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