6130-HS20

I JUST got the 6130-HS20 and LOVE it, but I have to say, outta the box, something seems wrong. I installed video drivers form omegadrivers and thats about it. I guess it just seems about as good as my old desktop...1.8 AMD 512meg.
This is a P4 3Ghz 512 ddr and I dunno, it seems SLOW as xmas..I tried Battlefield Vietnam and on the lowest settings it was ALMOST playable....my old 800mhz with a pci 64megnvida card ran 3 times as well...
What am I missing?!?!?!?!?!?

 

The hard drive in the notebook is only spinning at 4200 RPM, buy a faster notebook hard drive and get a notebook hard drive enclosure case and use the 4200 rpm hard drive as a back up. In all computers the bottleneck is the hard drive.
-andrew

 

Yea,
That is my next purchase. I am eyeing a few on eBay for under 200$. 8 Meg cache and 7200 rpm. Will that create a bottleneck with the USB 2.0?? As an update, I played more with the laptop last night and here are some thoughts I have on it.

Speed - It doesn't really seem any faster than my old AMD 1800xp Desktop. Then again, I know it's really hard to judge speed. The one game I did install seemed to load faster, however, when loading the map in the game (Battlefield Vietnam) it actually seems slower than my old desktop and the music that plays skips a bit. Maybe it is the hard drive?

LCD - It is a widescreen and looks great in XP. I can¡¦t stress how good it looks. I was very impressed. You can still see it pretty clearly from different angles so that was a plus. The text and icons are sharp and clear. Overall, much better than my Viewsonic 17 inch desktop. The widescreen was nice to have in the desktop world as well. In the one game I did play (BFV), the loading screens are stretched out and look, well, not so hot. The actual game play was awesome. Everything looks as it should and I feel like I have a better field of view. So far so good.

DVD +/- RW ¡V It plays DVDs and that¡¦s really the only feature I have tested so far. Here is the bad¡K.. DVDs look like CRAP. They seem overly grainy. I tried Lost in Translation and Kill Bill. LIT looks horrible in dark scenes. I tried all different settings and it improved a bit, but low light, dark scenes are grainy, at least to me. Could be the laptop highlighting the DVD transfer? On Kill Bill, it looks awesome in the well lit scenes and the colors shine through!!! But again, in dim scenes, not so hot. The blacks aren¡¦t solid black¡Kgrainy. That¡¦s the best way to describe it. Now for me, at first I wasn¡¦t too thrilled about the DVD playback but after some tweaking it is acceptable. If I want to enjoy a DVD I can go in the other room and watch it on the HDTV. On a side note: if any of you have the luxury of HDTV then you will understand what I mean here. 90% of DVDs do NOT look good when you have a very good hdtv/lcd. The higher quality displays basically highlight the flaws. It can be a shock when you are used to a regular CRT and being happy then watching on LCD or HDTV. Some are better than others. Knowing that I wasn¡¦t too disappointed in DVD playback but I have to admit, I feel like I am missing something. Like there is something I can do to make them look a bit better. I am using Power DVD Pro XP. I am open to suggestions here.

LCD/DVD ¡V Here is where the laptop takes its biggest performance hit to me. You REALLY need to be at a good angle to watch DVD¡¦s on this thing. While the widescreen is nice, if you look at it at the wrong angle, it gets all distorted. I don¡¦t know I can really recommend this for its ¡§portable DVD playing¡¨ capabilities. It¡¦s nice to have but not the strong point.

Gaming ¡V Again I have only installed BFN and at first it was LOUSY. See my previous post. ƒ¼ I poked around in the omega drivers (thank you omega drivers) and made a few tweaks, I think. I ran tweak XP. Then I installed the latest patch for BFN. Loaded it back up and WHAT A DIFFERENCE. Granted it is set on low graphics (and to be brutally honest, this game never looked very hot anyhow and I have it all maxed out on my desktop!!! Looks the same) It is VERY smooth, with the occasional dropped frame. I was very pleased with it. I even hoped online and played for a few min and it was flawless. I will be installing COD tonight as that is the only other game I play. I will update. At this point I am happy with the gaming as I am not a serious, hardcore gamer. I am open to suggestions.

Heat ¡V I had this laptop on for about 6 hours last night and installed games and played them, watched DVDs and some light web surfing and it never got hot at all. Warm, yes! But not hot. I also have the Targus Cooling Fans underneath so that may have helped. Overall I was happy with the heat thus far. I will post more as I do more on it.

