusiasts may skip by Hellgate: London, as the demo failed to impress. Not only did I buy it… I finished the single-player game. While that might put me in a good position to review the game, I've only played as one character class (and I tried out a couple other classes but only in limited fashion at present) so I can't really say I've had the full experience. The problem is, I really can't bring myself to start over and try out the other options. I'm not much into multiplayer games these days either, so I'm pretty much done with the game unless we start trying to benchmark it. After playing it on and off for the past month, though, I'm not sure it's worth the trouble. Sure, it stresses a system, but that alone doesn't make for a great benchmark. It's sort of like benchmarking with 3DMark: all the benchmarks really tell you is how well a system runs 3DMark; the results may or may not correlate at all with many other titles. But I digress; the point of this blog post is that I thought I'd give my thoughts on the game.

Hellgate: London is a lot like Diablo/Diablo 2, and yet it's also very different. The first-person perspective (I played a marksman) is actually somewhat cool for an action-RPG, but it makes the game feel more like an FPS instead of an RPG. Suffice it to say, as an FPS this game falls way short of titles like Crysis, Call of Duty 4, Gears of War, etc. I have to admit that while I played Diablo and Diablo 2 a whole lot, the more I played the less I liked either game. The whole running around clicking on stuff to kill it just got old, but you still wanted to see the end game at least once, and then you wanted to try to build up some of the equipment sets to turn your character into a righteous, demon-slaying superhero. Hellgate: London tries for that same feel, but ultimately falls short - or maybe I've just outgrown the genre. Diablo 2 ate over 200 hours of my life over time, but after less than 40 hours exploring Hell-ravaged London I think I'm done.

The Quest for Equipment

Probably the biggest draws for Hellgate (and similar games) are acquiring "phat loot" and seeing the next cool area. I'll deal with areas later, but let's start with equipment. You run around killing creatures in the hope of getting the Next Big Upgrade, just as you do in various MMOs and other action-RPGs. Hellgate has a ton of items you can find throughout the game, but after a while it all blurs together. One of the big problems is that there are no equipment sets - you have standard equipment, enhanced equipment, rare equipment, legendary equipment, and at the top you have unique equipment. (As was the case in Diablo, unique equipment isn't actually unique - I saw one particular item on three separate occasions; I even had the item sitting in my storage chest when I found another.) Sets appear to be part of the subscription online service but not the single-player game, which is a mistake as the lure of trying to complete sets is what kept many people (or at least me) playing Diablo/2 long past the point where I otherwise would have quit.

You can enhance equipment with various upgrades, which come in two forms: artifacts and attributes. Weapons have a seemingly random amount of space for artifact upgrades, each of which can improve damage and other aspects by 5%~20%. The result is that a lower quality base (non-magic) item with a lot of upgrade slots can actually end up being far more powerful than a legendary item if the legendary only allows four upgrades and the base item allows seven. The type of artifact upgrades also varies - there are five different classes of artifact - but other than minor differences in name and appearance, the five artifact classes don't seem to really matter.

Base equipment with many artifact slots has another advantage, in that you can add more attributes at Augmentrex 3000 stations. You can purchase single enhanced/rare/legendary stats to equipment for a fee, up to (I think) five attributes. However, these are random attributes and the cost is so extreme that this is something you will probably use on rare occasions if at all. Often you will find a legendary/unique item drop that has most of what you need without spending tons of time and money - well, time yes, but less time in the long run than if you were to sell everything you find in order to save up money to purchase upgrades.

Buying items from vendors is something else I didn't do much after the first 30 minutes, as the vendors never seemed to have anything worth purchasing. The exchange rate for high-end equipment is also terrible, as usual, so after selling a truckload of legendary items you would only be able to afford purchasing a single legendary item back… but the vendors never carried any legendary items in my playing so this is a moot concern. Anyway, money wasn't a major problem for me, and instead of focusing on getting cash I spent most of my time dismantling items in order to upgrade other equipment at the Nanoforges. So let's talk about that.

