What a difference a
few benchmark points can make. Trusted Reviews gave Evesham's 15.4-inch Voyager C550 Core Duo laptop a thorough going
over, and after noting it's many similarities with the
Acer Travelmate 8204WLMi which
blew their doors off, they
change course and rate it a seven, three full points lower than the Acer's perfect 10. Why the huge disparity? It all
comes down to numbers: even though the Evesham rocks only a slightly slower processor (1.83GHz vs the Acer's 2.0), its
single gig of RAM (the Acer ships with 2GB) contributes to a significant difference in SysMark scores. Even worse, the
battery life seems to be atrocious, clocking in at under two hours for not only DVD playback but normal use as well.
The upside here is that if you don't mind being tethered to a wall outlet and can deal with sub-par 1280 x 800
resolution, then you can get your "mobile" dual core-on for around $2100, or about a grand less than the
8204WLMi.
posted Jan 16th 2006 5:13PM
Until eveSHAM makes good on the warranty for the last product I bought from them, I must warn;
eveSHAM does not honor it's warranties and is horrible to deal with. They have no US presence and no contact info. Once their tech support (outsourced to a Caleris call center) decides to ignore you, you are just dead in the water.
Do yourself a huge favor and avoid eveSHAM no matter how cheap the product is.
The US price of the 8204 is $2499 people. That is clear on the pcmag site
The street price of the WLMi 8204 is only about 250 bux more than this, or $2350. check chumbo and pcnation.
The lesson here is that you get what you pay for. Another gig of ram costs, at most, $150, which leaves the battery as the sole difference. Looks like they skimped on the battery to "enhance" their profit margins.
I gotta echo the first comment. I just ordered my Acer TM8204WMLI today for $2400 (and I've seen it cheaper.)
1 GB of Ram + rotating camera + faster processor + longer battery + larger HD is worth $300 in my book.
Of course I'm VERY dissappointed in the 1 year warranty.
Interesting, the chassis of this laptop is nearly identical to mine, which is an Asus A3N.
The exterior is the same of my year old Asus notebook!
Dull!