Intel Celeron E1400 – Review and benchmarks

The infamous Intel seemingly always thinks about its less rich clients as well, likely that the Celeron family was designed for them. Each Celeron is way cheaper than the similar model from the higher class, in the Celerons’ case cheaper means that there’s a high loss of performance. Just like at the Intel Celeron E1400 case.

A few words about the Celeron E1400

It was manufactured with a 65 nanometer technology, can be fitted in (probably) any motherboard with Socket 775 and has 2 cores. It has 64bit support through its Intel® EM64T feature, as always, you have to have an operating system, drivers and programs to take full advantage of the 64bit architecture.
The processor works under maximum load at 2GHz, the front side bus speed is 800MHz and features Enhanced Intel Speedstep® Technology. This means that if the operating system supports this feature, then it can adjust the processor’s voltage when it’s underused in order to decrease the heat created by the processor. This feature is spiced with Intel® Thermal Monitor 2, for “just in case”.
As it’s a Celeron processor, it lacks Level 2 cache. The Celeron E1400 has only 512KB cache, working at 2GHz. This will be enough for any type of office application, but for games is surely not enough.

Intel® Celeron E1400 benchmarks

The system on which the benchmarks were done is the following:

• Motherboard: Asus P5N-EM HDMI
• Processor: Intel Celeron E1400, dual core
• RAM: Kingmax Dual-Channel 2GB DDRII
• Graphics card: Integrated GeForce 7100/nForce 630i

Running specific benchmarks, they popped the following results:

SuperPI 1M: 38 seconds
SuperPI 2M: 1 minute and 26 seconds
3DMark06 CPU: 1488
Cinebench10 Single CPU render: 1587
Cinebench10 Multi CPU render: 2872

Verdict on the Intel Celeron E1400

Even though it has 2 cores, this processor is less than recommended for gaming. It performs well with office applications and image manipulating, but when it comes to multimedia and high resolution video rendering, it struggles.

The data from within this article is purely informative

Sony VAIO NS105N now cheaper, thanks to Obama

And this is not a joke. OnSale, one of our sponsors released an Inauguration Program and dozens of notebooks now cost way cheaper than usual. The Sony VAIO NS105N normally costs $727.99, now is $579. That’s almost $150 off!

Review of the Sony VAIO NS105N/S notebook:
We tested this notebook for three days and we can’t say a bad word about it. As always the Vaio’s, this VAIO is beautiful as well. The 15.4″ WXGA display is easy to read in any condition, even in very bright environment.

The processor of the Sony VAIO NS105N/S is an Intel Core 2 Duo T5870, working at 2.0GHz under maximum load. Worthless to say that office applications run like a charm, thanks to the high performance processor and the 1 Gig PC5300 RAM.

The graphic card is an Intel GMA 4500MHD. This means for the end-user of the Sony VAIO NS105N/S that graphic applications will perform well on the notebook. We’ve tested the Sony VAOI NS105N/S with 3 games as usual: FEAR, The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion and World of Warcraft. Playing each game was a pleasure on this notebook, even when the graphics details was set to medium. Purchasing more RAM is recommended though, for playing with high quality details.

The Sony VAIO NS105N/S can be also used for playing HD movies. We tested it with movies up to 720p and the play was smooth enough to be enjoyable.

The 6 cell Lithium Ion batteries lasted under maximum load for about 2 hours, this changed however to 7(!) hours when the Sony VAIO NS105N/S was used for office work.

The notebook comes with pre-installed Windows Vista Home Premium, which, worthless to say that runs smoothly on the notebook. If you want to buy this notebook, you might want to know that we also tested the Sony VAIO NS105N/S with Windows XP and Windows 7 beta as well. None of them had an issue and switching between different operating systems was easy enough as all the drivers are provided on the manufacturer’s website.

As a final note, we wrote this review because we believe that these kind of deals pops up only a few times a year. The Sony Vaoi NS105N/S is an excellent notebook for anyone, even for gaming.

Follow this link to read more and eventually buy the Sony Vaio NS105N/S:
$149 OFF! Sony VAIO Intel Core 2 Duo T5870 2.0GHz Notebook – Granite Silver NOW only $579 (was $727.99)

The Acer AS6930 – Simply wow

I think I owe a pack of beer to our supplier for letting me testing this notebook. I tested in the past year about 10 notebooks –also wrote review about 5 or 6 –, but the Acer AS6930 crowned the past year with its performance, stability and, well, coolness.

The Acer AS6930 is simply beautiful: it’s amongst the first Acer notebooks which takes the advantages of the new “Gemstone Blue” (TM) design. And the first advantage for Acer is that — as our supplier said –, the people falls in love with the notebooks which follows the Gemstone Blue line.