Size ¡V This laptop is HUGE! Not very light but still relatively slim. I don¡¦t know about whipping this baby out in an airplane in coach!!! It was bigger than I expected! It did still fit in my laptop backpack comfortably. But again, it is Big!

Ergonomics ¡V First thing, the keyboard feels full size and that is nice. Very quiet and easy to type on. I don¡¦t like how close the keyboard is to the LCD. That¡¦s a personal preference. I wish the hard drive was on the back side of the keyboard, thus bringing it closer. When sitting back in my chair, it feels like a chore to reach up over and type (when the laptop is on a desk). Maybe that¡¦s just me.
All of the ports and connectors are in a good location sans two points. The power cord is right next to the DVD drive. I have to push back the extra cord to open the drive, just an annoyance. I also don¡¦t like the placement of the audio jacks in front. That seem intrusive to me, I would rather have it on the side. Just me.

Sound ¡V A few people have complained about the sound. I was pleased with it. I played mp3¡¦s and DVDs as well as a game and did not feel the need for external speakers at all. I even had the TV on in the background as well!

Well, that¡¦s all I can think of for now. I will post more as I use it more. Overall, I am very very pleased. I feel I got a great deal! $1187 From Buy.com I will post the specs. I am open to any questions as well as suggestions to improve performance!!!


Product Description - AVERATEC AV6130HS - P4 3 GHz - 15.4" TFT

Dimensions (WxDxH) - 14.1 in x 10.6 in x 1.4 in

Weight - 7.7 lbs

System Type - Notebook

Built-in Devices - Stereo speakers

Processor - Intel Pentium 4 3 GHz

Cache Memory - 512 KB - L2 cache

RAM - 512 MB (installed) / 1 GB (max) - DDR SDRAM - 333 MHz

Card Reader - Yes

Hard Drive - 60 GB

Optical Storage - DVD¡ÓRW - plug-in module

Display - 15.4" TFT active matrix WXGA (1280 x 800)

Graphics Controller - ATI MOBILITY RADEON 9600 - 64 MB

Audio Output - Sound card

Telecom - Fax / modem - MDC - 56 Kbps

Networking - Network adapter - Ethernet, Fast Ethernet, IEEE 802.11b, IEEE 802.11g

Input Device - Keyboard, touchpad, scroll button

Battery - Lithium ion

Operating System - Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition

 

Replace the 4200 rpm and put that 7200 rpm in it's place and i'm sure you'll notice the difference. Regarding USB 2.0, it transfers at a speed of 480 Megabits per second that's roughly 60 megabytes a second, remember there are 8 bits to a byte. Secondly download the omega drivers for it they are better then the ones that came preinstalled on it. Thirdly buy more ram for it, ex. take one of the 256 mb sticks out and replace it with 512 and then you'll have 768 mb. The more memory you have the faster programs will load and it won't use the hard drive as much. The last thing is to defrag atleast once a week to sort out your files on the hard drive. The 6130hs operates at 3000mhz or 3ghz plus it's using hyper threading technology so you'll be able to do multi media things faster like encode video or burn a dvd much faster then you would on a amd 1800. My desktop is a duron 1.3 ghz.
-andrew

 

USB 2.0's speed is variable, it can go anywhere from 1 megabit UPTO 480 megabits per second. Thats why firewire is so much better, its a constant 400 megabits per second.

 

really I didn't know that. I know that usb 2.0 is backword compatible with usb 1.1. I'm glad the 6130hs came with a fire wire port then.
-andrew

 

Yea but can you get an external drive that is powered through the firewire or usb? Here is another question???
Has anyone replaced the internal HD is the Averatec 6100 HS yet???? I would rather stick the 7200 RPM internal and just have a HUGH (but slow) external, for mp3's and movies and whatnot. Needing an external HD for tasks that require A SPEEDY HD kinda defeat the purpose of having a laptop. I don't want to be sitting in an airport terminal with my laptop on my lap, power cord running to the wall, external HD next to me, power cord for that running to the wall...kinda pointless to have a laptop now lol

 

The firewire port is a 4 pin bus only, non powered port on the 6130. Only 6 and the newer 9 pin firewire ports have power. I'm guessing the usb ports are powered, but i only think the power will go up to 500mA, but i believe thats for an externaly powered usb port/hub. I highly doubt that you can get a usb drive thats powered by usb only. And with the battery life on the 6100 series being so low, i don't think you would want an external drive draining the already limited batteries. i have read in another thread that there are external cd/dvd drives that are capable of being powered through firewire/usb. but they prolly don't need the power a hard drive would need.