Processor battle: 10 high-end notebooks tested

Pioneer Powerbook AMD 8355 (AMD)

Pioneer Powerbook AMD 8355The Pioneer is a very well built quality notebook with decent competitive performance figures and a great BatteryMark score considering the specs of the unit.

The Pioneer has an AMD Athlon 64 3200+ CPU, 512MB RAM, a 60GB HDD unit, a 15in screen, and a CD-RW/DVD-RW optical drive.

The keyboard is laid out very well with a nice tactile feedback. The cursor control is via a trackpad that seems slightly smaller than most and at times we felt that we were running out of space when using it; it's certainly not designed for those amongst us with sausage fingers.

The quality of the display is also very impressive. While in the middle of the road as far as connectivity goes, the inclusion of the flash memory slots, the manual volume control, and the DVD-RW burner certainly make this unit worth a second look. Not to mention the fact that is an AMD Athlon 64 processor with almost three hours run time on the batteries.

The question remains, does anyone really need a 64-bit processor in their notebook? Are you likely to crack the 4GB memory barrier doing database crunching or statistical analysis on the 6.05 from Central Station? Or is this innovation more likely to appeal to the graphics professionals and games aficionados?

 High-end notebooks

 Notebook reviews:
 Acer Travelmate 800
 Acer Ferrari 3000LMi
 AOpen B165
 Dell Latitude D505
 IBM ThinkPad G40
 Pioneer Powerbook AMD 8355
 QDI Alacritas 520-K8
 Sony Vaio PCG-GRT40
 Toshiba Tecra M2
 TPG Widescreen Notebook

 Specifications
 How we tested
 Look out for...
 Sample scenarios
 Editor's choice
 Final words
 About RMIT
Product Pioneer Powerbook AMD 8355
Price AU$2999
Vendor Pioneer
Phone 02 9690 2888
Web www.pioneercomputers.com.au
 
Interoperability
Excellent feature set.
Futureproofing
Good expansion potential.
ROI ½
Performance is quite good, particularly graphics. Price and quality is competitive with the other notebooks in this review.
Service
One-year warranty is average, but three years labour is included.
Rating ½

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Talkback 3 comments

  1. I'm surprised that in a 'high-end desktop replacement notebook' category Dell didn't think to submit their new Inspiron 9100. To quote from Reuben Lee, ZDNet, 04 March 2004 'The Inspiron 9100 is probably one of the best notebooks arou Anonymous -- 30/04/04

    I'm surprised that in a 'high-end desktop replacement notebook' category Dell didn't think to submit their new Inspiron 9100.

    To quote from Reuben Lee, ZDNet, 04 March 2004

    'The Inspiron 9100 is probably one of the best notebooks around that can truly replace the desktop PC, offering speed and excellent 3D graphics performance.'

    Having just purchased one I would have to agree.

    I would have truly liked to have seen this cat set amongst these pigeons.

    What was Dell thinking?

  2. Hi... great review... although a little thin on specific details. I'm just wondering if it is really fair to strip any additional memory if (for the indicated price) that is what is included in the package. In the end, are we not buying the laptop for Anonymous -- 24/05/04

    Hi... great review... although a little thin on specific details. I'm just wondering if it is really fair to strip any additional memory if (for the indicated price) that is what is included in the package. In the end, are we not buying the laptop for the package and performance as the manufacturers provide and intend to?

    Also, I'm very interested in the new LG/IBM Xnote series laptops. Are there any specific reasons as to why LG didn't provide you with their latest laptop? Could it be due to the lack of supply (as I have learnt that they have all but been sold out)? Could you please do a review on the LG laptop, separately, and verify their claim of having 10 hours of battery life?

    Thank you!

  3. I've just bought the A-open B165 and am very happy with it. This system can be bought without an operating system, with any size 3.5" hard disk (E-IDE or SATA), any Pentium IV Celeron or Northwood processor and any combination of RAM modules. The Opt Anonymous -- 06/07/04

    I've just bought the A-open B165 and am very happy with it. This system can be bought without an operating system, with any size 3.5" hard disk (E-IDE or SATA), any Pentium IV Celeron or Northwood processor and any combination of RAM modules. The Optical drive is removable and can be replaced with a DVD-writer, and the monitor can be removed (for those who just want to carry their work system off-base every night and take it home to plug into an external CRT/LCD). All up, it's an extremely flexible platform and suits my needs very well. As for the lack of Infra-Red, Bluetooth, PCMCIA and Compact Flash: why be paying for these 'feautures' if you're not going to use them? It does have a parallel printer port, Firewire and 5 USB 2.0 ports and that suits me just fine.

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