BIOS: Technology Means Business

Fancy a dark blue laptop, widescreen display, full-size keyboard and AveraBrite screen technology for just £799? Hell yeah! Averatec has added to its range of stylish, colour-coordinated, slimline laptops with the 13.3-inch widescreen 4155. It has a striking dark blue cover but in stark contrast, the interior is brilliant white. The design, we’re sorry to say, is a little childish and certainly lacks the chic appeal of other ultra-portables, especially those from Apple and Sony.

The 4155 is the first Averatec laptop powered by AMD’s Turion 64 Mobile (MT-30) processor (1.6GHz, 1MB L2 cache). Along with just 512MB of slow PC2700 (333MHz) RAM, the system provides moderate performance but with minimal power consumption. This makes the Windows XP Home Edition-based system best suited to frequent business travellers and students. It also offers an 80GB (sluggish 4200rpm) hard disk drive, 802.11g wireless LAN, FireWire, USB 2.0, and Mirage SiS760GX GPU. The WXGA (1280x800 pixels) screen offers excellent brightness and sharp contrast, delivering good image quality in most conditions from a dull room to bright sunlight.

Much like Intel’s Centrino, AMD’s Turion 64 sports ‘Mobile Technology’ and is not just a microprocessor platform. Unlike Centrino however, Turion 64 doesn’t rely on AMD-supplied chips to receive the branding. The Turion 64 processor is basically a 90nm mobile Athlon 64, so all of the architectural features of the Athlon 64 make their way to the Turion 64. One advantage that the Turion 64 has is that with an on-die memory controller, AMD can potentially offer lower memory controller power consumption than Intel.

The Turion 64 is based on the latest revision E4 of the K8 core, meaning that it supports SSE3 instructions as well as lower power states. The processor line also supports AMD’s PowerNow technology (known as Cool’N’Quiet on the desktop), which allows for clock speed (and voltage) modulation between 1.0GHz and the processor’s maximum frequency based on load. It’s available in both 1MB L2 and 512KB L2 cache models, but both models will only support a 64-bit (single channel) DDR400 memory controller. The first Turion 64s will be available in speeds ranging from 1.6GHz up to 2.0GHz.

The 4155 is a neat travelling companion. Only a tad wider (316x224x31mm, 2kg) than a standard 12.1-inch laptop, the system boasts a near full-sized keyboard, with keys spaced 19mm apart for easy typing while on the move. The wear-resistant touchpad is almost totally flush with the chassis and provides a relatively precise response. There are separate fields below and on the right too, enable quick scrolling in all directions. On top of all this, the 4155 comes with a multi-format DVD burner and 4-in-1 card reader for MultiMedia Card, SD Card, Memory Stick and Memory Stick Pro, so it can handle a good selection of popular external media.

The laptop is packed with practical features including the ability to start up Windows Media Player without booting the operating system, and switch wireless LAN on and off at the touch of a button. External interfaces have been well thought out, with three USB 2.0 ports, two on the left (one of which is an active port) and one on the right. With the active port, an external appliance such as an MP3 player or mobile phone can be recharged even when the 4155 is switched off. On the right of the system are 4-pin FireWire and Ethernet interfaces, S-Video outlet, PC Card slot and 10/100Base-TX NIC. It is also possible to connect an external analogue monitor to the back of the laptop, while headphone and microphone sockets are conveniently located at the front.

The 4155 offers a competitive component mix at a remarkably low price that will appeal to students and home office users. It’s far from being a speed demon - and you’ll either love or hate the design - but the 4155 is worth a look if you’re after something a little different. Numbers crunchers and multi-taskers should take note though - the 4155 is not powerful enough to compete with some of the dual-core laptops we’ve seen recently. [6.5]

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