Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo Xi1546 Review (pics, specs) Discussion

The Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo Xi1546 is available with Intel Core Duo processors from 1.66GHz to 2.33GHz, RAM from 512MB to 2GB, an 80, 100 or 120GB Hard Disk and all have a 17" widescreen monitor, either 1440x900 or 1920x1200. All models also come with Intel PRO/Wireless 3495ABG and Bluetooth.

Read the full content of this Article: Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo Xi1546 Review (pics, specs)

 

Great review, clear and concise and with plenty of pictures. I was considering this machine but it is absolutely huge.

 

Excellent review... what a nice COMPAQ legacy laptop you have!

 

Very nice review! Excited to find a NB with an X1800 in it! That's a powerful GPU. Surprised you didn't have that under your Pros and Cons.

 

Nice review! It is rare to find a notebook with a ATI X1800 graphics card, which makes this review all the more interesting.

 

That's a first - an ATI Mobility Radeon X1800 256MB. Haven't seen one of those reviewed yet. It looks like a very powerful chip, especially when looking at the 3DMark06 score.

I think the look and design of the Xi are very nice.

 

to be honest i was expecting more on '06
my 512mb 7600 gets 2100.
and that's on a 14"

 

Do you realize that based on the super pi calculations, your time beat the Lenovo 2GHz core duo and was almost as fast as the Dell 2GHz core duo laptop (vs. your 1.86 GHz)? That's very impressive.

 

Yikes, that machine is a beast! Very nice review, looks like a very solid desktop replacement with a graphics card that (with a little tweaking) could potentially measure up to a 7800. Certainly a big jump from the X1600, though.

I'd love to see how the 1920x1200 LCD measures up, I'm all about getting as much screen real estate as possible.

 

I think this laptop also has MXM, according to Ice Tea's website.

http://mxm-upgrade.com/Table.html

 

'Swank' has got an easy 6100+ in 05 clocking back up to 450mhz(Stock ATI).
So thats not bad

 

Great review Great Picture of All the Laptops in the end

Lets get a Super Pi score for the Legacy Beast (Hmm 3hrs??)

Keep it up

 

Do they sell this in USA?

 

Just because of this review, my notebook shall be a Fujistsu-Siemens Amilo. But not anytime soon though

A really neat notebook, and I'm sure you must be a proud owner of them X1800s

 

I want that Compaq machine, I'd love to know the specs on it...

 

Great review rwyke.....I just havnt had the time to review my Amilo Xi, so you beat me to it
Out of box you got the same 3dmark05 score as I did, around 5700, but as Hillbilly said, I clocked the core up to 450MHz and got a score of just above 6100. That's without touching the memory speed.
The Xi is great for games. I havn't had a single problem with any of the latest graphic-hungry games out there (FEAR, BF2, HL2 & Ep1, Oblivion, Hitman Bloodmoney), in native resolution 1440x900 and everything turned up.
One thing that I thought was funny is that you didn't get 2x80gb hd's that was delivered with my version. Except for that, it is the same machine.

swank

 

hey, do you mind me askign how long you have had it for? i considered this notebook before but was put off by some posts saying how unstable it is? is this true?

 

I think you are getting it convused with the M3438.This is an entirely different rig.

 

great review!!...that is a BEAST!!

 

I've had my machine since the beginning of july and I do not think it is unstable at all. Like another post said, you probably confuse it with the M3438. Anything from games to movies to "serious" programs work well. I must say that as a replacement for my old stationary, it is SWEET

swank

 

Swank, if you don't mind me asking, have you got your hard disks in RAID. If so, are they much faster?

 

oh no, im talking about the xi 1546. ok, heres the thing. ive been choosing between the zepto 2425. whcih is a d**n good notebook. and this. thing is. im not buying yet. till september. so i decided to accumulate as much info about my top 3 choices and see how things develop. so i would be so grateful if saaay, in a month or two you could post more info about how its running. or i would be forever grateful if you could keep me updated. although thats really selfish to be honest..so i dunno...if you could update this review it would be amazing. im not as confused aobut buying as before. but i suppose like every notebook enthusiast out there, youd want to get the best for what your spending.

as for the xi 1546 being unstable. i read it somewhere i cant remember, it was more then one post and a few people agreed. was overheating and cpu problems. so it put me off. i think after that it kind of went to my head that fujitsu siemens were all unstable. so i want that bug removed from my head!

 

Yep, my hd's are in RAID. Are they much faster than what ? The Millenium Falcon?? I havnt run any tests to check the speed, but compared to the 7200 disks that sits in my stationary, I would say that they are just as fast.

