Lots of features in a weak case
Written: Aug 21 '00
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Pros: Lots of features
Cons: Not sturdy. Won't wake up from sleep. Hot. A lot of repairs
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| johnqh's Full Review: Winbook XL2 400/32 |
In November of 1999, Winbook sells XL2/400/32/CD with 12 inch HPA screen for $999. I happened to need a notebook and the price is right, so I bought one.
Well, it is full of features for the money. It has just about everything for a entry level notebook....Floppy drive, CD-ROM drive are both available at the same time (no swapping). The HD is user upgradable. Remove one screw and you can remove the HD cage easily. It has all the regular ports(serial, parallel, USB, PS2, sound...) and even NTSC S-Video out and RCA Video out.
However, problems appears pretty quickly.
Two months after I got it, the CD-ROM drive failed. Fortunately, the CD-ROM drive is user upgradable too, so I send in the old drive and got a new one back in one week. So this is not so bad.
Then something got loose behind the LCD screen. Eventually one day, the hinge cracked. This time I had to send the whole unit in to get fixed.
The notebook came back with new hinge, which is very loose. I can live with that. Well, then vertical lines appear on the screen when I do a cold start. It would disappear after a while, but certainly a signal the LCD is failing.
There are other problems. It uses a 400 mhz Celeron (desktop Celeron, not mobile one), and it gets really hot....too hot to place it on the lap. Even the wrist rest gets very hot. It makes strange noises which I still don't know what it is. The biggest usability problem....When the notebook goes to sleep, it rarely wakes up right. Most of the time I get a black screen and have to do a cold restart.
After the LCD failed, I sent it back in and this time, Winbook sent me a Si model for replacement. While I am quite unhappy with the XL2, I am very happy with Si. See my other post under Si.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 999
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Intel Celeron
Processor speed: 301-400
Screen Size: 12"
RAM: 32
Internal Storage: CD-ROM
Hard Drive (GB): 4-6
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johnqh
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