Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo D Series

Budget desktop replacement with a 1GHz Intel Celeron chip.

Price: £899

Manufacturer: Fujitsu-Siemens

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Verdict

What the Amilo loses in performance, it gains in value for money with a host of useful features that go beyond basic expectations.

Andy Gordon, What PC? 19 Mar 2002

Continuing the trickle-down of technology from desktop to laptop, Fujitsu-Siemens' newest notebook uses the latest 1GHz Intel Celeron processor.

The Celeron does not offer the same performance as a 1GHz Mobile Pentium III but it costs less, making machines like the Amilo worth considering as a budget desktop replacement.

For the money, the Amilo's 128Mb of RAM and 20Gb hard drive seem attractive, but this has to be weighed against the slack performance of a basic processor: the Amilo's score of 61 in our SYSmark test is a significant 20 points off the worst Pentium III-based notebook.

Talking of limited power, the Amilo's graphics facilities are particularly poor. The machine relies on an integrated graphics chip that shares memory with the main system, which is hardly conducive to fast performance.

Having said all that, unless you're intending to go application crazy, the Amilo has more than enough features to justify its cost. It really looks the part, with a light-blue finish and good 14.1in display.

There are two easily-accessible USB ports on the right-hand side and an S-Video port on the back. This allows DVD movies to be viewed through a standard TV courtesy of the 8-speed DVD drive; a step up from the CD-ROM and still not common at this price.

The FireWire port around the back is another bonus and is ideal for downloading digital video images.

Peripherals can also use the serial or parallel ports that sit next to the modem and network interfaces. Two PC Card slots round off the connection options.

The well-spaced but spongy keyboard shares the bottom half of the machine with a responsive touchpad for mouse duties and function keys for running the DVD player and adjusting the volume.

SPECIFICATIONS