When it comes to the stability question that kamikazefly opened. I have had my laptop on 48h's, working, playing, watching movies, downloading and I didn't had to restart ones. Maybe it's to soon to decide whether it is stable or not, but till now I'm happy.

swank

 

Thankyou for that info Swank. Much appreciated. Originally, i was going to buy a smaller laptop, but the power of this has persueded me to buy it. I might wait a while though, to see if Merom has any impact on the price of this.

 

A great review, I might well be buying this beast now! One question: has anyone out there used this for music making? Like with Cubase, Logic, Reason etc and lots of VST plugins running? That's mainly what I'd be using it for, and I have horror visions (due to my now dead HP notebook and its motherboard frying through) of it not coping with very ram-intensive stuff.

 

Where does one buy one of these things? Any place in the US have them?

 

i'm getting mine in september, for the same reasons as swank, but with a 2 GHz processor... and now i know it will be spanking fast. Swank, if you want to Overclock your GPU, download ATI tool or some other overclocking tool and you can bump it up to the standard 450 MHz.

 

I decided to buy the Alienware M5750 which is supposed to be this machine. I live in the US and didn't want to order from the UK. Anyhow, I'll post my review of the AW version shortly after I receive it.

 

Wow that laptop looks great! Only one problem, it comes with XP Home and as a student I feel like I should be using XP Professional. The world and their mother does recommend XP Professional. Should I look into upgrading or will home be fine?

Also since I can't find any versions with media centre, what’s the instant-on functionality like with Home, can you connect to external devices? (i.e. iPod, external hard drive)

 

Hmm...I've appeared to have KILLED THE THREAD. Whoops.

 

For some reason this thread hasn't strived on too well. I was hoping to hear more from the owners myself.

 

Probably all too busy enjoying their new Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo Xi1546's

 

Yes we are
Currently replaying CoD2 and Chaos Theory



swank

 

Well, if you've got a second, could you tell me what warranty comes with the Amilo?

I'm hoping to get a laptop that will last me quite a while and I'm worried that the low price will impact on its longevity.

 

I got mine through work so I have everything covered in three years. That means if I should happen to "drop" it on the floor I would get it fixed or a new one.
Other than that I think it depends on where u buy it. Each country has different laws regarding consumers rights. Here in norway we have a 2 year warranty on almost everything bought in stores (online or the old fashion way), then we have a extended 5 year warranty on products that are supposed to last longer than 5 year (i.e. tv, vcr, cdplayers and laptops).


swank

 

Richard, Thankyou for the excelent review.

I have just ordered an Xi1546 TM2500, 1.040mb RAM, 200GB HD (100GBx2 raid) today together with an Si1520, TM2300 for my girlfriend from elara.ie here in Dublin.

My Amilo M1420 (centrino 1.7, 512mb, 80GB) has served me well for 2 trouble-free years now, and is going to my daughter. My brother has one the same plus an 'lifebook S'. he also has an amilo pro.

I have read up about the xi series since before it was generally available, and have not heard any issues about unstablity. I know of some issues with M*43* series (missing a beat), but i have found Amilos to be great computers. I dont think that the major players (dell, hp, toshiba etc.) can match either of the 2 i have just purchased. The 1520 12" widescreen at just over 900 euro plus vat with core duo is great value for a sub-notebook. the only laptop i could find near to this was the PC world's philips which is has quality issues and no support.

Boopolo.

PS. let you all know in a week or so if they live up to my expectations.

 

Just purchased one of these little babies form laptops direct in the uk.
I must admit that overall I am impressed except the following.

Have 1 dodgy pixel, not stuck permanently but seems locked on red at times.

Opted for the 2x100gb drives but they appear not to be RAID configured.

I presume I will have to do a fresh install and change the bios settings for the VIA RAID setup.

Has anyone done this??

FEAR loading at times is dire on a single 5400 drive, has anyone else had this?

 

OK .... dont do that ..... no need

The 'Via raid tool' allows you to do a raid 0 (striping) without a re-install. It will take over one hour but it works.

My only problem was that after I diid this, half of the drive (190GB+) was not allocated. This drove me crazy for 3 days.

By accident I discovered a fix. After the 'Via Raid Tool' has made your raid 0array check to see if you have one hard drive (local Disk C: ). If this is showing only 95GB+ as it size in the properties, do the following.
Start/My Computer/Local Disk (C: )/VIARAID/ and click 'CONVERT' icon.