Everyone remembers that awesome item that you found early in a game of Diablo that you eventually had to get rid of because it was simply no longer as powerful as when you first picked it up - eventually even basic magical equipment in the later stages of the game would surpass the damage inflicted by early unique items. Hellgate gets around that somewhat by allowing you to upgrade items. There are four different base materials, each of which comes in a standard and a "rare" form, for a total of eight different materials that can be required to upgrade or forge any equipment - more on forging in a moment. (No upgrades/forging will actually require more than five of the eight materials, though - at least not that I encountered.) Any equipment you find throughout the game can be dismantled into its base materials, and when you have enough of these materials you can then take one of your items to a Nanoforge and upgrade it. You can only upgrade items to match your character level (you'll get a "you need more experience" message otherwise), and while the upgrading won't change any of the other aspects of an item, it does keep your equipment more or less "current" with your character level. There's a maximum amount you can upgrade any particular item - 10 times? - but it takes a while to reach that point.

Tinkers are another use for material components. They're like vendors, but instead of selling items for money, they have a randomly selected type of item that they can forge from raw materials. They have rare, legendary, and even unique items on a regular basis, something that the regular merchants lack. However, they only deal with certain equipment types at a time, so often they aren't offering something you can even use let alone want. If you specifically want a new helmet, you might have to visit dozens of times before a tinker is offering to forge helmets, and even then they might not offer anything in your "size". Tinkers seem most useful for getting high-end artifacts to upgrade your weapons, since artifacts are class agnostic - if your weapon takes a battery upgrade, you can use any battery of the appropriate level.

All the equipment options all sound good, but in practice it almost seems too much. Artifacts, forges, and upgrades… oh my! At least in my first run through the game in single-player mode, once I found a good weapon (or other equipment), I often ended up using the same thing for a long time. Throughout the game I probably used six weapons for most of my fighting - one machine gun at the start, a grenade launcher, a rocket launcher, two sniper rifles, and one heavy rifle. Of those, the heavy rifle and sniper rifle saw the most action - the heavy for groups of creatures and for blowing up crates and barrels (it was really like a rocket launcher that only fired one exploding projectile), and the sniper for picking off creatures from a distance. A large portion of my time was spent grabbing dropped items from creatures and then quickly scrapping all of them when my inventory was full.

The other concern is that there are three different equipment classes, each of which serves two of the six character classes. Some of the enhancements won't even apply to your character since they are for the other class, so for example as a marksman none of the minion enhancements did nothing for me - I never had a single minion throughout the game. The engineer skills on some equipment I could wear also served no purpose. The result is that roughly two thirds of the items you find are completely unusable. This sort of happened with Diablo as well, but Diablo focused on stat requirements - any character could use any item, provided they had the required stats. You might not be able to use a bow with a warrior character as effectively as an archer can use a bow, but it was at least an option. In single-player Hellgate: London, there is absolutely nothing for you to do other than dismantle or sell equipment that your character can't use. In multi-player, you can try to sell/trade it, but my experience with the online game is that most people didn't pay much attention to messages.

As a final comment on equipment, I suppose some people will like the process of trying to balance equipment requirements with your stats, but as the game progresses this becomes increasingly difficult. The basic equipment requirements are reasonable, but all of the artifact enhancements that you can apply can begin to push stat requirements to the point where you are not able to use an item. You can pay to remove all of the artifacts from an item and start over, which you will almost certainly have to do a couple times for each weapon. The problem here is that artifacts have a set level, so as you upgrade your equipment at the Nanoforge you eventually reach the point where some of the artifacts are too low-level for use. They stay in effect as long as you don't remove the artifacts, but once you do you will need to have new artifacts ready.

