www.HUBCanada.com

Portable Voodoo: a thing of envy
By Sean Carruthers, posted 2/10/2004 2:23:49 AM

If you're a power freak when it comes to your home computer, chances are you feel a bit lost when you have to head out on the road with your slow old notebook computer. Notebooks have always been pretty creaky compared to your typical desktop machine, but if you're the type of person who likes to use only performance parts for maximum gaming performance, the step down to a notebook is that much more severe.

Not any more. Calgary-based Voodoo PC has always prided itself on performance computing, even when it went into notebooks, but with the move towards the Athlon 64 processor in its new envy series, the bar has been raised for mobile performance. Couple that with a high-end ATI Mobility 9600 Graphics Pro video component and a 15-inch TFT screen capable of 1,400x1,050 resolution, and you have one hot little notebook. Making things even hotter, our test notebook also featured 802.11g wireless networking, a 60 GB hard drive and a DVD/CD-RW combo drive. For external connectivity, the envy has two USB 2.0 ports, a FireWire connection, one PC Card slot, and a combination slot for MemoryStick, SecureDigital, and SmartMedia cards. In addition to the wireless networking, the notebook also features a built-in 10/100 Ethernet port and a 56Kbps modem.

OK, so "little" is maybe not the most accurate word to use when describing this computer. The m:855 is about the size of other machines with a 15-inch screen and weighs in at about 3.6 kg (8 lb.), so it's not huge, but nor is it a stealth machine -- it'll weigh down your shoulder if you have to carry it around regularly. Once you get it down on a desktop though, it flies.Our test computer scored quite high during benchmark testing, faster than any of the notebooks we've looked at yet -- either Centrino or Athlon-based. Even better, the notebook managed to pull off benchmarking scores that were usually about 80 to 85 per cent of the performance level of a 3.06 GHz Pentium 4 desktop configured with high-performance components, and hard drive performance was about 90 per cent of the performance of that desktop PC using Serial ATA. Pretty impressive indeed.

Of course, benchmarks are theoretical, measuring performance under controlled circumstances. More importantly: how well does it play games? In a word: beautifully. The graphics components are top-notch, and it handles 3D gaming easily. We loaded Max Payne 2 onto the system, and it was as smooth as can be. As we've seen the game bring desktop computers to their knees, it's all the more impressive on a notebook.

You'd expect a notebook with this much computing and 3D power to be extremely power-hungry, but the envy's battery can last nearly 2.5 hours with regular hard disk activity. We tested its runtime with Madonion.com's PC Mark 2002 software, using the battery test module; the hard disk tests were turned on during the benchmarking, to add further drain. We achieved two hours and 23 minutes, which means that more modest use of the machine would give you a longer runtime (Voodoo quotes over three hours).

As with other Voodoo machines, including desktops and notebooks, the finishing touch is the customized paint job. You have a choice of eight colours, and you can "tattoo" your machine with one of six graphics available from the Web site (though that does add a week to the shipping time).

Since Voodoo builds systems to order, there are a number of other customizations you can make to your machine: to tweak your performance (and price) you can choose different CPU speeds, more RAM, a larger hard drive (40, 60, or 80 GB), and a number of external peripherals like wireless routers, external hard drives, keyboards, and monitors.

If we have any complaint about the envy, it's the positioning of the wireless on/off switch and the FireWire connector. Both are located along the front bezel, making it easy to turn off the wireless when you're working in close quarters (such as holding the notebook in your lap); it also means the FireWire cable will stick out towards you when you have a DV camera plugged into your notebook. These are reasonably minor, though, and it's pretty easy to work around these problems.

Voodoo envy m:855
http://www.voodoopc.com/
Estimated price: $3,650 and up ($4,100 as tested)