The AS6930 notebook is advertised as multimedia notebook. It’s the first notebook which has a 16 inch (yeah, 16″) display and is capable of 16:9 aspect ratio. The 16″ is almost 15% more than what you get with a 15,4″ and this advantage makes the AS6930 perfect for watching HD movies. It has integrated HDMI output which makes perfect for linking the notebook to HDMI projectors or flat-screens.
The native resolution of the Acer HD CineCrystal display is 1366×758 and it performs well in almost any light. I say any, because in heavy sunshine it’s just as useless as any other LCD.

The native Dolby Home Theater support with True 5.1 channel output and the HDMI output revolutionizes the multimedia notebook concept.

The gaming tests were the coolest. We didn’t find ANY game at our supplier which didn’t work well on the Acer AS6930, and we didn’t have mercy when tested it as we’ve found the most resource eating games on the shelves: The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, FEAR, Dead Space, Grand Theft Auto IV.
The good performance is the result of the high-end hardware from within the shell:

• the graphics board, a GeForce 9600 GT with 512 MB DDR3 dedicated(!) RAM
• Intel Core 2 Due, T5800 processor working at 2GHz
• 4Gigs of DDR2 RAM

The storage space is kinda generous: 320 Gigs on a hard disk which spins up to max. 5400 revolutions per minute. Installing OSes was easy. Every Microsoft operating system recognized most of the hardware. Switching off AHCI (from the BIOS) in case of ANY Microsoft OS is necessary in this notebook’s case, too.
Finding the drivers for Vista was easy as Acer provided every driver for this notebook on the official support website. In XP’s case there is one issue: there are no drivers provided, because Microsoft hand in hand with the manufacturers makes everything possible to put Vista on as many PCs as possible.
To obtain drivers for the unrecognized hardware, we had to download the XP drivers from each hardware manufacturer’s support website.

The ergonomics were neither forgotten when Acer designed the AS6930. It has a full size keyboard which means that it has all the keys you have on the keyboard of your PC. The reversed “T” touch-pad is sensitive enough and it also has incorporated a biometric fingerprint scanner which assures the AS6930’s user that no one can access the files stored on the notebook. The battery life of the 6-cell LiIon battery is satisfactory, it averages around 3 hours.

And finally my personal thoughts. Where I live the Acer Aspire AS6930 is $1100 with 19% VAT included (around 820 euros). The notebook performed well in any situation and has a quite good battery life, so I think if you have the money to purchase it, do it. The Acer Aspire AS6930 is both beautiful and a power-plant.

Review – My own Google Laptop Backpack

Since I bought a notebook I had hard times when I had to travel: where to put my notebook when I travel? I can’t put it in the luggage for the obvious reason that I can’t work with the notebook while traveling. I can’t hold it in my hand because where I live rains a lot and notebooks doesn’t like rain. I can’t put it in the briefcase cos then I have no space for the documents I usually travel with.
I needed a laptop bag. OK, but laptop backpack or a traditional briefcase-like laptop bag?

If I choose a laptop bag, then I have both of my hands occupied: in right the briefcase as always, in the other the laptop bag. This made me to choose the laptop backpack!

Probably you noticed already from my previous posts that I’m one of those who are fan of the infamous Google. This is why I chose to get a Google Laptop Backpack.

The Google Laptop Backpack costs in Europe $54.82 (USD) plus VAT. Since the weight of the laptop backpack is far from light, there were only two choices for shipment: UPS express or UPS standard delivery. One thing I adore in UPS is that you can track the package on its road, so you know when to expect it. Since UPS don’t has offices in my country yet, after the Google Laptop Backpack arrived in my country, they handed the package to DHL and they delivered the package to my front door. On time! UPS informed me that the package will arrive to me in seven days, and in my front door between 9 AM and 7 PM. So it happened: DHL rang at my front door at exactly 5 PM, on the seventh day after the laptop backpack from Google was shipped in the UK.

Now about the Google laptop backpack. Its design is kinda weird, but probably it’s just me. Seemingly it’s made 100% of polyester which is odd, since Google is probably one of the greatest supporters of the Green Initiatives. But at least it’s waterproof. On the bottom of the Google laptop backpack there’s a thick rubber layer which will come handy when I will drop it in the snow of the Alps.

The backpack has 4 pockets: 2 big in which you can easily put your laptop in (they are huge) and 2 smaller, perfect for the cables, mouse, keyboard and the charger, notebooks and pens. In one of the smaller pockets there’s a hidden(-ish) pocket which can be perfect for hiding stuff from your girlfriend and wife’s sight.
The backpack itself is around 2lbs (~1 kilogram), which is not much if you consider the rubber from the backpack’s and the consolidation of the pockets. The zippers are massive enough to not remain in your hands when you open and close the Google laptop backpack, which is good again since I usually break every zipper I encounter.

Am I satisfied so far with my brand new Google laptop backpack? If I take in consideration that the Google-store employees were extremely helpful, the shipment arrived on time to me, the backpack looks cool (and weird in the same time), the shell is tough and waterproof, I think I’m satisfied with it. So far. Will see when I manage to break the zippers.