A handsome and affordable thin-and-light that doesn’t last long enough on a charge.
The Averatec 2260-EK1 is an affordably priced notebook with sleek lines and a nice 12.1-inch widescreen display. Its dual-layer DVD burner is a nice perk for the price, but the poor battery life makes this system less than ideal for anything but the shortest of road trips.
Weighing in at 4.2-pounds, the 1.4-inch–thick 2260 is quite easy to tote around. The exterior casing has an attractive black matte finish with silver trim. The inside is all silver, including the full-sized keyboard, which was responsive and roomy. The scrolling touchpad maintains the same aspect ratio as the display and supports four-way scrolling. The mouse buttons were intermittently sluggish, requiring several clicks to get the job done.
The 12.1-inch, widescreen display has a maximum resolution of 1280 x 800. The LCD is brightly lit, courtesy of the company’s AveraBrite LCD technology, and provides a nice viewing angle for watching movies.
A dual-layer/multiformat DVD burner shares space with a FireWire port and the power jack on the left side of the notebook; three USB ports and a 15-pin VGA video output are on the right. A 4-in-1 memory card reader, a Wi-Fi switch, and two audio jacks are located on the left front bezel.
An 80GB hard drive provides ample storage, but it’s a slower, 4,200-rpm model. The 2260 handles up to 2GB of memory, but you can’t order a maxed-out configuration on the company’s Web site.
The 2260 is powered by a 1.8-GHz AMD Turion 64 MT-32 processor, which is designed specifically for thin-and-light notebooks. This CPU coupled with 1GB of DDR memory enabled this system to turn in a respectable MobileMark 2005 score of 193, not bad for a non dual-core system. With a 3DMark03 score of only 443, the 2260 simply won’t be able to handle 3D graphics.
The 2260’s biggest weakness is its lack of endurance, as it lasted only 1 hour and 38 minutes on a charge with Wi-Fi enabled. That’s two hours below average for a thin-and-light notebook. When we enabled the Power Saving feature, we got 2:22, but that dropped the MobileMark score to 129. You can also buy a spare battery to have on hand, but it will cost you another $100.
Another knock against this system is that it comes with an Express Card slot instead of a PC Card slot. The former technology is so new that very few peripherals are yet available to support it, including mobile broadband modems and 802.11n Wi-Fi cards. As for the built-in Wi-Fi connectivity, the 2260 performed admirably in our tests. It delivered throughput of 18.4 Mbps at 15 feet from our access point and 17 Mbps at 50 feet.
Averatec backs the 2260 with a one-year warranty covering parts and labor, and you get one year of toll-free 24/7 telephone support. The battery is covered for six months. In addition to Windows XP Professional, the system comes with CyberLink’s DVD Solution burning software and Zone Alarm’s Internet Security Suite.
The Averatec 2260 will handle your everyday home or office workload without breaking your back or emptying your bank account. However, this system’s short battery life may not be worth the savings if you spend much time on the road.
The 2260’s biggest weakness is its lack of endurance, as it lasted only 1 hour and 38 minutes on a charge with Wi-Fi enabled. That’s two hours below average for a thin-and-light notebook. When we enabled the Power Saving feature, we got 2:22, but that dropped the MobileMark score to 129. You can also buy a spare battery to have on hand, but it will cost you another $100.
Another knock against this system is that it comes with an Express Card slot instead of a PC Card slot. The former technology is so new that very few peripherals are yet available to support it, including mobile broadband modems and 802.11n Wi-Fi cards. As for the built-in Wi-Fi connectivity, the 2260 performed admirably in our tests. It delivered throughput of 18.4 Mbps at 15 feet from our access point and 17 Mbps at 50 feet.
Averatec backs the 2260 with a one-year warranty covering parts and labor, and you get one year of toll-free 24/7 telephone support. The battery is covered for six months. In addition to Windows XP Professional, the system comes with CyberLink’s DVD Solution burning software and Zone Alarm’s Internet Security Suite.
The Averatec 2260 will handle your everyday home or office workload without breaking your back or emptying your bank account. However, this system’s short battery life may not be worth the savings if you spend much time on the road.
A stylish and powerful traveling companion that gets better with the optional extended battery.
The moderately priced Asus W7J offers a powerful dual-core engine, discrete Nvidia graphics, and dual-layer DVD burning in a stylish, portable package. Unfortunately, you'll need to spend $1634 if you plan to do spend much time away from an outlet.
The W7J is encased in a smooth, black body with subtle silver highlights that accentuate the 12.4 x 8.9 x 1.1-inch frame. Weighing in at a light 4.2 pounds, the W7J won't bog you down on the daily commute. The notebook features a good-looking 13.3-inch widescreen with 1280 x 800 resolution. Asus Color Shine technology minimizes screen glare, which makes watching movies from a variety of angles enjoyable. The screen displays rich colors and doesn't suffer from heavy reflections.
Three nicely spaced USB ports are housed on the right, left, and back sides of the machine. This spacing prevents overcrowding when you have multiple gadgets plugged in at once. The W7J also features a PC card and ExpressCard slot, as well as a 4-in-1 memory card reader.
A full-sized keyboard offers good tactile feedback. Below it resides a touchpad that works adequately, although it doesn't feature a scrolling area. To the upper left of the keyboard is a Wi-Fi On/Off switch.
Just above the screen is the Asus Video Security webcam. The 1.3-megapixel webcam doesn't have the swivel feature as found on the Asus W5F, or the image editing package, but it does contain motion sensing technology that can send e-mail alerts when it detects movement. The motion sensing was so effective that the camera snapped a picture when we merely rocked back and forth in a chair. The webcam combines with the built-in microphone to make the W7J a solid video conferencing machine. The video we sent and received was a bit choppy, but on par with other notebook webcams.
The W7J scored a strong 264 in out MobileMark 2005 test, which is well above the average of notebooks in this class. Despite this strong showing, the 1.83-GHz Intel Core Duo T2400 chipset didn't multitask like a champ. When we watched a DVD while running a virus scan, we noticed a few audio skips, something we haven't encountered with other dual-core notebooks.
Powered by the Nvidia GeForce Go 7400 graphics card, the W7J delivered a score of 4,039 in 3DMark03, which is acceptable for notebooks in this class. F.E.A.R averaged 48 fps on the very low resolution of 640 x 480, but it choked when we ran at the game at maximum resolution of 1024 x 768, averaging an unplayable 5 fps.
Wireless strength remained fairly consistent with throughput, at 12 Mbps from 15 feet and 11.3 Mbps from 50 feet. Bluetooth is also included for connecting wirelessly.
The biggest disappointment is the W7J's battery life. The included six-cell battery managed a paltry 2 hours and 15 minutes—barely enough for one movie. Road warriors will want to plunk down the extra $135 for the nine-cell battery, which should provide around two more hours of power.
Asus continues to offer limited tech support, with 19 hours offered during weekdays and only 9.5 hours on weekends. If you're willing to live with that compromise, and fork over the cash for the bigger battery, the Asus W7J will satisfy.
