Evesham Voyager 64 3200+

A reasonably priced laptop, and it even houses a 64bit processor.

Price: £1399

Manufacturer: Evesham

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Verdict

Pros:

Good price; excellent 3D performance.

Cons:
Not as fast as we expected.

Verdict:
Very reasonably priced, but we found that the Cool 'n' Quiet technology is hard to control.

Will Stapley, Personal Computer World 23 Feb 2004

After releasing the Athlon 64 desktop processor last year, it was only a matter of time before we started to see notebooks arriving with the mobile version of AMD's 64bit processor. Evesham was first off the mark to get an Athlon 64 mobile notebook to us in the form of the Voyager 64 3200+. As its name would suggest, Evesham has used the 3200+ version of the Athlon 64 Mobile - it also comes in a slightly less speedy 3000+ model. Evesham has also supplied a suitable 512MB of Ram to back up the processor.

Before looking at the various components of the Voyager 64 3200+, we'll let you know exactly how it performed in our tests. In our Sysmark 2002 test it managed to return a score of 201 - it's by no means a bad score for a notebook, but a little less than we hoped for. Meanwhile, in the 3Dmark 2001 test, the Voyager managed to notch up an extremely impressive rating of 10,071.

However, we did have some issues with the new AMD Cool 'n' Quiet power management technology that aims to increase battery performance and reduce noise levels by reducing the speed of the processor. The Athlon 64 Mobile is designed to run at 2GHz, however the Cool 'n' Quiet technology is able to reduce this to 800MHz when the system is idle. The problem is that we found it particularly hard to control the effects of the Cool 'n' Quiet tool and, as a result, were left wondering whether or not the processing was running at full pelt when it is required to. What's more, the Cool 'n' Quiet option was activated even when the notebook was hooked up to the mains, and not just while it was running off the battery.

In terms of build quality, the Voyager 64 3200+ is solidly put together, but at 3.6kg it's not the most portable of notebooks on the market. Open it up and you're presented with a fairly uncomplicated design - the only item of note is the scroll pad that sits neatly beneath the standard touchpad. The 15in screen looks great when you're sitting directly in front of it, but it wasn't the best in terms of viewing angles. Horizontally it wasn't too bad, but the vertical viewing angles were a little disappointing - move up or down without adjusting the angle of the screen and you'll find that the display soon starts to lose its clarity.

As far as storage goes, the Voyager 64 3200+ comes complete with a decent Toshiba 60GB hard drive, which should keep most users happy. Evesham has also thrown in a Panasonic DVD combo drive that's capable of burning data to both CDs and DVDs. The usual selection of ports is found lurking around the side and back of the notebook. A total of four USB ports are available, along with one Firewire socket, while digicam owners will delight in the fact that there's also a multiformat card reader sitting at the front of the case. It will happily accept Smartmedia, MMC/SD (Multimedia Card/ Secure Digital) and Memory Stick, but those with Compact Flash (CF) cards aren't catered for.

If you're after extended battery life, you might be a little disappointed that our tests showed it to be capable of ticking away for only two hours and 38 minutes - it's not a bad battery life, but considering the weight of this notebook we expected a little better and it doesn't compare too well with some of the Intel Centrino notebooks that can keep pushing away for over four hours.

Should you encounter any problems with your notebook, Evesham also includes a decent three-year warranty with the Voyager 64 3200+. The first year is on-site, while the final two years are return to base only.

On the whole, we were impressed with the Voyager 64 3200+, especially since it's so reasonably priced. However, as with all PCs using AMD's 64bit processors, until we get a 64bit version of Windows and some decent 64bit software, it won't be running at full capacity.

Contact: Evesham 0870 160 5900
www.evesham.com

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