Packard Bell Dot M/A performance tested

17Hot on the heels of last week’s unboxing video, the folks at NetbookWereld have posed a more detailed set of observations about the Packard Bell Dot M/A mini-notebook (also known as a rebadged version of the Gateway LT3100. And like the Gateway version, the Packard Bell M/A gets moderate ratings, at best.

The laptop has an 11.6 inch, 1366 x 768 pixel display and an AMD Athlon L110 64 bit CPU. It also packs ATI Radeon X1270 graphics. According to NetbookWereld, the battery runs for about 4 hours while surfing the web over WiFi, using Bluetooth, streaming music, and keeping the screen brightness at about 75%. I wouldn’t be surprised if you could get 4.5 to 5 hours if you adjusted those settings a bit.

HD video playback leaves a bit to be desired. The reviewer tried playing a 720p movie and playback was a bit choppy. The computer’s fan is reportedly fairly noisy. but the hard drive was reasonably fast and the touchpad supports 2-finger gestures including zooming.

For more details, check out NetbookWereld (and if you don’t speak Dutch, just click the flag for the country/language of your choice).


Posted on Tuesday, July 21st, 2009, 5:03 pm by Brad
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  • MikeLT
    I have the Gateway version of this netbook. The reviews on the Gateway LT3103 are mixed and don't make too much sense. I don't put much faith in benchmarks and most people should just look at their everyday use.

    From the Asus 701, Aspire One 8.9, Lenovo S10, Samsung NC10, HP DV2 (melt your legs off), to the Acer 75, this is by far my favorite and a keeper for me.

    It runs Vista just fine.

    I do have two issues that irritate me about the Gateway.

    The first has nothing to do with the system itself. Gateway does not list this netbook/laptop on their support page. I have emailed them several times regarding this. This is the only system I have purchased in my life that was not listed in the support section prior to release.

    The second item I hope will be fixed. I cannot understand why the "Power Now" function has been disabled. If AMD or Gateway or both had enabled this feature the battery life would increase and the heat of the unit would be less (not that its that bad). I know this is an underclocked Athlon and maybe "Power Now" would not work in this scenario. I guess if AMD would officially list this on their site and give some information about the processor I would not have these questions.

    Other then that this the the best netbook thus far.
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