Eurocom's Monster Laptop: Too Much!
Laptops are like automobiles. Some are flashy while others are perfect for rough use. Regardless of the look and feel, under the hood, they are all essentially the same. The latest offering from Eurocom smashes that paradigm to smithereens. However, it also comes with a hefty price tag.
Designed for gamers and professionals like graphic designers and A/V engineers, the Phantom comes with quite a few brawny parts. The D900C Phantom-X is a quad-core laptop that has three (count them, three!) hard drives configured in a RAID array. If that isn't enough proof that this is a special kind of a laptop, then consider that it also comes with a mini-PCI TV Tuner, Gigabit Ethernet, and 802.11 a/b/g wireless networking.
The Channel Test Center received a D900C notebook with Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700 processors, 2 Gbytes of memory, and three 120 Gbyte-hard drives. Pre-installed with Windows Vista 64-bit Ultimate, this laptop also supports Windows XP Professional and 64-bit versions of Vista. It comes with two Nvidia GeForce Go 7950 GTX graphics cards in SLI mode, a Sony Optiarc DVD-RW drive, Intel PRO Wireless 3945ABG module for wireless networking, a touchpad, and a built-in 1.3 Mpixel camera. The full-sized keyboard includes a numeric keypad.
Engineers were most impressed with RAID storage on the laptop. The machine can arrange two or three SATA II drives in a RAID 0 or RAID 1 configuration. To set up RAID 5, the machine requires three identical drives up to 250 Gbytes in size. The Test Center unit came with a RAID-5 configuration and as far as the OS was concerned, there was only one 223 Gbyte drive. A BIOS-based configuration utility managed RAID settings, such as creating and deleting RAID configurations.
The D900C Phantom-X is misnamed. A phantom is supposed to be light and wispy, but this monster measures 15.6 inches wide by 11.7 inches deep by 2.4 inches high and tips the scales at 12 pounds. The AC Adapter adds another few pounds. Despite its unattractive size, the 1920x1200 pixel 17.1-inch flat panel LCD display is very sexy.
Eurocom touts the unit as a desktop replacement. That's a pretty accurate statement because it's too heavy to carry around anywhere. A word of advice for the mobile sales force and executives on the go: stay away, stay far away.
Just because it's a laptop, don't try actually keeping it on the lap. It's too heavy to do so comfortably, and the air vents don't help. There are four fans in the base of the system blowing out hot air and keeping processor and dual graphics boards cool. However, thanks to the fans, the unit never gets too warm to touch.
There are plenty of ports and jacks for networking, audio, and USB components. There is also an Express Card slot, a mini IEEE 1294 port, S/PDIF-out port, VGA and DVI-out ports, both S-Video-out and S-Video-in jacks, cable antenna jack, and a DC-in jack. There are two built-in speakers.
All this comes at a price. The Test Center demo unit would be priced at $5352, with $2674 in "optional" components added on to the base price of $2678, and come with a 1-year warranty. While the price includes Vista, it doesn't include Microsoft Office, antivirus, or gaming accessories and software. The base price offers only one hard drive, no wireless, and a single Nvidia card.
In case that doesn't break the bank, D900 Phantom can expand further. According to a price list on Eurocom's Web site, expanding to the maximum 4 Gbytes of memory would cost an additional $750, and 750 Gbytes of hard disk space (with 500 Gbytes available under RAID 5) would add $1143. The two Nvidia graphic cards can be swapped with two Nvidia GeForce Go 8700GT cards instead for $40, or upgraded to a single NVidia Quadro FX 1600 with 512 Mbytes of video memory for $268. A Blu-Ray drive instead of a DVD-RW drive would raise the price another $937. Even adding Bluetooth would cost extra ($71). The D900 Phantom was tested for performance using PassMark's Performance Test software, which can be used for free by anyone for up to 30 days. The system scored 1125.5, significantly higher than other laptops, and on-par with scores returned by workstations. It is very likely that the score could have been much higher if that drives had been set to RAID 0.
As engineers expected, battery life is very short on the D900. To test battery life, engineers played a movie off a DVD and timed how long it took to drain the battery. The D900C's battery died in 48 minutes.
Eurocom targets its highly customizable laptops for gamers and professionals who need the performance boost and are willing to shell out a premium for it.
There is nothing exciting outside to indicate the Phantom is anything unusual. The exterior is slate-gray with glossy plastic lining the base and the wrist rest area. In fact, it looks like just any other bland laptop, just bigger.