Preliminary Review of the Averatec 6130HS-20

[Knightmare]

Hey everyone,

I first want to thank everyone for their reviews of the Averatec 6130, if it wasn’t for you guys I probably wouldn’t have bought it. I was wary of buying this laptop due to my unfamiliarity with the brand and my reluctance to invest a sizable amount of money in a laptop I had no knowledge about, especially in terms of its quality and performance.

To be honest most companies like HP and Dell don’t build their own computers, they only re-brand computers built by companies in Taiwan and China. So it really shouldn’t matter what brand of computer you buy, but as we all know here in America brand names are important. This isn’t the time or place to get into that subject so I won’t delve any deeper, but suffice it to say I am really happy with my purchase.

I’ve only had this laptop for a few days now so this is a preliminary review, and I will update it if anything new arises.

I have to say I wasn’t expecting too much from this laptop in terms of build quality and style but after opening the box I have to say that I was wrong. I found the outer casing to be surprisingly sturdy and the overall two tone silver look to be quite comfortable to look at. This laptop isn’t in the realm of an Apple or a Sony in terms of style but how many are.

The first thing I did was reformat my hard drive and reinstall Windows XP home, I also installed all the updates from Microsoft and I have to say so far so good. I installed the wireless card drivers from windows update and I haven’t encountered any of the troubles some of you have had with it dropping connections. I also installed the omega drivers recommended by catalyst_007. They seem to be working fine but I was wondering what settings you recommend to get the most performance without frying the card.

One thing is true about the laptop and that’s the heat issue, not to say it gets unbearably hot but I haven’t done anything but surf the web and watch some movies and I can say that it gets pretty warm.

I don’t have any hard numbers to back it up, but in my opinion this laptop is fast. I can say from using a friend’s Toshiba with similar specs that my laptop is faster than his. Let me say it again that this is just my opinion and it may be biased but it seems to be slightly faster than his.

I can say that the screen is not the best that I have seen and that you won’t be able to make out some details when viewing at an angle. But this isn’t a big deal unless you have a few friends wanting to watch a movie on your laptop, but I really don’t see to many people wanting to have a movie night with friends and watching it on a laptop. You could also use the S-Video out if that be the case.

The heat issue and the display is the only real complaint I have with the laptop. I do have some others but they are more of a personal preference kind if thing like the power brick being huge, but that’s due to the processor requiring a huge amount of power. Also a fault of more and more laptop keyboards is having the control button only on the left side of the keyboard. I don’t know about you but I love the “ctrl + enter” shortcut in Firefox and IE. It automatically puts in the www and .com in the address and I used to be able to do it with one hand but now I have to use two. This is a petty gripe but if you’re as lazy as me then you use your laptop while lying in bed with the remote in one hand and browsing the net with the other, and it’s just a pain to have to put the remote down just to hit the control button.

I know this is one really long review and most of you are probably a bit bored right now so I will conclude with saying that I’m really happy with this laptop and I really appreciate all the reviews you guys have provided because without it I probably wouldn’t have bought an Averatec. So if you’re on the fence like I was I would advise you to go ahead and get an Averatec, for the price there is no comparison.

[jedisolo]

Excellent review.
-andrew

[Knightmare]

I also wanted ask what hard drive you guys recommend if i wanted to upgrade. I've havent had too much experience with notebook hard drives and was curious what brand you guys would go with. Also how much of a differnce is going with a 7200 rpm drive over a 5400 is going make.

-Richard

[jedisolo]

getting a 7200 rpm hd wil make opening programs much faster. I bought a 40 gig 5400 toshiba hd with 16mb of cashe memory and it's fast. If you get a 5400 or a 7200 rpm you'll notice the difference but your computer will also run hotter. The 4200 in this notebook in my opinion is pretty good.
-andrew