Introduction

Earlier this year we had the opportunity to test drive Packard Bell’s first netbook, the Dot.be. Their original config featured a 8.9” LED screen (1024x600) based on Intel Atom 1.6Ghz CPU, 1gb RAM and 160Gb HDD. There was a config available with 3G if you paid extra.

Today we have a brand new config from Packard Bell, dubbed the Dot M/A it features a larger screen, more memory, larger hard drive and is based on an AMD Athlon L110 CPU and ATI Radeon integrated GPU. One the few AMD netbooks around in Belgium.

Specifications

We received a test model, so no fancy packing, it also featured slightly less memory and HDD; the official specs are quite complete for a €399 (incl VAT) netbook:

OS: Windows Vista Home Basic (Includes Adobe Elements 6 and MS Works 9)

CPU: AMD Athlon L110 (1.2Ghz)

Memory: 2Gb

Storage: 250Gb HDD

Memory Card Reader: 5-in-1 (MMC/SD/XD/MS/MS-PRO)

Graphics : ATI Radeon Xpress 1270 128Mb

Screen : 11.6” LED (1366x768)

Integrated Webcam, Two Stereo Speakers and Microphone

10/100 Lan UTP , 802.11 b/g Wireless, Bluetooth

3x USB 2.0 ports, Headset/Microphone jack

Battery: 6 Cell Li-Ion (5200 mAh)

Weight: 1.35Kg

Warranty: 2 Years


Packard Bell Netbook DOT Series

The original Dot was launched with three different configurations, all Intel Atom based, all 8.9” screens, the cheapest had 3-cell battery, the middle one had 6-cell battery, the high end added 3G support. Packard Bell has refreshed their line-up completely this time around. And they are now using letters instead of numbers to differentiate between the product lines;

The first two under Dot S come with Windows XP Home:

Dot S: 10.1” €299: Atom 1.6ghz – 1gb – 160Gb HDD – Wireless network – 3 Cell battery

Dot S: 10.1” €399: Atom 1.6ghz – 1gb – 160Gb HDD – Wireless network – 6 Cell battery - Bluetooth

Then we have a larger, more power friendly Dot M, with XP home

Dot M: 11.6” €399: Atom 1.33ghz – 1gb – 160Gb HDD – Wireless network – 6 Cell battery - Bluetooth

The fourth model is the one we’re testing, the Dot M/A, all of these Dots share the same color and design scheme, slick piano block finish with stylish logo:



Let’s have a closer look ->

A Closer Look

The Dot M/A should come in a nice retail package with plenty of documentation; Packard Bell is known in Belgium for providing a ton of extra’s to help you get the most out of your new system, especially if you’re new to PCs in general. Our test sample came in a white cardboard box with the bare essentials:



We got to charge the 6-cell battery so we’re happy, allowing us to test this netbook at home and on the road.

This almost 12” netbook is quite compact, while it won’t match the Macbook Air in thinness, it’s sufficiently small to be carried around in a small backpack.

Connectors wise the configuration hasn’t changed much over time, we get one USB, LAN part and power connection at the left side:



At the right side we find 5-in-1 card reader, audio in/out, two more USB ports, Kensington lock, and one D-SUB VGA out;



Opening the LED reveals a QWERTY keyboard, touchpad with one larger dual function mouse button, activity LEDs at the top right, function LEDs bottom left. (Belgium final retail version ships with AZERTY)



The touchpad did quite ok, but an external mouse works much more comfortable, especially with the dual action mouse button on the touchpad which worked average at best; a separate left/right might be less appealing aesthetically but so much easier in use.



The maximum angle the screen opens up is sufficient for most purposes:



At the top ridge of the screen you’ll find a webcam with ok quality (youtube) and integrated microphone.




The keys on the keyboard are quite flat and compact to fit all of them in the design, but with the extra width by using 11.6” screen, there’s enough spacing to not feel too cramped when typing for an extended period of time.



The functional LEDs at the bottom left reveal on/off switches for Bluetooth, 3G and Wireless.



A look at the innards next ->

A Look Inside

The original Dot series came with 1gb and 160Gb HDD; while this is quite sufficient for most, memory and HDDs have become affordable, so an upgrade should not be out of the question. Unfortunately in case of the Dot we tested last spring we noticed the following:



Packard Bell definitely took these remarks into consideration as we’re happy to report that the Dot M/A features easy access to HDD, memory and expansion card areas.

The photo below of the bottom already reveals what is removable, no “warranty void if broken” labels visible here, but those might be present on retail versions; so please take this into consideration if you happen upon them. We would suggest upgrading any of the parts inside, only after the warranty of 2 years has expired. With 2Gb RAM and 250Gb HDD already inside they should last a while.



If you’re adventurous, here is what the DOT M/A looks like without the black panels. Memory bank supports DDR2 SO-DIMM:



Two Mini PCI Express slots; one holds Wireless card, the other can hold your favourite 3G access card. Since this is a dev. Machine what you see here might have changed before it went retail.



The HDD is secured in a separate metal casing, you can fit any 2.5” SATA disk in there; an upgrade to SSD will definitely boost performance.




BIOS Options

When you enter the BIOS of this Athlon powered netbook you do get some settings to fiddle around with, none related to overclocking, but you can tweak the integrated GPU settings quite a bit:





Setting USB as first boot device can come in handy when you want to upgrade the preinstalled OS to something different.

