Fujitsu Siemens AMILO A1630 - Athlon 64 3000+ - 15.4" TFT

Author's product rating:   

Speed	Very fast
Look & Feel	Good
Comfort & Portability	Excellent
Robustness & Durability	Good
Value For Money	Excellent

Advantages:	Flippin' fast !  Futureproofed big time, wide screen, good design
Disadvantages:	Price may put you off

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Move aside standard crappy normal sized 4:3 ratio TFT screen! The new lord of the flat panel display is wide screen. 16:9 (or 16:10 for computer standards) displays that can show more of the work surface area is now the in thing. Was you frustrated before about not being able to see that panoramic view of the beach on your screen without scrolling? Now you don't have to, wide screen saves the day!

Wide screen laptops isn't a new thing, but it still beats the hell out of a standard laptop screen in movie viewing anyday. Our eyes are placed side by side, not top to bottom, so our stereoscopic vision is properly embraced by wide screens. We were born hunters you know, that's why our eyes are in front of our face and not on the side unlike other creatures that get munched all the time.

Usually if I wanted a fast laptop I would have to chuck it out the window and watch it plummet at high speeds, but now there is another way. Set aside the fact this laptop is a wide screen laptop, this is still one of the finest, fastest laptops (at the time of writing) to have ever found itself resting upon my lap. If there had to be a laptop on my lap threatening to make my sterile from the heat, then I would choose this laptop anyday of the week. Made by respectable company partnerships of Fujitsu and Siemens, this laptop has some good quality reputable companies backing it up.

If you have read my previous reviews, you would know I am a PC lover. Therefore when I purchased this laptop, I simply had to have the best one. No cutting corners for me oh no, the full whack and then some! So that means the laptop model I am reviewing here is the fastest one your money can get. Cheaper ones are available with less RAM, slower CPU and lamer DVD drive, but that's not good enough for me!

The Amilo A1630 is the result of the love between the two companies. A laptop that doesn't look half bad and has enough grunt to grind other laptops into the dirt with it's immense processing power. What does this laptop possess that causes me to hype it up so much? Come here kind sir and let me sell this laptop to you!

Processor: Mobile AMD64 3700+ One of the fastest processors on any laptop with the added 64bit processing with Cool'n'Quiet technology to slow down & save battery life, keep the laptop quiet and reduce heat. At full whack it matches the AMD64 3700+ desktop processor very easily.

RAM: 1GB DDR333 RAM Plenty of fast RAM here for all your computing needs. Be it gaming, watching movies or encoding loads of stuff simultaneously, this 1GB will be the workspace for it whilst the 3700+ CPU bends it over and spanks it hard.

Hard Drive: 80GB Ultra IDE Not as great as I would of hoped for, but many laptops don't come with 80GB so this really shouldn't be sniffed at so lightly.

Wireless: Built-in 802.11G wireless card and aerial that has great speed when connected to a good hub. However it does have a short range.

DVD±RW/±R Dual Layer Writer: Back up al lyour data on 4.3GB DVDs. Not enough? Back up your data on 9.6GB DVDs. Come on that's got to be enough!

Audio: If I remember correctly this laptop has a SiS sound chip that's 5.1 surround sound capable and a pair of loud stereo speakers built-in (trust me compared to other laptop speakers, these are positively loud).

Modem: Built-in 56K V.92 modem for internet when you can't have broadband.

Ports: 3x USB 2.0, S-Video, S/PDIF, InfraRed, Parallel, VGA, 4 In 1 Card Reader (MMC/SD/MS/MS Pro), 1 PC Card slot. Plenty of ports for your hands to get fiddly!

Screen: 15.4" WXGA TFT screen. Ok not the biggest and Sony's X-Black is better, but it is still a piece of wide screen beauty.

Battery: Lithium Ion battery up to 3 hours. Not too shabby for a powerful laptop such as this one!

Graphics: The selling point of the laptop for me besides the CPU, RAM, Screen and Dual Layer DVD writer. This laptop has the ATI Mobile Radeon 9700 graphics chip with 128MB RAM. Although really only as fast as a desktop Radeon 9600 Pro, still that's very fast and more than adequate for playing today's games.

Software: Drivers & Utilities, Works Suite 2004; Word 2002, Encarta 2003, Picture It 7.0, Autoroute 2003, Money 2002, Photoshop Elements 2.0, Photoshop Album 1.0, Norton AntiVirus, Nero 6 and of course Windows XP Home Edition.

Yup, they don't skimp out on the software either. All this, but the laptop only weighs a mere 3.6KG. To me that's light but some of you may find that a shoulder crushing, back squatting painful piece of luggage to lug about.

The laptop is a grey-silver colour all over. A bit plastic looking, but that helps keep it light. The audio ports are mounted at the front of the laptop making it easy for you to plug in your earphones if the desire should ever pop it's head out. The keyboard is standard laptop QWERTY layout and is dark grey. Above the keyboard are a row of silver buttons, they are all shortcut keys to access specific things in Windows such as email. The other uses of the silver buttons include the power button and the wireless aerial activation. To the right of the laptop is the DVD drive, the battery compartment and the port for the power supply to plug into. To the left of the laptop there is the PC Card slot, 2x USB 2 ports, modem port, network port and the memory card reader slot. The rest of the ports are located at the back of the laptop. Just over an inch in thickness whne the lid is closed makes it rather thin for all that it is packing.

In practise this machine took Windows XP, kicked it in the bollocks then ran around with it as if it was a bully at school and Bill Gates was the nerd that it loved to pick on. The operating system is highly responsive with little lag or slow down at all. In video editing and encoding it could encode a full 2 hour DVD movie in just under 2 hours. Now that to me is very impressive.

Of course the main reason I purchased this laptop is for gaming on the go. No more shall I have to endure the pain of playing 2D card games on my laptop now while away from home. From the day I owned this laptop I shall be 3D gaming to my hearts content (or until the battery dies). Running 3DMARK tests on it churns out a 3DMARK03 score of 2,700 and a 3DMARK05 score of 720, very respectable scores that show this machine can play with the big boys when it comes to 3D gaming grunt.

I have been bigging this laptop up for ages, but I think I will be honest and tell you a few things I think are flaws with the laptop. Firstly, although the screen is a nice wide screen with good brightness and sharpness, it has the viewing angles of any normal TFT screen. Secondly the DVD drive does access DVDs a bit slow, although all the DVDs it writes to come out excellent. Lastly the touch sensitive mousepad has a scroll up and scroll down area on the right hand side. If you try to move the cursor and your finger wanders into that area, yourwindow may all of a sudden scroll up or down. This can be VERY annoying!

Overall though, this laptop rocks! Hardware is a performance whore, software is plentiful for general purposes and 3D gamers can finally get into the portability scene. The only other tihng I can think of to put off buyers is the asking price of £1,149 for the whole thing. But hey if you can't afford that you can go for the cheaper (read: slower) options available for this model type. Highly recommended laptop with superb build quality!

Note: You notice Tiny.com's Tiny Mediabook U64 - 3700+ laptop? It looks exactly the same as this laptop with all the same specifications and software but with the model name changed from Fujitsu Siemens to Tiny? Man... are they running out of suppliers in China or something?

There is faster laptop I just discovered being released by Alienware sporting hardware you woul;d only find on desktop PCs. Damn... already my 'fastest laptop' dream has been shattered...