Compact, Affordable, Gets the Job Done
Written: Feb 27 '04 (Updated Feb 29 '04)
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Pros: Compact, light, fast enough, can burn CD's and play DVD's.
Cons: Keyboard crowded, low speaker volume, gets very warm.
The Bottom Line: The Averatec 3150H was a pleasant surprise both in performance and design. At well under $1,000 I have no reservations about recommending it.
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| georget99's Full Review: Averatec (3150H ) (SL3150HW-01) PC Notebook |
I've been teaching a computer class and prefer to run my presentations, etc. on my own computer. Bringing my desktop quickly became tired and my hand-me-down 200 MHz notebook computer was too slow and getting somewhat unreliable.
I went shopping for a new notebook computer and quickly came to the conclusion that they were getting like SUV's. One salesman showed me a unit with a 17 inch screen that weighed 16 pounds and would be like carrying a sheet of plywood around.
I looked at a couple of the few smaller lightweight machines and while attractive they were outside my budget. I wanted to stay under $1,000.
Then I spotted the Averatec 3150H in a store. Its final cost after rebates was $694.00! Now that was something I could afford.
The computer has a bright, sharp, 12 inch, 1024x768 display, is just over an inch thick, and weighs a bit over 4 pounds. The main typing keys (a-z) are just about full size, and the remaining keys are smaller than normal -- the result is I can type almost as fast as with a "real" keyboard though punctuation and some other keys are hard to hit without looking. The backspace key especially takes some getting used to.
Internally it has an AMD Mobile Athlon XP-M 1600+ processor. The 1600 implies 1.6 GHz but I think the AMD clock speed is not directly comparable to the more familiar Intel chips. It doesn't seem any slower than my 1.8 GHZ Celeron based desktop. There's 256 MB of DDR RAM of which 32 MB is used for the integrated video. It is expandable, I think to 768 MB.
I've loaded Microsoft Office 2003 and there are no performance problems even working with a couple large databases in Access.
The disks are a 30 GB UDMA 100 hard drive, and a combination CD-RW + DVD optical drive. The speed of the latter is unspecified but it seems as fast as the 48X drives on my other computers.
The pointing device is an integrated touch pad with scrolling edges, the usual 2 buttons, and an additional pair of up/down scroll buttons placed between the other 2. These act like the wheel on a mouse but I haven't found any place to change their scrolling distance -- it's set to 3 lines and I prefer more.
It has a pair of tiny stereo speakers. Notebook speakers usually sound tinny and weak and these do, too, only more so. If you want to watch a movie, you'll be happier plugging in headphones or external amplified speakers. There are conveniently located headphone and microphone jacks along with a volume control on the front edge of the computer.
To the left of the touch pad are 3 indicator lights that show on/off, stand by, charging, etc. There are also 3 tiny holes that the manual says are a microphone, however the online FAQ says there in fact is no microphone behind the holes. I verified this by trying to record and ending up with nothing.
I should mention the computer does not come with a printed manual. I downloaded the manual in pdf format from Averatec's web site, but to be fair, I think it was on my computer before I downloaded it and I just didn't notice.
Continuing our tour from the front edge of the magnesium alloy case, on the left side is a single CardBus/PCMCIA slot. It is only single thickness so some double thickness cards can't be used. This model of the computer does not have built in wireless networking so that's where my wireless card lives. Averatec does make a model with built in wireless but that one was not on sale.
Next to the card slot is a standard Cat-5 10/100 network connector, followed by a standard 15 pin video connector for an external monitor or projector. Heading towards the back, we encounter the DC power connector where the charger connects, and finally a socket that accepts a Kensington locking device.
The back side has nothing.
On the right side near the front are 3 USB 2.0 connectors. Next is the aforementioned CD-RW/DVD drive, and finally there's a pop-out RJ-11 connector for the built in V.92 modem.
The computer comes pre-loaded with Windows-XP home edition, Microsoft Works 7.0, and Norton Anti-Virus 2003 with a 3 month subscription to online virus updates. Also included are Roxio Easy CD Creator, CyberLink Power DVD player, and the usual assortment of Windows games and utilities such as Media Player and Movie Maker. Remarkably it does not come with setup programs for AOL, Compuserve, etc.
Claimed battery life is "over 3 hours", this is probably achievable by setting the screen on the dimmest setting and doing something that never accesses the hard drive. I've never actually timed how long it will run on a charge but my feeling is about 2 1/2 hours.
For best battery runtime, the instructions suggest you run the BIOS battery calibration procedure about every 3 months. This is true for many notebook computers but this is the first one I've seen that tells you right in the manual. There is also a fan calibration procedure. Both are easily accessed in the BIOS. The battery procedure takes several hours and the fan takes about 20 minutes.
The unit gets very warm after 30 minutes or so of operation. This is normal for just about any small notebook computer but you might worry if this is your first. The CPU cooling fan is variable speed and only runs when needed. It is usually very quiet though when you first turn on the computer the fan runs at top speed for a few seconds and is quite audible.
Closing the cover puts the unit into a standby mode that consumes very little power. When you press a key it "wakes up" and is ready to continue where you left off in about 10 seconds. There is also a Hibernate key. This stores the entire system state on the hard drive then shuts off completely. It takes about 20-30 seconds to restart from this state (press the power key to restart) but it saves a lot of battery without you having to restart whatever you were in the middle of. I've found that if I hibernate with my wireless network card in the slot then wake up the system with the card gone, I end up having to restart the computer, however standby has always worked flawlessly for me.
added later:
I discovered the hibernation problem only occurs if I wake up the system from hibernation with my wireless network card in the slot. My card is an older 16 bit PCMCIA card and the drivers for it apparently don't support Windows-XP style hibernation correctly.
I enjoy using the computer a lot. I'm a programmer/web developer and have installed Office 2003, Microsoft OneNote, and Coffee Cup HTML editor. I've also added the Microsoft Japanese IME and Asian languages support. Everything works correctly.
I've just passed the 3 weeks of ownership mark and am not regretting the decision to go with a lesser known, small screen computer.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 694.00
Operating System: Windows
Processor: AMD Athlon (K7)
Processor speed: over 1000
Screen Size: 12 inches
RAM: 256
Internal Storage: CD-RW and DVD
Hard Drive (GB): 21-30
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Epinions.com ID:
georget99
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Reviews written: 20
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