Eurocom M860TU Montebello: Look and Feel
Of all four contenders, Eurocom’s Montebello feels the most like a do-it-yourself whitebook. And that’s not too far from the truth, since its shell is intended for resellers looking to build their own mobile offerings. To be fair, so is Killer Notebooks’ Odachi—the main difference, visually, being the graphics shield that Killer Notebooks added. Nevertheless, Clevo’s design keeps the Eurocom offering looking professional thanks to a polished black lid and matching palm rests. This is another two-tone design, the other color being silver around the top and bottom of the chassis.
As with the 17.1” D9C shell, Clevo’s M860TU incorporates a lip underneath the available ports that isn’t quite as attractive as the flush Alienware chassis, but does make for easy lifting. Not that picking up Eurocom’s Montebello is a challenge—it’s the lightest model in our roundup at roughly seven pounds. There’s naturally not as much room with a 15.4” LCD, so you give up the 10-key number pad with Eurocom’s smaller shell. However, the notebook still includes a full-sized keyboard on which it’s a pleasure to type. And the Montebello is one of only two designs we tested that doesn’t latch shut. It instead swivels on a quality hinge with enough resistance to not fall open while closed.
We like how Eurocom jumped into Centrino 2 early, incorporating the PM45 chipset, Intel’s fastest dual-core Core 2 Extreme processor, battery-conserving DDR3 memory, and a relatively potent Nvidia GeForce 9800M GT graphics processor.
Although the M860TU only includes an eight-cell, 4,400 mAh battery, it’s still much more efficient than either of the two SLI-equipped offerings. Of course, the more power-friendly stature comes at the expense of performance, and we’d certainly hesitate before calling this an extreme gaming notebook. Perhaps the Montebello would be more at-home as a desktop replacement workstation rather than a purpose-built entertainment machine.
Like Killer Notebooks’ Odachi, Eurocom’s solution exhausts air out the back of its chassis by pulling it in from underneath. But because the Montebello isn’t hosting a 95 W desktop processor or pair of graphics boards, it gets by with just one fan blowing over a heat pipe and fins. Though the thermal load isn’t nearly as demanding, we’re still not big fans (pardon the pun) of drawing air from under the chassis.
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Please use Propper size pictures as i am not zooming every one (takes 3-4 secs to load each one when doing that)
even when i use the Print option thay are still in 200 x 120 pixels when it should be 450 x 271 pixels for both print and per page viewing
rest of the review is good
Okay, I have no idea about the battery life of ANY of the contenders - no mention of them in the text and that one vital image of the battery chart is missing from Toms. Good going guys!
Not that you can claim credit for any of the graphs on this article - all the rest are borked as well. They do show up - as tiny thumbnails. Nice one. Real classy.
Now back to the actual article subject, aka Rant#2. Hasn't it occured to the OEMs that we have a major niche going unfulfilled here? I can think of several nomadic user bases (how about students for starters anyone?) who want gaming laptops but who are unwilling to part with €5000 for something that has the same performance as a €500 desktop. Even with Centrino 2 bringing the RAM and motherboard back up to scratch the near-inability to run games such as SupCom and Crysis shows that the gap between standard and mobile CPUs and GPUs is now reaching crisis point.
You'd think that with such a large potential user base some of the big facs or OEMs would be innovating, but they ain't. AMD seem to have given up on mid-high-range lappies entirely, which give nVidia and Intel carte blanche to sit there doing very little (note to Nintel fanboys - this is what would happen to desktops if your hated AMD died for you - €5000 desktops to not-run Crysis). And yet OEMs continue to specify WUXGA screens that the tiny GPUs cannot hope to power, and all that HD clarity will go out the door if you drop down the res - LCDs suffer badly when running resolutions that aren't native or a root of 2 of the native (and the root-2 res for WUXGA is 950*600 - nonstandard and way too small for use!). Why aren't OEMs using high-quality (and potentially cheaper) 1650*1080 or even 1440*900 screens instead?
As for processors... if Intel really gave a damn they should have implemented mobile quads that electrically isolate half the cores when away from AC, halving TDP. Even without this some OEMs should have put in BIOS tools that overclock and underclock CPU/GPUs depending on power status (battery, AC...). Nope. Asus did try, bless 'em, but their lappy isn't even a high-end gaming machine! Desktop-replacers take note. Alienware should be taking notes - they could really do with those features, especially as their machine is supposed to be a gaming lappy - unlike Killer, who isn't afraid to admit their "laptop" is really a small desktop light enough to be carried
At least AW got the ventiltion right... everyone else still has easily-blocked fan ports on the bottom. Why hasn't Clevo tried to put some side intakes on their larger units yet?
guess thay do not bother to read these posts any way
them pictures are to small mite be ok if my desktop was at 640x480, mite even be viewable on my PDA (if it was not for the best of media stuff)