Appearance II
The rear a minimalist's dream, with just a VGA connector and Kensington lock spoiling the form factor.
The left-hand side is also pretty bare. An NEC multi-format, dual-layer DVD ReWriter is located to the right of Ethernet and modem ports. The sample featured Realtek's RTL8169 Gigabit Ethernet controller and a Motorola 56k modem.
The bottom is split into three sections. The smallest covers the hard drive. The sample shipped with a single 100GB 4,200RPM Seagate 2.5" drive but retail examples will feature either a 100GB 5,400RPM, 60GB 7,200RPM (no extra cost), or 120GB 5,400RPM (+£70). Users can also add Bluetooth connectivity for an extra £20, and Rockdirect would located it right next to the hard drive.
All models ship with a 6-cell 4400mAh battery as standard, although this can be boosted to a 9-cell 6600mAh version for an extra £75 at the time of purchase, and it should add a further 30% or so to the regular battery life. Note that the 9-cell version will protrude a touch, although Rockdirect assures us that it won't affect the height of the laptop. Like most, the rear height is markedly higher than the front, and the Pegasus 650 measures in at 35.7mm.
Whipping off the large central cover shows us the juicy innards. Wireless connectivity comes in the form of Intel's 2915 802.11a/b/g mini-PCI card, shown top-right. To the left is the large heatsink for the Type II MXM card, which, in this case, is an ATI Mobility Radeon X700 128MB running at 350MHz core and 600MHz GDDR1 RAM. 8 pixel pipelines and a 128-bit memory interface should make it a decent enough midrange performer. Leading on from the heatpipe is a second block covering the Pentium M 770; the fastest CPU provided by Rockdirect. Just above is the small, quiet fan blows over the Intel's MCH. To the right are 2 SODIMM DDR2 slots, run in dual-channel mode, that can be populated by a maximum 2GB of system RAM. 1GB is provided here, with the another 1GB (2x1GB) costing an extra £200.
Removing the 200g cooling apparatus is a matter of taking away 7 screws.
MXM Mobility Radeon X700 to the left. Pentium M 770 to the right, and Intel MCH up above. All pretty simple, really.
The external appearance is pretty good, with ports in the right places and easy accessibility to interior parts.
