As with anything too technical they tend to have glitches
Recommend to potential buyers:
yes
Full review
Technical Stuff --------------------
This laptop is probably one of the quickest on the market (although the market changes and improves daily) it has a Pentium M 2.0GHz processor.
The memory is 1024Mb(thats 1 Gb)! Loads for most people.
The Hard Drive is a massive 100 Gb.
There is a DVDR9, so you can play and burn your own DVD's.
It has an internal wireless/Modem which is 802.11b/g/ 56k respectively (hopefully this will mean more to you than to me!). Also a sound card and video card included. The video card is ATI Radeon 9600/9700 128Mb which I am also told is top notch graphics - can't say I've had any problems.
It is blessed with CentrinoTM Mobile Technology, which I'm assured by my computer whizz brother makes your battery life last longer. Mine lasts for at least 2 and a half hours even when playing games or watching programmes.
There are 3 USB points, S-Video connection (so you can hook it up to a TV), a telephone point and a place for a network cable. There is one firewire position on the front along with a headphone and microphone input. There is already a tiny microphone which is on top of the lap top, handy for talking on MSN Messenger. Best of all, I feel, there is a space for you to put a memory card (ie out of a camera or a phone etc) which makes transferring pictures and music very easy.
The Style ------------
When open the laptop is mainly black with accent silver parts round the mouse pad and battery areas. Closed it is silver n top and black underneath. It has 2 speakers on either side of the keyboard and a subwoofer underneath.
The screen is 15.4" widescreen. It is what they call a diamond screen or crystal. This means it is very black and shiny, which makes any films or programmes you watch on it absolutely magnificent.
When closed it is about an inch thick and slightly bigger than the 15.4" screen. I would say it is very portable, not too heavy.
My Experience -------------------
I must first of all tell you how I came to purchase this machine. My brother is a computer shop owner and does consultancy work for big companies. He gave me the name of someone he buys laptops off. This contact sells refurbished machines as new. My laptop came with no visible signs of having being used before. I am assured that he puts new casing on them and basically gets them back to the state they were originally sold in. It was also sold to me with 12 months Packard Bell warranty, so this is not like buying a laptop second hand. The price is very good though - I bought this model for £500 which is extremely cheap in the shops brand new they would be over £1000 (you can see the attraction!). Although it doesn't come with a manual hence the satisfactory for the Specific Criteria for the manual. Can't damn or praise something you don't have!
All this said and done when I first bought it I charged up the battery as they had told me too and it wouldn't hold the charge for longer than 20 minutes. They gave me a new battery and I haven't looked back it now holds a charge for at least 2 and a half hours (as I've already mentioned).
This is a very quick processor in a laptop therefore it gets VERY HOT which is expected but it is not very nice on your lap for too long especially when it is this hot! I must admit this hasn't bothered me too much as I would prefer to be able to do a few things at once and not have to wait around. The heat seems a small price to pay for speedy surfing!
I use my laptop for mainly surfing, downloading music and videos, manipulating photos and home videos. For all of these uses I have had no problems. There are a few minor problems and one major problem with it, though. Firstly after about a month of having this laptop the DVD drive stopped being detected therefore it is useless and needs to be sent to Packard Bell for fixing, which really is a major hassle (that's why I haven't sent it yet). I must admit in that first month I had only used the drive once for transfer some pictures off a disc onto the computer but I hadn't really wanted to use it for anything else. That's not to say I won't in the future, in fact when I found out it was broken was when I wanted to burn a film onto a disc.
The minor problems I mentioned are things such as the wireless connection disappearing, which is frustrating but only happens infrequently and comes back when it is restarted. The same goes for the sound card. I have been told by my brother that there could be a virus on the machine which is easily fixable but I will give it to Packard Bell to sort out when they fix the DVD drive. I will also update this review when I have it back and know how good they were to me and how well it works.
Overall I would recommend this laptop to any one it has been very special and I am able to do everything I want on it with ease. There is even the little extras such as the mouse pad has a raised ridge on the right side which sort of separates a tiny bit - this is clever - when you touch this part with your finger and go up and down it scrolls the page you are looking at! This is has always been a bug bear for me with mouse pads as you frequently want to scroll when on the internet or read an essay on a word processing program. What a fantastic extra! Along with the memory card reader, this means I actually take the photos off my camara and phone regularly which is very unusual.
This laptop has made me very happy and I hope I haven't put any one off this model because of the few glitches I've had. I will update this review as soon as I know what has happened with the repair. Thank you for reading this review, I hope it hasn't been too boring! Any comments / questions are welcomed.
Update ----------
As promised here is the update on this review after the computer has been fixed. When I rang the warranty dept they wanted to first identify the problems so I started with the biggest problem, the disk drive. As soon as I mentioned the problem he asked me had I got iTunes downloaded onto my computer, I had, because there was a problem with these computers and iTunes. Well I don't even use iTunes, don't know why I downloaded it really. So I uninstalled and sure enough the disk drive came back! Brilliant! Next I listed all the smaller problems and each one only needed for me to download the latest drivers from the Packard Bell website which sorted all the problems. So all in all I didn't have to send my laptop away which would have been a major inconvenience, and the people on the end of the phone were really friendly and helpful. They even talked me through how to uninstall iTunes from the registry in easy to understand lingo! To conclude I have been very pleased with everything to do with this laptop and would highly recommend them to any one.
More details
Memory / capacity
Excellent
Ease of use
Very easy
Range of Extra Features
Excellent
Instruction manual
Satisfactory
Manufacturer Support
Good
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