QDI Alacritas 520-K8 (AMD)
The QDI and TPG notebooks are both virtually identical and obviously come from the same factory. The only major difference is that the TPG notebook is in a widescreen 15in 16:9 format with an AMD Athlon XP-M processor while the QDI machine has a 15in 4:3 format and an AMD Athlon 64 K8. QDI tells us it will also have a widecreen model available in the near future.
The Alacritas 520-K8 notebook as the name suggests houses an AMD Athlon 64 K8 3200+ processor. It has 1GB of memory and a 60GB HDD unit; the optical drive is a DVD-R burner. This unit would certainly be aimed at replacing the upper level of most desktops.
The keyboard is of very good quality with the keys being raised slightly higher than the average notebook keyboard.
Of particular note was the boot time of this notebook, going from fully off to ready to start opening application in less than 27 seconds. Overall this unit is certainly worthy of consideration. The onboard wireless LAN is 802.11g which is 54Mbps which is a bonus. The built-in network port is 10/100Mbps however 1Gbps is available as an option. There is no Bluetooth or support for flash memory cards. If you need a 64-bit processor, then this is definitely the one to go for.
| Product | QDI Alacritas 520-K8 |
| Price | AU$3395 |
| Vendor | QDI |
| Phone | 1800 660 280 |
| Web | www.qditech.com.au |
| Interoperability |  ½ |
| Good feature set, DVD burner is a plus. | |
| Futureproofing |  ½ |
| Better than average expansion capabilities. | |
| ROI |  |
| Relatively expensive, would be good priced less than $3K. Performance is not too bad. | |
| Service |  |
| Two-year onsite warranty is good. | |
| Rating |  ½ |
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?