Powering Up

The DOT M/A is the only Dot to come with Windows Vista, the 2gb memory will definitely come in handy here, but the Athlon CPU is really a bit underpowered to run this OS. The Radeon is fast enough for all the Aero effects, so that’s definitely a plus.

We hope Packard Bell upgrades this system to Windows 7 soon, and offer the end user the possibility to use XP on there, if they so desire, in the end XP is still the most battery friendly Windows OS out there.

The Windows Vista install comes preloaded with a few applications to get you started; the Adobe image editor certainly will come in handy, the MS Works package is also more than what most require from a “Office” suite. The 1366x768 resolution is pleasure to work with on the 11.6” LED screen which is bright and offers excellent image quality in darker environments, it’s a tad reflective though and this is a downside when you use it on the road in the open, when the sun shines in, gets a bit harder to view the image clearly.




We used a Windows 7 RTM 32-bit DVD to do a clean install (copied the source files to USB, made bootable with winsetupforusb) and are happy to report that all integrated hardware was detected (wireless, wired network, mouse, webcam, microphone), even the Radeon was supported, but we upgraded to the latest support ATI Catalyst using ATI MobilityModder.

Size Comparison: Packard Bell DOT M/A vs MSI Wind U100

The MSI Wind U100 is an Intel Atom based 10” netbook, comes with measly 3-cell battery, later revision luckily had 6-cell. Size wise the Dot M/A is bigger. How much bigger? Let the pictures do the talking:







Performance numbers next ->

Performance Comparison

The MSI Wind U100 was bought last year and has received a few upgrades, 2Gb memory and a entry level SSD; The SSD helps boot up times A LOT, but overall CPU/GPU benchmarks are still pretty much limited by their speed and the SSD doesn’t help there.

The MSI Wind was running Windows 7 RTM also, so somewhat an apples vs apples comparison here; except for the HDD benchmark of course.



The Atom 1.6Ghz scores better in memory sensitive tasks, but raw CPU benchmarks give the nod to the 1.2Ghz Athlon; GPU score is noticeably higher on the Radeon card. HDD benchmark, as mentioned, is dominated by the SSD.



Time to really drive the point home, the Radeon Xpress X1270 does quite ok in 3D03, 3D05 is more of a slide show; overall though the Radeon graphics are 127% faster than the Intel GMA 950



SuperPi is a single thread application, here the Athlon CPU is noticeably faster; the WPrime application is multithreaded, Atom has HT support, which gives it a small lead here.



We tested a few games on both netbooks, Q3A was not really very fun on the MSI Wind, and despite the average of 41.3fps the min.FPS dips were well below that, UT2003 was unplayable. On the DOT M/A the experience was a lot better with Q3A as you can see with the 80fps; UT2003 was more challenging, LowDetail was fun, max detail… a bit too taxing.



screen brightness was set to 50%

Battery life test proved interesting; completely idle the DOT M/A held out a little bit more than 3 hours. Under 100% load it was about 2 hours and half, not too bad for a 6-cell battery, but we’ve seen better. AMD Athlon is not a match for the efficiency of the Atom CPU, and the larger 11.6” LED screen certainly does not help. The MSI Wind with its original 3-cell battery had to be charged daily, with a much larger and lumpier 9-cell battery it runs more than 6 hours idle, and more than 5 hours under full load.



We measured 1.5kg on our scale for the DOT M/A, that’s 150 gram more than specifications led us to believe…

Conclusive Thoughts

The original DOT netbook was a decent first entry by Packard Bell into an aggressive market, there is a lot of competition in this segment, about every computer vendor and/or brand has a netbook variant or netbook targeted hardware;

With the DOT M/A Packard Bell is offering a quite performing portable PC, offloading video encoding to the GPU is all that is lacking, hopefully this can be resolved with a software update. We hooked up the DOT M/A to a Plasma screen and played back some HD content (x264 720p), while the image looks crisp, there were too many frame drops. Playing games like Live For Speed was possible on the big screen though.



With 2Gb memory you can run more than your average netbook friendly applications, 250HDD ensures enough storage for time to come, a nice HD Ready resolution and comfortable keyboard make this netbook a joy to take along on your daily commute, to friends and family or on holiday.

Packard Bell added upgrade possibilities which is a nice extra, you can now swap out the HDD with an SSD if you fancy snappier load times and overall usage.

Packard Bell.com is mainly a European brand, you won’t find their products in the USA. There are some resellers in Argentina, Columbia, Chile and Russia, but those outside Europe are out of luck… at first sight. Since Acer bought Packard Bell and Gateway, they have been offering similar products on both camps. So if you live in US/Canada check out the Gateway LT3100 series netbooks, priced at $380. The EU counterpart Packard Bell DOT M/A is available for €399.

At this price point there is some competition with other feature laden products from Asus, MSI, Dell, HP and even their own mother-company Acer. With the DOT M/A Europeans get another choice and the product certainly comes prepared to win you over. Whether or not it will succeed depends on your needs. What makes this netbook quite unique is the extra GPU power, so if that is important for you the Dot M/A should be on your shortlist!

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We like to thank Tim from Packard Bell and Corneel from NewsEnginePR for allowing us to test the latest DOT M/A Netbook.