Samsung Q430 14in notebook
Do ya think I'm sexy?
Review There was a time when plastic sprayed sliver and moulded with a brushed metal-like texture was cool. The problem for Samsung, which has decked out the interior of the Q430 this way, is that such decor hasn't been hip for more than 30 years.
In fact, all this laptop needs to bring back that ye olde home music centre look is a base formed from mock-oak veneer chipboard. Heck it even has a built-in amp, feeding 1.5W through each of the laptop's two speakers for a beefier-than-usual sound.
Samsung's Q430: silver-sprayed plastic abounds
Instead, it's standard matte black, while the lid is an attractive glossy graphite look, both of which make the shocking inside look even more anachronistic.
Samsung, the 1970s called - they want their consumer electronics design back.
But if you can stomach the looks - and the guffaws of Apple fans and design buffs looking over your shoulder - the 14in Q430 has much to commend it.
The laptop's outside is not unattractive
The notebook is powered by a decent chip, the 2.26GHz Intel Core i3-350M processor, backed by 3GB of 1066MHz DDR 3 and an Nvidia GeForce 310M graphics chip with 512MB of dedicated video Ram. The GPU drives said bright, glossy 1366 x 768 screen and the HDMI port.
Next page: Not quite as thin'n'light as billed
COMMENTS
Well....
I quite like the design, but then again I did have one of those music centres and I loved it.
Not sure how the battery manager reducing capacity to 80% helps? Is it just a case that, as a battery loses about 20% a year anyway, the first years loss won't be noticed because it always ran at 80% capacity? e.g. "I bought my laptop a year ago, it had 2.5 hour battery life then and it still does today!"
Sounds like smoke and mirrors to me.
Design?
What a quaint idea - that somehow design gets "better" as time goes on. Of course it's bollocks - as proved beyond doubt by the plague of those hideous piano-lacquer flat-screen TVs. "Retro" in itself is neither good nor bad, design-wise - it's just "retro"
Re; Batt. Man.
So, you're saying that such an application adds an increased chase of falling off cliffs?
They should add a consumer warning.
Sexy? Not even close!
Hell no! sometimes I feel like I am the only person left who likes technology to be plain flat black. I absolutely despise laptops with those god aweful silver or grey sections. This machine's color choice makes me nauseous.
Battery
Actually, it does make sense: these cells are all charged with a constant current source, making it difficult to tell when it's truly 'full' as opposed to 'overcharged' (this problem gets worse with cell age, as I understand it). Leaving the cells slightly depleted will extend their usable life, especially for the folk who leave the thing on mains pretty much all the time (Mrs. Ball boy: are you listening?) even a laptop has overcharge prevention - which all should have these days - because the initial state when the laptop is powered-up is to go into a charge cycle...hence the long-term overcharging effects.
As the author suggests, how useful this is depends on how long you intend to keep the laptop - personally, I'd keep a home laptop for a while & would probably still have this when brushed silver came back into fashion!
