Budget Notebooks

The budget category winner this year
again is an Acer TravelMate and like its cousin, the 4150, this one too
comes packed with features. There is little about this notebook that you
would not like, except for the 32 MB VRAM. For most business users and
traveling executives, it is a superb companion.

The 14” wide screen notebook not only
looks good, it comes with an ergonomic curved keyboard and has a lock for
its track pad that prevents accidental taps on the touch pad turning into
unwanted clicks when you're working with the keyboard. This model has a
built in microphone and coupled with the excellent speakers, it lets you
watch a full DVD during a boring budget flight. The battery lasts a cool 3
hours and 40 minutes (best in this category).

In performance, the 3242 performs top of
the line for its category, with 832 3D Marks and 41.9 MCC Winstones. This
is of course quite natural as this is the only dual core notebook in this
category. The Sahara Turion, with its Radeon 200G and the Intex 029CD with
the Intel 915 but 128 MB VRAM did give better frame rates than the 3242,
points out that this notebook has 64 MB too less VRAM.

BOTTOM LINE: The labels of 'Best
Features', 'Best Performance' and 'Editor's Choice' should say
this is the notebook to buy, if you have 50K rupees to spend, a little
above the average price for this class.

The Sahara L1 is a
Celeron notebook and is priced the lowest in our Budget notebooks
category. As such, its configuration is low end and this notebook would be
suited for executives and junior management in the company. Given its
configuration, it has good performance.

There are three Celeron
or Sempron notebooks in this shootout (the Gigabyte 521 and the HCL M7901
being the other two). Of them, this notebook performed a little better
than the Gigabyte in MCCW (27.8 against 22 Winstones) and gave almost the
same battery time compared to the HCL (2 hours 37 minutes against 2 hours
35 minutes). Its 3D Mark score was 109. This is a plus point for the
notebook and indicates progressive technical design from a new player in
the notebooks market. The Sahara L1 comes with a standard set of features.
There are no bells and whistles added that would have made the price go
higher. The hinges are placed in such a way that the notebook can open out
flat. Its silver-gray coloring gives it style and large keys usability.
There is a built-in microphone that's just under the LCD and the
speakers are mounted on the front-edge. All the ports are arranged at the
rear of the notebook and this may be a problem if you frequently need to
plug or unplug devices.

If you remember our last
notebook shootout (July 2005), we had a couple of entries then too in the
same price range from Sahara. At that time, their notebooks came with only
a Linux option, with Windows drivers, no documentation and the nature and
quality of the software provided with the system were not in the same
league as the big boys they were competing against. This year, things have
improved. In fact, the Sahara was one of the few notebooks we received
this time that came with a full kit like from a branded player.

This shows a progressive
player and we expect their future entries to do even better in the next
shootout.

BOTTOM LINE: If
you don't mind a Celeron and have a rock bottom budget, then this is an
ideal notebook for you.

Features: 82.9 Performance: 81.4 

Price: 69.1 

Overall: 284

Rs.40,499

Features: 60.4

Performance: 86.7 

Price: 83.6 

Overall: 293

Rs.33,499

Features: 59.0

Performance: 89.9

Price: 61.5

Overall: 257

Rs. 45,499

Features: 55.4

Performance: 62.9

Price: 94.9

Overall: 284

Rs. 29,490

Features:  58.5

Performance: 31.8

Price: 80.0

Overall: 230

Rs. 34,990

Features: 73.2

Performance: 92.4

Price: 70.2

Overall: 288

Rs. 39,900