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Photograph: Rick Rizner
WinBook X512
- Spec Navigator
- Processor
- Memory
- Display
- Storage
- Battery
- Dimensions
- Other Features
- Networking
- Multimedia
- Interface Connections
- Included Devices
Storage
| Total HD Size | 40 GB |
| Optical Drive Type | DVD-ROM/CD-RW |
| Optical Drive Speed | 8 |
| Removable Optical Drive | No |
| Slots | None |
| Number of Media Slots | 0 |
| PC Card Slots | Yes |
Battery
| Number of Included Batteries | 1 |
| Standard Number of Batteries | 1 |
| Type of Batteries | Lithium ion |
| Vendor Rated Battery life | 324 |
Networking
| Bluetooth | No |
| Included network card | Ethernet (10/100 Mbps) |
| Modem Type | V.90 |
| Wireless LAN Type | 802.11g |
- Lab Tested
- How We Test Laptops »
Pros
Inexpensive and lightweight
Cons
Unremarkable design
Bottom Line
Inexpensive unit has an elegant Media Center Edition knockoff app and makes a dandy stand-alone DVD player.
WinBook X512
X512 Review, by Carla Thornton July 29, 2005
The $1098 WinBook X512 is a "decontented" version of the $1599 WinBook X540 (which we reviewed in March), with half the RAM, half the storage, a slightly slower processor, and a CD burner instead of a DVD burner. It has all of the X540's other features, however, and costs considerably less (as low as $749--without business applications--in some stores such as Micro Center).
A thin-and-light black unit with a silver lid, the X512 weighs 4.6 pounds, not including a power adapter. It comes with an attractive 12.1-inch WXGA wide screen, a good keyboard and one of the nicest knockoffs of the Windows Media Center Edition interface I've seen. Pressing the keyboard's sole quick-launch button, the "P" (for Power Cinema), launches a blue-hued revolving menu that offers many of the same choices as Media Center. You can watch DVDs, listen to CDs, or view a slide show of your digital photographs without turning on the notebook. The X512's stereo speakers tend to distort at high volume, and there are no media buttons, not even for volume. Everything is controlled by the keyboard.
The X512 boasts a four-in-one card reader, a FireWire port, and a TV-out port. There is a USB 2.0 port for temporary plug-ins on either side of the case, and a bonus third USB 2.0 port for connecting a mouse or keyboard sits on the back behind a removable cover. Both memory slots and the 40GB hard drive are user-upgradable; you have to remove nine small screws from the bottom of the notebook to reach their shared compartment.
The 1.5-GHz/600-MHz Pentium M715-equipped X512 acquitted itself well on our performance test suite, earning a WorldBench 5 score of 67. The rear-mounted battery lasted a slightly above-average 3 hours and 24 minutes on one charge. For more oomph, you can add 512MB of RAM to the laptop's standard 256MB for an extra $200.
A shell of its former self, WinBook's once excellent printed user manual now serves mostly as a thin reference to details available only in the Windows Help and Support Center. All of the features are well covered there, however, and information is easy to find.
Upshot: Looking for a nice back-to-school laptop or an inexpensive entertainment unit to go with a set of speakers? The WinBook X512 fills the bill.
Carla Thornton
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PCWorld Lab Results
- Rating Breakdown
-
54
-
70
-
78
- See Complete Lab Results »
Performance Comparison with Similar Laptops
54
86
74
70
Performance
| ACD Systems ACDSee | 837 |
| Adobe Photoshop | 482 |
| Adobe Premiere | 697 |
| Ahead Nero | 1017 |
| Battery Life (Office Applications) | 3:24 |
| Discreet 3ds Max DirectX | 615 |
| Discreet 3ds Max OpenGL | 632 |
| Microsoft Office XP | 621 |
| Mozilla | 575 |
| Musicmatch Jukebox | 700 |
| Number of Included Batteries | 1 |
| Roxio VideoWave | 545 |
| Windows Media Encoder | 571 |
| WinZip | 535 |
| World Bench 5 Score | 67 |
| World Bench 5 Word Score | Fair |
WorldBench Tests
| Multitasking | 1019 |
User Reviews
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