While the name
Packard Bell usually just conjures up images of hopelessly-broken Windows 95 machines in Radio Shacks, the company has been sold several times since leaving these shores in 1999, and though the specs on the new EasyNote SB line aren't exactly turning us green with envy, they're respectable enough to make us think that current owner
Lap Shun Hui knows what he's doing. Both the EasyNote SB85 and SB86 feature Intel's
Centrino Duo chipset with 802.11n support, 15.4-inch screens with integrated 1.3 megapixel webcams, 2GB of RAM, dual layer DVD±RW drives, and HDMI ports. The lower-end SB85 will set our European friends back €1199 ($1624) and comes with a 1.8GHz Core 2 Duo T7100, a 256MB GeForce 8600M GS, and a 160GB drive, while the €1499 ($2029) SB86 ups the processor to a 2GHz T7300 and the video card to a 512MB GeForce 8600 BS, while weirdly dropping the drive size to 120GB. Packard Bell says it'll be dropping the SB line later this month -- we're certain all of Europe is going crazy with anticipation. [Warning: PDF link]
[Via
SlashGear]
posted May 14th 2007 8:13PM
my first PC was Packard Bell....that was back in 1996 or something. and i remember it was around $1,600 for a 486 DX2 66 Mzh.
Packard Bell, rhymes with Dell, rhymes with Hell, lalalalala...
Just wow, are they serious, come on, i mean cum on (jimmy voice from South park) seriously how well do they think they are going to do. competition is serious tough and they want to join the market again?
Wait...Packard Bell still exists, period? Man, my family's first laptop was a Packard-Bell with a ghosty 4-shades-of-grey LCD and Windows 3.11. God, the memories.
*lays on the ground twitching in massive convulsions*
Never...
say....
THAT.....
Cccccompany's...
name.....
agggggain...
*flashback* Oh god! Wrong jumper! My audio isn't working....SHIT! Windows isn't booting!!! ARRRGHG!!!
Packard Bell....
snicker...
First of all, thanks for the PDF warning...but you should probably note that it's also in french...
Secondly,
"while weirdly dropping the drive size to 120GB."
If you read a bit further...well as good as an english speaker can in a french document...you'll notice the specs mention 2x120 and 240...so it appears they are RAIDing the drives together. If they're 7200 rpm and not 5400, all the better. For 2 grand, it's a hell of a laptop.
That porthole touch-pad makes me want to sing the Spongebob song.
Dang, they're back. Someone go round up the villagers, and I'll go get the pitchforks and torches out of the closet...
...I didn't even know that company still existed.
Sadly they still very much exist in the UK at least. PC World and Currys seem to be keeping the brand alive over here and because they're huge stores and they keep advertising Packard Bells on TV, they keep selling.
To my great shame, I actually bought one of their desktops two years ago when my old one went kaput. All I can say is that I was young and inexperienced and I'll never do it again.
Wow Packard Bell build quality used to be el-cheapo. I remember servicing a friend's computer and found that they hadn't even mounted the hard drive in a bay (which the case did have). Instead they bolted the hard drive to the side of the case, to save time / labor is my guess. Also they were able to use a shorter IDE cable this way. Not an OEM I would recommend to anyone.