Voodoo Envy M:860 - AMD 64-bit at Widescreen

Construction - Build, Appearance, Size (cont.)

As already mentioned, the M:860 uses a single sliding clip mechanism that secures the lid to the laptop with two hooks. Directly below the sliding clip are two LEDs that give power on (blue) and battery status (orange). Other than that, the front of the system is only home to two speakers. The speakers themselves are of much better quality (crisper and cleaner audio) than the ones on the M:855, but we find the placement of the speakers on the M:855 better.

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The left side of the system is mostly for removable media: CompactFlash slot (above the USB 2.0 ports), Secure Digital/Memory Stick slot (above PCMCIA slot), and a PCMCIA slot. Only the CompactFlash and Secure Digital/Memory Stick slots have dummy cards, while the PCMCIA slot uses a hinge door design. Personally, we are fans of the hinge doors, since dummy cards can be easily lost. For other external devices, there are two USB 2.0 ports and a 4-pin IEEE-1394 firewire port.

The implementation of the card reader is something that we have not seen on other laptops to date. Instead of always having the removable drive appear in the Windows Explorer, the drives will only appear when there is removable media in one of the slots, since the card reader functions as a USB device. This is something that we liked to see, since it kept the unnecessary aesthetics to a minimum. There really is no point in having an empty drive already appear in the Windows Explorer. What we didn't like was the fact that all three appeared and disappeared as a single USB device. It would be nice to have only the drive with removable media appear and disappear.

The single vent on the far left on the left side of the unit is one of the exhaust vents, which mainly feeds air out that is taken in from the top intake vent, which is directly above and to the left of the keyboard.

The nice thing about the M:860 is that both its left and right sides are slightly recessed inwards, which makes the ports and other "knick knacks" basically flush. Some other laptop design solves the problem by rounding out the edges a bit (like Dell's Inspiron 8600), and either design will be one of preference. Personally, we don't have a favorite between the two.

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The back side is fairly simple. All vents on the back are exhaust vents for either the CPU or the mobile GPU (in this case, Mobility Radeon 9700). Arrayed across are more ports (left to right): power port, microphone, headphone, modem jack, Ethernet jack, VGA-out port, two USB 2.0 ports, s-video port, and a lock port.

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The right side of the system is all bare expect for the M:860's Pioneer dual format 2x DVD-RW/2.4x DVD+RW DVR-K12D drive. It is nice to see Voodoo finally making the switch over to DVD+R, since it is the most predominate format in (at least) the notebook community. Last time we checked, Voodoo was using DVD-RW in all their notebooks including the M:855, and DVD+RW support was only in their SFF and tower systems via a DVD±RW drive. Now, they are using a 4x DVD+RW drive on the M:855 and seem to have made the format switch throughout their notebook line.

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The charger for the M:860 is basically the same size as the one shipping with the Envy M:855. Although they are made by different companies (M:860, by Lite-On, M:855, by FBS or Delta), they have the same size brick, yet the M:860 has grooves on the top. It actually seems uncannily familiar, as we remember the Asus DigiMatrix using the same power supply, but with a pin design. The only issue that we take with the M:860's power supply is the use of a keyed connector. This kind of limits the direction in which you connect the power plug to the laptop, and that is why all major system vendors (i.e. Dell, IBM, HP/Compaq) have moved to circular plug designs.

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The bottom of the M:860 reveals the system's 14.8V 4.4AH Lithium Ion battery (bottom left) along with several access panels. The access panel right off the front side of the unit is home to the system's 60GB Hitachi Travelstar 7K60 7200RPM 8MB cache hard drive. The access panel on the right side hides away a single SODIMM slot and the left side, a mini-PCI slot. All the vents seen here are intake vents for the system's various components.

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The M:860 measures in at about 14.1" x 10.5" and 1.9" thick (at its widest points). Compared to an 8600, it is basically the same in its physical footprint design, though the M:860 is slightly wider and thicker. Compared to the Envy M:855, the M:860 is about an inch longer, two inches wider and 1/5 of an inch thicker. Weighing in at a little over 8 pounds (ours was about 8.25 pounds), it's in the same weight class of the M:855, though we seem to remember the M:855 a bit heavier, probably by only a few ounces. This is definitely a desktop replacement notebook in every sense of the word, as this notebook isn't meant to be a something used constantly on the go, but rather, it is something that you buy instead of getting a desktop system, which has the benefit of being moved around on a very limited basis. The mobility factor of the M:860 and M:855 is nothing compared to the likes of the IBM X31 or Dell X300.