The stat requirements matter, because later in the game the monsters seemed to be scaling in difficulty faster than my weapons and equipment, in part because my stats weren't high enough to use all of the best artifact and other items I acquired. Obviously, it wasn't impossible, but some of the battles took quite a bit of time, and things became decidedly less "fun". I felt like I was trying to figure out how to manipulate the system in order to win fights rather than playing a game. In the final level, I was lucky enough to have three of the boss creatures not come hunt me down when I attacked from range with a sniper rifle; they still required about 50 shots, but at least I didn't keep dying…. I guess things might be different for other character classes, but at least these are my experiences with the marksman class.

That's a lot of talk about equipment, but from my perspective the item hunting was a huge part of Hellgate. Without the items, I don't think I could have even finished the game. It got old, it got repetitious, and yet I still played on thinking maybe the next boss character would give me a cool upgrade. Once every several hours I was proved right. Even as negative as I sound right now, I still started the game as a different class recently to see how things changed - and they did change quite a bit in terms of combat. I have sort of this love/hate relationship with Hellgate now. It's not great, but there hasn't been a good action-RPG in a while (since Titan's Quest and its expansion) and it's still sort of fun. The six character classes do play different enough in my limited experience that many people might spend an extra 12 hours with the game just trying them all out. What Hellgate has then is quantity - equipment, levels, items, classes, etc. The question is whether or not it has enough quality.

Technological Considerations

One of the interesting things about Hellgate - at least from a hardware enthusiast perspective - is how much it stresses the hardware in your system. I didn't try to benchmark the game on a bunch of different computers at different settings - Anand and Derek have more GPUs and CPUs on hand, so I really couldn't do justice to this area anyway. I simply grabbed my fastest system (Core 2 Duo E6400 overclocked to 3.0GHz with 2GB RAM and an 8800 GTX), found some playable detail settings, and set about playing. This is, needless to say, a system with plenty of oomph… and yet it struggled with Hellgate at maximum detail settings.

The reason for the sluggish performance despite graphics that definitely aren't at the level of, say, Crysis (or Bioshock or several other titles) seems to be the design approach. Many of the levels/areas are randomly generated, which means that the rendering engine has to deal with a different type of content. Rendering a game world in 3D in real-time is one thing, especially when you perform a bunch of optimizations in advance so that the system knows it doesn't have to calculate certain things from some areas. Doing all of that with more or less randomly generated content is a lot more complex. It seems likely that Flagship was forced to reduce overall graphics complexity to keep performance manageable.

On my test (re: "play") system, the game defaulted to maximum ("Very High") detail settings on all areas, but that was with a 1024x768 resolution. It was playable that way, but I wanted the native 1920x1200 of my LCD, so I ended up turning down some detail settings from Very High to High. You can see above where I ended up settling. There were occasional stutters, but overall the experience was fine. I would suspect that performance on GeForce 8800 GT hardware is close enough to the 8800 GTX that 1920x1200 is not a problem with a few tweaks. I initially disabled DX10 graphics, as performance was pretty rough, but you can turn on DX10 mode provided you're willing to turn down other settings.

In terms of DX9 vs. DX10, the differences aren't very noticeable. It seemed at times that the DX10 version stuttered more, but in later testing this wasn't as apparent. A patch may have addressed it - we'll have to look into it more. Here's a quick screenshot comparison showing the DX9 and DX10 versions of the game.

DX10 gives a slightly tweaked look to portals, though why this isn't possible in DX9 is beyond me, as it doesn't seem all that complex. The only other major difference is that soft shadows are used in DX10 mode. Particle effects might also be better, but if so I didn't immediately notice. I encountered periodic slowdowns with large explosions, particularly in rooms with metal grating on walkways, but this didn't consistently happen. It may simply be a bug that needs fixing, and it occurred to varying degrees in both DX9 and DX10 mode. Anyway, while the DX10 graphics are somewhat better it isn't such a striking difference that you need to worry about not being able to run the DX10 mode. Windows XP users can happily avoid Vista for a while longer.

