Maxdata ECO 4000A (381290) PC Notebook

Good value at £100, cheaper than some lower spec Pentium III laptops.

Well built but a little heavy to be carried around regularly. I use it mainly for web browsing which it does well enough.

The wireless network connection occasionally gets lost which doesn't happen on my centrino laptop or other pcs using wireless dongles.

The screen resolution is rather low for 15in at 1024 by 768. However use of "cleartype" text display compensates for this quite effectively.

There is a button to change the speed between a near silent 350mhz and 800mhz. For web browsing the slower speed is adequate.

The ventilation vent on the base is quite large. I would have preferred no base vents.

The CPU is rated considerably faster than an 800mhz Pentium III but the Pentium
doesn't require so much cooling as the Sempron mobile processor.

The hibernate and startup to internet browsing is good, 18secs to save and under 25secs to get browsing.

The build quality seems good. Everything seems solid. The screen is solid and doesn't flex when touched. The keyboard feels solid too. The touch pad seems to be as good as any I've used but does need more pressure to scroll compared to moving the mouse pointer.

For its intended use of web browsing and the odd letter and sums at home this is more than adequate. I expect the power usage to be similar to other laptops I use, around 20 to 30 watts considerably less than the 150watts used by my core2 duo desktop and large lcd monitor.