ECS i-Buddie 4 Pentium 4 1.6GHz

Conclusion

There is no question that ECS' "desknote" design is innovative. Combining the power and low cost of desktop components and placing them in a package that can fairly easily be transported certainly represents a new area in computer design. But does the desknote idea make sense?

Well, at least two major companies seem to think so. Acer and Quanta teamed up to recently announce that they will be producing desknote type PCs that should arrive to market in the second half of this year. Rumor has it that ASUS and Inventec are also considering production of desknote PCs. So it seems that some major companies are behind the idea, but what do we think?

Well, we think that the desknote idea is a good one and that the ECS i-Buddie 4 is a good first attempt but some work still needs to be done. The idea of creating a desktop PC that can fit in a notebook form factor is very promising. Such a solution makes perfect sense in the corporate world, where a dedicated PC for the office and a second one for the home can get pricey and a notebook machine will rarely be used apart from a desk. Desknote PCs have the potential to also be much more powerful than dedicated notebooks. When desktop chips are used and power consumption is not an issue, there is really little limit to what can be built in a notebook case. A final plus is that the desknote concept takes up much less room than a conventional desktop setup and does not carry with it the large price tag of a desktop 15" LCD display.

Most of the downsides we noticed about the i-Buddie 4 are system unique and really do not reflect on the great potential of this growing PC market. It does seem, however, that ECS could have done more to make the i-Buddie 4 even more desktop like. First off, we would have liked to see the SiS 650 chipset replaced with something a bit more proven and powerful. Although using integrated video keeps the cost down, it also rules out the i-Buddie 4 as a gaming option, a fact which will keep the system out of the hands of many home PC owners. Hopefully an i-Buddie system with NVIDIA's NForce chipset will make it to market soon, as this chipset seems to be a perfect solution for this type of application.

We would have also liked to see a PCMCIA slot or two on the i-Buddie 4. The system does offer quite a few powerful ports onboard already, including four USB 2.0 ports, a 6-pin powered firewire port, an ethernet jack, and an modem jack, further expansion of the system is difficult unless external USB or firewire devices are added. Ideally in a desktop system we would be able to plug in any PCI card of our choosing, but the desknote is not quite a desktop and thus requires a PCMCIA slot or two for the sake of future upgrades.

Finally, a faster hard drive in the system is most certainly called for. 5400RPM laptop drives have been on the market for some time but we have yet to see a laptop ship with one. In all other cases we attributed the use of slower 4200RPM drives to power consumption, as 5400RPM drives are certainly more power hungry. In the case of the i-Buddie 4, however, power was not a concern. Using a 5400RPM drive instead of the 4200RPM drive that the unit shipped with would help alleviate the largest mobile bottleneck: the I/O system.

Right now the i-Buddie 4 makes the most sense for corporate uses looking to run business applications. Others, who crave 3D gaming, or even would like to dabble in it should stay away: it shouldn't be much time now before higher 3D performing desknote PCs make it to market. The i-Buddie 4 is fairly fast, fairly cheap, and fairly easy to transport from point A to point B. For a first attempt we are impressed, but there is still work to be done. We cant wait to see what the desknote PC market holds for us in the future.

The i-Buddie 4 is available now from a variety of online and off-line resellers. Prices of the system start in the $1,000 area.