As a final note, I did see that Hellgate appears to use a significant amount of CPU power, including making use of multiple cores. I haven't had a chance to test with quad-core, but on my dual-core setup it used 100% of core one and around 30-60% of core two. As a hardware geek, I'd really like to know more about how they're using the second core and what impact it has on the game. It may be providing extra physics effects, improved graphics, or something else. Either way, it's nice to see that their multi-core support isn't totally bottlenecked by the GPU.

The Rest of the Story

To wrap up, let me talk a bit about the storyline. The story in Diablo is that hell and heaven are fighting over Earth - or at least Tristam. Where the Tristam setting is in the medieval era, Hellgate: London takes place in future-London. The actual dialog and quests are different, but otherwise you're looking at the same basic premise: all hell is breaking loose on Earth and it's up to you to stop it. There's no soul shard, but instead of angles and devils we have Truth (yes - capitalized!) and demons. There may be more to the back-story if you choose to search out such information, but purely by playing the game you end up with this impression that there's a lot more to the story and you're only getting a Cliff-notes version of what's happening.

Most of the quests have you running off and killing a single monster or a group of monsters, collecting an item(s) from creatures you kill, or sometimes activating certain items within a level. It gets repetitive, and the dialog boxes that show up with these quests add nothing to the big picture. Various Templar in the game react to some of the events as though they're obviously important, but if you were to go by the short text clips and cut scenes, you'd likely be scratching your head - I know I was. The ending sequence also leaves things wide open for a sequel - perhaps not Hellgate: Seattle, but the story definitely isn't over. The sum of the parts isn't necessarily bad, but the story definitely isn't at the level of games like Bioshock, and I would say it's less satisfying than Diablo 2.

The number of different level tile sets is also quite limited. Offhand I can think of: outdoor cityscape, indoor subways, indoor hallways, indoor cathedrals, indoor crypt/dungeon... there might be one or two other areas I'm missing, but most of these areas end up looking very similar. While the levels and artwork may feel consistent, it ends up being... consistently dull. There are certain levels that are static, but even these often feel the same as other area - only with layouts that maybe lend themselves to a specific battle.

I've read a few reviews, I bought the game, I played it, I even beat it. I haven't tried the multiplayer component because that really isn't a major concern to me. The bottom line is that if you enjoyed Diablo, there's probably a lot here that you will like. It will eat about as much CPU/GPU as you can throw at it, and while the graphics are nowhere near Crysis in quality, they're still good and at times great. I still left with the sense that things could have been better, particularly in the area of the story. You can play the game as long as you like, really, constantly looking for bigger and better items. It you pay for a monthly subscription - ugh… don't even get me started! In-game advertisements and they still want us to fork over $10 per month? - you get additional items and content as far as I can discern, but truth be told by the time I played through the game once (around 30 hours) I don't have much desire to return to London. But let's talk about the multiplayer aspect quickly.

Frankly, I'm not really qualified to evaluate the multiplayer experience - it's not my general interest. One thing I can't fathom, however, is people spending $10 per month to continue playing a game for which they already paid $50, all for a few minor updates that should have been included as part of the game already. That was one thing Blizzard got right with Battle.net, and for Flagship Studios to make a second tier pay-for-play environment is a huge mistake. There may be some financial execs with dollar signs in their eyes imagining all the people paying extra to get ahead in Hellgate, but I think the reaction will be the exact opposite. After the in-game ads (which I really didn't find distracting), that they're trying to milk even more money out of the online community is unacceptable to me. Here's what you get for $10 per month:

• Hardcore Mode
• Guild Creation and Management
• Larger Stash
• Themed Events and Quests
• Unique Event Items
• Special Event Pets
• New Levels to Explore
• New Monsters

You also get:

• New Weapons
• New Skills and Spells
• New Character Classes
• Raid-Level Areas
• Seasonal / Themed Events and Items
• Additional Difficulty and Game Play Modes
• Additional PvP Modes and Rewards
• Achievement Rewards
• Advanced Guild Management Tools
• Web-based Rankings and Character Viewing
• Achievement Rewards
• Advanced Guild Management Tools
• Web-based Rankings and Character Viewing

