Eurocom's M860TU Montebello 15.4-inch laptop rocks the Centrino 2

In case you missed it, it was Eurocom's Phantom-X that managed to swipe that "fastest tested laptop" mark from the MacBook Pro last year -- and totally ruin a perfectly good commercial. Now the company is back for more with the M860TU Montebello 15.4-incher. We'll have to wait for the benchmarks to see how this one stacks up against the recent crop of Penryn laptops, but what's new here is that the Centrino 2 "Montevina" chipset is under the hood, which should support faster Penryn processors, lower power consumption and some new fancy security features. Other specs on the M860TU include a 15.4-inch 1920 x 1200 LCD, 512MB NVIDIA 8800M GTX graphics (with a future option for 9xxxM GTX chips once they're announced), 4GB of RAM, HSDPA and external eSATA and HDMI plugs. Yeah, pretty hot. No word on price, but the laptop is slated to ship May 1st.

[Kris S. @ Mar 8th 2008 2:19PM]

What's the game on the screen?

[ijyt @ Mar 8th 2008 2:30PM]

MS Flight Simulator X. One of the expansions I think.

[Fernando @ Mar 8th 2008 2:25PM]

Holy shit a big mouthed airplane is coming out of that laptop!

[jblock @ Mar 8th 2008 2:31PM]

That's an A-7 Corsair

[Kamall @ Mar 8th 2008 3:11PM]

Strange that this laptop is to come out May 1st when I hear that Montevina is to be released in June 2008 at Computex Taipei and some other sources say sometime in May.

Or am I missing something?

Well, I'm a fan of ultraportables so I cannot wait to see Montevina in them.

[BCre8v @ Mar 8th 2008 3:16PM]

1900x1200 on a 15.4" screen is fantastic! Up until hearing this announcement, I have preferred 17" high-res notebooks (including the MacBook Pro). A 15.4" machine is sure to knock off at least a pound, if not more.

[Mark @ Mar 8th 2008 3:24PM]

I think I'd go blind if I had to use a 15.4-inch 1920 x 1200 for anything other than movies ..

[Sam Winter @ Mar 8th 2008 8:35PM]

@Mark

You can turn up the DPI scaling, and its not bad. Remember Higher resolution is always better. Just because Microsoft is too damn stupid to be able to make a DPI-independent display system by now , doesn't mean that people should be stuck with crap DPI monitors. Wasn't res-independent scaling supposed to be included in OSX leopard? I sure wish Vista and Leopard would hurry up with it so consumers start buying and manufacturers start selling higher resolution monitors.
Its totally pathetic that people equate high resolution with "hard to see/read". That is completely avoidable, and shame on Apple and MS for their pathetic omission on their new OS's.

[islisis @ Mar 8th 2008 10:59PM]

agreed complete with above comment
res+dpi > size

[William Heger @ Mar 8th 2008 4:24PM]

Some of us have really good eyes -- my D820 is WUXGA and I can't bring myself to consider anything else now.

That said, dumb-down resolution is a desktop environment problem. If the desktop special effects departments (ie. Mac genies and Linux's Beryl) would focus more on usabilty, you might have a hi-res display where the active window automatically expanded by 20% or maybe the focus text was bigger, like the jewelers loop effect. Instead we get spinning cubes.

ESATA, HDMI, replaceable graphics, DDR2-800, if the base model is

[Chris @ Mar 8th 2008 4:03PM]

Sounds a lot like the Alienware M15x. I've never heard of Eurocom but just by the name I'm guessing they arn't available in the US.

[Jesterday @ Mar 8th 2008 4:47PM]

Actually, Eurocom is a Canadian company and it sells all of their products throughout the world. They make great laptops and have pretty good warranties. I used to sell them and would recommend them, except they can get pricey after adding a lot of the cool options.

[marcin @ Mar 8th 2008 4:05PM]

actually, 1920 by 1200 on 15.4 is not all that useful. ive had this on my 3 year old dell 9100 and you'll notice how shitty it is the second you open up a web browser. most pages dont support this res. well and neither does the OS itself. everything on my desktop is small as heck.

i do have some nice high res. wallpaper though...

[OziD @ Mar 8th 2008 4:47PM]

it's easy to make vista look okay on a large res/small screen.

you are right about web browsing. Zooming in browsers is terrible looking, so thats out.

[Ayle @ Mar 8th 2008 5:53PM]

Isn't that just another Clevo rebrand?

[narutouzumaki16 @ Mar 8th 2008 7:20PM]

NICCCCCCCCCCCCEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!! love it whats the hit on my wallet going to be?

[TareX @ Mar 9th 2008 11:17AM]

Guys, before I buy it, I need to know: Is this currently the best gaming laptop? Isn't Dell's new one with the 8800 update better?

All I want is a laptop capable of fluidly playing games like FSX and Crysis on ULTRA-HIGH settings. Thanks.

[KPrime @ Mar 9th 2008 8:24PM]

hurray, my birthday is May 2nd.
So all I have to do now is convince my wife that we really do need a second mortgage on the house, and our kids don't really need to go to college.

Then I could have it next day shipped for my birthday present! As long as I am at it, I can use it in my new Ferrari that will be waiting for me on my birthday morning.

No... Really... OK, just some cake and a new gadget will be fine.