Via Raid Tool is fantastic. You can create/remove: stripe raids (raid 0), mirror raids (raid 1), striping & mirroring raids (raid 0 + 1), and Span raids (JBOD) without taking any sofware (including windows) off your original drive.

Boopolo

PS. will post this as a separate thread if the mods dont mind. ????

 

**** Too late lol.

tried a few things beforehand, have reinstalled everything and works a treat.
just was a last resort.

cheers for getting back to me, made no difference in FEAR however. Have put on some Omega drivers and reduced it all down to medium.
Things now seem a lot better. BUt not perfect.
Have been on the FEAR forums site and they claim its an ATI issue.

My biggest bone of contention with this laptop is although ATI claim Fujitsu has signed up for mobile catalyst program. WTF cant you install the drivers

 

Great review and nice system! Glad to see the x1800 in action!

 

Hey guys, are any of you fellow Xi1546 owners experiencing either of the following?:

1.) Laptop randomly freezes at WinXP loading screen, or Login screen every few days, requiring a hard-reset.

2.) When trying to safely stop and remove a USB device, Windows also stops the wireless card, which cannot be reactivated until the machine is rebooted.

I can't figure either of these issues out. Everything else runs flawlessly on my laptop, it's really bizarre!

 

da.guvna...

hey dude... tried to run the new Bios flash? you can download it from http://support.fujitsu-siemens.com/com/support/downloads.html

hope that the update will fix your problem´

Peace!!

 

I am trying to install windows xp from my original disks only.
I understand that I need to put the RAID driver on my windows xp disk or windows will not find the disks (I have 2 X 120Gb).
Q1: What are the names of the driver files
Q2: Where exactly (folder) do you put them

Thanks

Rob
PS The recovery disks are in a foreign language only

 

Hi....

im thinking to buy this laptop and i saw on some websites in the uk they are selling it (well they are out of stock) with the new intel core 2 duo processor (t7200!). one website said it will be available on the 20th september. going for sub £1100 !

i jus have one question to ask:this laptop says its hdtv ready amd has hdcp support..what exactly does it mean by HDTV ready and HDCP support... im completly lost there...does it mean its high def ready like new tv's? or that it displays high def quality? or that u can connect to a high def tv and display high def quality? like i said im lost ! if someone can explain it to me that would really helpful.

one more thing i also went to this website

http://www.gpureview.com/Mobility-Radeon-X1800-card-411.html#

on this website the fragments pipelines had 12(16)
as well as the texture units 12(16)
when i clicked piplelines under advanced options there was a function saying enabled disabled pipelines.
does that mean that the x1800 has 4 pipelines disabled?? or is the info from the website wrong??

 

wow!!! where did you see the core 2 duo one? any links would be amazingly helpful. ive buying mine next week!! cheers

 

each of these websites says a different date for its availablity roughly around 20th onwards.

but the specs for the laptop are pretty sweet for the price i reckon

Intel Core 2 Duo T7200 (2GHz),
2GB (2*1024MB)
160GB SATA
the rest is the same


http://www.zomp.net/shop/product_info.php?ctr=froogle&products_id=341638
http://www.dealsmashers.com/lkngbr101100035-p-21047.html?ref=9f567r2
http://www.lambda-tek.com/componentshop/index.pl?origin=gbase13&prodID=1270648
http://www.morecomputers.co.uk/textra.asp?pn=LKN:GBR-101100-035


anyone know the answer to my questions about the graphics card (disabled pipelines) and htdv and hdcp part?

 

Core 2 duo on FJS is alreay available in france for price of 1729euros :

Duo Core T5600 (1.83Ghz 2Mb) Memory 2048 Mb HD 2 x 120 Go SATA Screen 17" WXGA+ ATI X1800 256Mo ddr3 Burner DVDRW eithernet 10/100 & Wifi 802.11b/g DVI Windows XP Home

http://www.grosbill.com/fr/ordinate...le/41147/ordinateur-portable-FUJITSU-SIEMENS-

 

naaah...i think they were just giving an overview of the whole 1800 range. the x1800 has 12 pixel pipelines. while the x1800 xt has 16 so i dont think any are disabled. the x1800 runs a ta core speed of 450mhz while the xt runs at 550mhz..this is as far as i know...ohoh and both have the same vertex shaders at 8. sooo this is all..apart from that...im still researching my very near future GPU.

 

I am going to double post(and get told off !!)
Do you think that is 2x80gig drives or 1x160gig unit? 5400rpm??

 

I would personally prefer the single 160GB drive; there will still be one drive bay open for later expansion.