You can chalk me up as being decidedly underwhelmed, but then I have never subscribed to an MMO. Many of the items in that list are things that just shouldn't be subscriber content, and how important the others are will depend on how frequently they come into play. New weapons, skills, classes, levels, game modes, etc. all sound somewhat interesting, but it they only appear infrequently it won't mean much. Two months is $20, and that's enough to buy most expansion packs. If fundamental aspects of the game play don't change, however, it's difficult to imagine most of the above items mattering in the long run. Then again, I never have understood the people that play Everquest, World of Warcraft, etc. for months on end, so it could be those gamers will love what Flagship offers. Time will tell….

Hellgate represents what many fear in the gaming world: it took a long time to develop, it involves many people (judging by the end credits, it's probably as big as many blockbuster movies), the graphics boast many of the latest buzzwords… and yet for all the technological advances it's a step back in other areas. That so much time and energy from talented people could go into the game and yet still fail to impress is scary. Wrapping this up, as this is already waaaay too long, you're probably thinking I hate Hellgate: London. That's not actually true. I really enjoyed it at first, but the more I played the less satisfied I became. I had similar feelings with Diablo/2, but I didn't reach saturation level so quickly. I may simply be an older curmudgeon, so those of you who didn't walk to school uphill in the snow can probably disregard much of my complaining. If you want a score, I'm going to stick with the standard school grading scale. This is a B overall, bordering on a B-. It gets many things right, but something got lost in the big picture. Patches and other minor changes can address some of the issues, but you might need to subscribe to get the improved experience. If the subscription service didn't exist, I'd be more forgiving and the game might rate closer to a B+ instead.

The bottom line is that Hellgate: London will almost certainly appeal to fans of the genre, particularly those who liked Diablo and to a lesser extent Titan's Quest. Those are both spiritual sequels to the Diablo throne, and they diverge from their predecessor in different ways. The near-future setting in Hellgate is a nice change from the standard fantasy fare, even if it ends up not making a huge difference in terms of actual game play. At the end of the day, whether you kill demons or devils with bows, guns, or something else... well, there's only so many times you can do that before it wears thin.

We probably see a lot more computer hardware over the course of a year than most people are likely to use in a decade. (Okay, some enthusiasts might go through a lot of hardware, but I'm talking about your everyday average Joe.) For one reason or another, not all of the hardware we actually see ends up getting a full review. Some of it fails and the manufacturer decides not to send back a replacement, sometimes the manufacturer discontinues the product before we finish the review… whatever. The point is, we get our grubby little paws on a lot of different hardware, which hopefully means we are able to provide better advice on what's hot and what's not, even if we haven't personally tested every aspect of every device.

Since I began doing notebook reviews, I've received various email messages asking for help with a problem. Sometimes it's just a setting or feature they don't understand, but often it's about a flaw or some other difficulty. Usually, my response for hardware issues is that they will have to contact the manufacturer. After all, unless I encountered the same issue during testing, I really have no idea what's going on. I can't touch the notebook and try to troubleshoot things, and since I don't work for the manufacturer I have no idea if this is a single fluke incident or if there is a bigger problem. Regardless of how experienced a user might claim to be, there's always the potential for user error.

As an example issue, consider a laptop that's crashing during heavy use. We frequently comment about how hot some laptops can get, and though we often use "laptop" and "notebook" interchangeably, there are certain notebooks we really would not enjoy having on our laps. Similarly, we wouldn't think about running them while they rest on top of some soft cloth, particularly on models where there's a lot of ventilation on the bottom. I once had a contact that was experiencing instability while gaming… on his couch, in the winter, with a blanket on his lap. The laptop was sitting on top of the blanket. While he was certainly keeping warm that way, the laptop was also warm… a bit too warm. Other laptops however have been known to overheat even while sitting on a flat, hard surface. So what do you do when a formerly stable laptop starts having problems? That's what I wanted to discuss.

