Bundled Software, OS Setup and Battery Life
Bundled software runs to the Creative software for the Audigy 2 NX, a nice version of PowerDVD XP PRO EX, the full 7.1 Dolby Digital EX version of Cyberlink's impressive software DVD player, with full hardware acceleration support for the MR9600 and a copy of Pinnacle Instant CD+DVD, letting you use the DVD writer.If you've read any of my previous full system reviews, you'll know I like to whinge about the lack of an office productivity suite in computers costing a lot of money and I'll whinge again here. But being the third Time system we've seen at HEXUS so far, it was no surprise to see. No copy of Microsoft Works or something like OpenOffice.org; Time are religious Microsoft supporters. Ah well. It doesn't stop there either, there's no games bundle or any other applications, just the bare minimum to use the hardware provided.
Time will sell you Works or Office, my whinge is that a copy of either isn't rolled into the initial cost as a value added incentive to buy. If Office is too expensive for Time to bundle in at base cost, ship OO.org. Maybe the Redmond giant's marketing dollars shout loudly. A shame, whether it's a free download or not.
The daft thing is that the Model 3000+ version with 512MB of memory does get Works V7 and a trial of Office XP. Gah!
OS Setup
The Platina uses Windows XP Professional. Time partitioned the Travelstar 60GB disk with a single partition, using FAT32 at the filesystem. Hmm, why no NTFS? It's not hard to convert, but it should be done from the factory. As far as other OS setup goes, upon first boot of the Platina, you're run through a wizard to get a first user account setup, administrator class.This shouldn't be the case and probably won't be until Microsoft change the OS itself, but the first created account on a Windows system shouldn't have administrator class rights. A basic limited account teaches new OS users basic system security and good OS usage practices, something that's very important in this day and age of rampant viruses and worms. Get new users thinking about security from the first click of the mouse. Not Time's fault especially though.
Aside from that little nuance, things are as they should be. The touchpad was configured correctly, the WiFi worked flawlessly, the OS was setup to use the Portable/Laptop power scheme from first use and Service Pack 1 and all current Windows Update patches were installed.
Crucially, Time also installed the latest Cool and Quiet driver for the Athlon 64/VIA K8T800 hardware combination, allowing the operating system to correctly set CPU power saving states, giving the unit as much battery life as possible.
Battery Life
That brings me nicely on to battery life. Being a high frequency Athlon 64, 7200rpm hard disk and Mobility Radeon 9600 equipped computer, you wouldn't expect brilliant battery life. I'm actually typing this out on the Platina, using the battery for power, and I switched the unit on 2 hours and 41 minutes ago. I'm only doing light work, a little web browsing and some image manipulation, not hitting the disk, DVD-R or GPU too much, but that's not too bad for light use. The battery indicator is estimating I have another half an hour left and I'm inclined to agree with it.Looping 3DMark 2001SE to hit the GPU and CPU hard and the hard disk moderately, the battery ran down in 2 hours and 8 minutes. For a laptop with the spec the Platina has, I'm pretty impressed. Massive battery life is never going to be a strong point of laptops like this, but it's nice to see you can get ~3 hours of work done on the move on a single charge.
Charging it up
The Platina is powered by a 150W FSP Group external brick. Its end connector has an LED indicating power to the device. Easy stuff, the battery charges intelligently, stopping after the ~3hr full charge.Cool and Quiet
Want to see a little movie of Cool and Quiet in action, manipulating processor multiplier on the fly, as I load the CPU up for ~20 seconds?Click here (~950KB, uses the XviD CODEC).
Cool and Quiet is an extension of AMD's previous PowerNow! power-saving initiative, allowing the operating system and hardware inside the computer to adjust processor frequency, by means of multiplier, and operating voltage, on the fly. It's largely responsible for the decent battery life in the Platina and offers massive control over the processor and its operating states.
