MaximumPC 2004 12

Reviews

W

e’ve never been impressed

by low-cost notebooks,

which tend to sacrifice so

many features they feel like a car

without a spare tire or rear window

defroster. Thankfully, the 6200 isn’t

one of these, sporting an interesting

blend of features that make it a

noteworthy budget portable.

The most compelling feature is

that you can play up to 4.5 hours

of DVD movies on a single battery

charge. Averatec accomplishes

this—without using two batteries,

we’ll add—by taking advantage

of what has become a plethora of

low-cost MPEG2 decoding chips

made for single-purpose portable

DVD players and DVD decks.

Because the 6200 uses one of these

chips—which handles all DVD,

MP3, and audio functions, it can

boot into a power-saving pre-OS

environment where it can be used

to play CDs, DVDs, and MP3 discs

instead of forcing you to wait the

minute or so it

takes Windows

XP to boot.

How much

power does it

save? Consider

this: The zero-

point notebook

we compared

it with needs

two batteries to

reach the same

playback time.

To aid in DVD

viewing, a nifty

PC Card-size

remote lets you

flip through chapters as

well as choose subtitles and audio

formats. Elegantly, the remote slips

into the notebook’s single PC Card

slot when not in use.

Unfortunately, this impressive

battery life comes at the expense

of visual quality. The movies

we watched using the built-in

decoder chip looked dull and soft

when compared with playback in

CyberLink’s PowerDVD running in

Windows XP on the same laptop.

Because the DVD playback mode

lacks the ability to tweak image

quality, there was little we could do

to sharpen the image.

The 6200 is powered by AMD’s

Athlon XP-M 2400+, a 1.8GHz

Athlon XP using the Barton core

with AMD’s PowerNow! tech-

nology, which steps the processor

speeds down as usage levels drop.

While this mobile XP chip can

outgun the two-year old 1.7GHz

Pentium 4M we use as a zero-point,

it gets smoked by modern Pentium

M/Centrino-class CPUs. If your

mobile work is limited to DVD

viewing, light-duty Photoshop work,

web

browsing,

and e-mail,

the Athlon XP-M has more than

enough pep. For gaming, however,

it’s a dud. With its integrated

graphics, it was incapable of run-

ning our 5-year-old Quake III test.

Because we couldn’t achieve a

1280x1024 resolution—the min-

imum resolution required for the

benchmark—we were unable to

obtain any results. Obviously, you

shouldn’t expect to use this laptop

to play much beyond Solitaire.

Storage is a 4,200rpm, 60GB

Hitachi Travelstar 80GN with an

8MB buffer and a Lite-On 24x

CD-R combo drive. The model

we reviewed didn’t feature a DVD

burner, but Averatec has since added

it as standard equipment. There’s no

Bluetooth, but you do get 802.11g,

which is backward-compatible with

802.11b access points.

We’ll admit we didn’t expect a

whole lot from the Averatec 6200,

but overall, it’s a pretty serviceable

notebook for the money. If you’re

looking for a notebook that will give

you long-haul movie viewing and

basic computing capabilities, the

6200 is surprisingly satisfying and

won’t break your back—or the bank.

—GORDON MAH UNG

Averatec 6200

7e liKe to thinK oF it as a Big
ass D6D Player

92 MA XIMUMPC DECEMBER 2004

Incredible DVD playback times and a wide screen

for $1,200.

ANCHOR STEAM

,UC+9 ,A'ER

Integrated graphics core and no DVD burner.

$1200, http://www.averatec.com

MA XIMUMPCVERDICT 7

The Averatec lets you

play DVDs without

booting the OS.

STORAGE

Hard drives Hitachi Travelstar 80GB 4,200

RPM 8MB buffer

DVD-ROM/ Lite-On DVD/CD-RW Combo

CD-RW Drive 24x CD-R

TIPPING THE SCALES

Lap weight 6 lbs

Carry weight 6.8 lbs

AUDIO

Audio chip Realtek AC97

Other PC Card remote, built-in

MPEG2 decoder

BOOT: 34 sec. DOWN: 11 sec.

UNDER THE HOOD

THE BRAINS

CPU 1.8GHz Athlon XP-M 2400+

(333MHz / 512KB L2 cache)

using SiS M741 chipset

RAM 512MB DDR333

I/O ports Four High-Speed USB 2.0, Fast

Ethernet, modem, S-video out,

VGA out

LAN SiS 900, 802.11g

DISPLAY

Video SiS M741 integrated

Display 15.4-inch (1280x800@32-bit)

BUNDLE

Windows XP Home, Norton Antivirus 2004,

Roxio EasyCD Creator 6

0 20% 40% 60% 80%

PERCENT FASTER

ZERO

POINT

SCORES

SYSmark2002

Premiere 6.0

Photoshop 7*

Audio Grabber

Quake III

Battery Test

150

720 sec

91 sec

549 sec

63.4 fps

235 min

100 %

155

WNR

54 sec

412 sec

243 min

256 sec +

AVERATEC 6200 SCORES

Our zero-point notebook is a Dell Dimension 8200, and includes a 1.7GHz P-4M

CPU, 256MB DDR266, a 64MB 128-bit DDR GeForce4 Go graphics chipset, and a

5400rpm IBM Travelstar 60H hard drive. *Our notebook Photoshop 7.0 test differs

from our new desktop Photoshop test.