Small notebook shootout - part I - F9Dc cont'd
Author: Vedran Dakic
Date: 05 Apr 2008

CPU-wise it's AMD-based, so we're kind of expecting the RAW CPU power and overall system speed to be a bit lower to Intel's offerings but you've gotta remember that's what AMD's stuff lately is - a good choice in terms of balance of performance and price. This was actually confirmed on our dumb-side-by-side-comparison of one of the most simple things - turning on F9Dc next to U6s at the same time and measuring time needed to set up Vista bundled with them. U6s was a lot faster and was sittin' comfortably doin' nothin' for more then four minutes while waiting F9Dc to "come around". Later on we'll discuss our own take on this and how this relates to price differece. The model I tested comes with AMD Turion 64 TK-55 running at 1.80GHz , 2GB of memory (2x1GB), GeForce 8400M VGA and 160GB 5400rpm drive. The built-in 12.1" screen spots 1280x800 resolution, and this notebook also has built-in optical drive (DVD+/-RW, Dual Layer). Operating system is Vista Home Premium. Weighting around 2kg with 3-cell battery, this is pretty acceptable for first-time users, although I have to say that there are quite a few notebooks out there that are lighter then this one.

If you're a security-freak, this could be a nice weapon of your choice - it comes with a fingerprint reader (ASUS calls it "Trusted Platform Module, TPM). And if you have any kind of problem with this notebook, you can always use the 2-year limited global warranty and 1-year battery pack warranty, which is ok for a notebook of this class. If you need any extras, batteries come in three flavours - 3, 6 and 9-cell, or - if you prefer the numerical way - 26, 53 and 86Whrs. Also, you can use a mouse that's bundled with this notebook which is more then adequate for any kind of notebook-related work. Personally, I'm more of a mouse then trackpad type but that's completely subjective so - you can choose where you wanna go. Commendable.

We decided to run these notebooks side-by-side and run the same batch of tests - battery on DVD playback (same DVD), PCMark and basic 3dMark score to see how these things work. These are not gaming powerhorses and no sane person is gonna use them in that way so the goal here is to see how good they are at what they're supposed to be doing - a little bit of movie-fun and overall system speed.

8-in-1 Card reader spots MMC, MS, MS-Pro, SD, xD, Mini-SD, MS Duo, and MS Duo Pro (via adapter) compatibility. Built-in network interface goes up to 1Gbit/s so - no love lost there. Just in case you need those small bits 'n' pieces to have the whole picture of this notebook.