I'm not the type of person that typically worries about warranties; by the time you actually need to use your warranty, it's often too late. The other side of the coin is that frequently you encounter problems with a particular component and it breaks during the first couple of months, so purchasing an additional warranty isn't necessary. I've known people that work in the car industry, and most money put into extended warranties ends up being pure profit for the dealership. The manufacturer knows how well-built their vehicle is, and few problems will occur during the warranty period for most users - or even during the extended warranty period. Basically, what you end up doing is purchasing peace of mind.

I usually have the opinion that when it comes to computers - speaking about full systems here, not individual components, since most individual components often carry a two or three year manufacturer warranty - if you take the money you would have put into purchasing an extended warranty and simply save it, over time you will almost certainly come out ahead. (The same is probably true for cars, too.) You might periodically have to replace a part in your computer that breaks after the first year, but only on rare occasions. I supported almost 200 computers as a network administrator for a while. Very few had problems during the first year, a small percentage had difficulties (failed motherboards, power supplies, memory) the second year, and by the end of the third year we had probably had repairs performed on close to one third of the systems. (The fourth year was looking even worse, but I left a few months into my fourth year.)

By that point in time, of course, we were getting old, outdated hardware fixed, when what we really wanted was new hardware. The extra $300 per system almost certainly ended up costing more than if we had been able to handle all of the service and repairs internally, but that's not the way most big businesses want to run. Of the ~200 systems, 160 were desktops, 20 were servers, and 15 were laptops. The servers, I should note, experienced a total of three hardware failures while I was there, but what happened with the laptops?

Rather than a failure rate of roughly 33% after three years, we had issues with maybe 15% of the laptops in the first year. By the end of the second year, every single battery had been replaced, but beyond that we had various failures on at least half of the laptops. After three years, I doubt there was a single laptop that hadn't experienced some sort of failure outside of the battery (screen, keyboard, HDD, and various motherboard issues were common).

Not surprisingly, laptops go through a lot more use and abuse than your typical desktop computer. No matter how careful a person you tend to be, given enough time using a laptop it will almost certainly experience a few bumps and bruises. "Oops - tripped over the power cord!" Even the simple act of putting a laptop in the carrying case and hauling it back and forth to work every day is likely to create problems down the road. Imagine picking up your desktop system and shaking it around for 15 minutes or so twice per day; it doesn't matter how well you put the thing together, eventually that will have a negative impact on the system.

I tested quite a few laptops during the past year or so, and frankly I'm shocked at how many minor issues have occurred - usually after I finished with the review, unfortunately. Those tiny little fans seem to get louder and louder as the months go by, which can result in overheating/stability problems. Replacing those fans isn't as easy as swapping a case fan on a desktop, and if you get a "normal" warranty you're faced with the prospect of shipping your laptop away for a few days to get it fixed. I had one laptop that developed a short somewhere - probably in the motherboard - and if you bumped it at just the right spot, it would BSOD/restart. Let's not even get talk about how frequently people damage hinges or LCDs.

The bottom line is that, were I to go out and buy my own laptop today, I can guarantee I would purchase something with a three-year warranty and accidental damage protection. There's still a chance that I will never need the warranty coverage, meaning I probably spent $400 extra, but outside of minor items like hard drives, optical drives, batteries (which often aren't covered anyway), and memory, most repairs to a laptop can end up costing a decent chunk of change. If you need a new motherboard, the cost to replace one on an 18-month-old laptop might be high enough that you simply decide to purchase a new laptop instead. You'll still be missing a dear friend if your laptop happens to attack your pet and get chewed up in the process - that's why they call them "limited warranties" - but at least you might still have a laptop to use at the end of the day. We should also note that given the potential for data loss due to a failed hard drive or a stolen laptop, you should continue to make regular backups of important data. Outside of something inexpensive like the ASUS Eee PC, however, you probably don't want to be stuck footing the bill trying to repair your 13-month-old laptop.