HardwareCentral - Averatec C3500 Review

Averatec C3500 Review

Fast-Acting Tablet?

November 18, 2004
By Eric Grevstad

Fast-Acting Tablet?

The Athlon XP-M 2200+ processor runs at 1.67GHz (when not throttled down during idle moments or on battery power) and boasts 512K of Level 2 cache. Teamed with 512MB of DDR333 memory -- technically 480MB after subtracting the integrated graphics -- and the 60GB Hitachi 4,200-rpm hard disk, it provides perfectly acceptable performance for loading and using office applications, writing e-mails, and giving presentations.

Our Averatec earned a BAPCo SysMark 2004 benchmark rating of 85, balancing an Internet Content Creation score of 101 with an Office Productivity number of 71. Futuremark's PCMark04 yielded an overall score of 2,102 (CPU 2,528; memory 1,367; hard disk 2,470; graphics 507). Except for ultralight, ultra-low-power Transmeta Efficeon or Crusoe portables, those numbers are at the bottom of the pack among recent laptops tested, but the C3500 never felt sluggish in everyday use.

Until we tried playing a game, that is. The convertible's SiS M741 integrated chipset is fine for PowerPoint or even occasional image editing, but limped to a lackluster 31 frames per second in the oldest and slowest of our 3D graphics tests, Quake III Arena, and completed only the first of four game simulations en route to a 3DMark03 score of 80. Its AquaMark3 graphics score of 306 involved flickering through the 3D scenes at 2.9 fps. And the Averatec took all afternoon to complete our Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory benchmark, though it yielded a nice round score of 1 frame per second.

But if the only game you'll be playing on the C3500 is Solitaire, at least you can flip the machine into tablet mode and play using the stylus, freed from its slot next to the screen with the push of a latch. When the display is folded face up, you can rely on three buttons along one edge. The first rotates the screen image 90 degrees with each press, so you can hold or orient the clipboard any way you like.

The second pops up a handy menu for adjusting screen brightness, audio volume, rotation (again), hibernating or shutting down the system, and accessing Microsoft's Tablet PC setup and tutorial screens. The third button is also a rocker switch that lets you move up and down through the pop-up menu before making your selection.

Too Much Cost-Cutting?

We've liked the active-digitizer approach of the Tablet PC -- which responds only to the special stylus, so you can write or sketch without contorting yourself to avoid resting your hand on the screen -- from Day One. And Microsoft has steadily improved the software over these couple of years, both in terms of more accurate handwriting recognition and by introducing the note-taking and -managing Office OneNote 2003 -- included on the C3500 -- along with the more bare-bones Windows Journal and Sticky Notes. (The system also comes with Roxio's Easy CD Creator 6, CyberLink's PowerDVD, and the trial version of Symantec's Norton AntiVirus 2004.)

That said, while the Averatec performed adequately in clipboard mode, it didn't rate with our favorite Tablet PC experiences. The stylus doesn't have an "eraser" on the end as some models do, and repeatedly seemed to require a firm tap or hesitation or both to attract or acquire the mouse pointer; we found ourselves rerunning the calibration routine two or three times a day to rein in a cursor that felt as if it had irritatingly drifted a few pixels away from where we were pointing.

That's sort of a matter of subjective feel, but two other gripes are easier to quantify. First, as we've complained in other Tablet PC reviews, a computer that weighs more than four pounds is simply too heavy to comfortably cradle in one arm while writing for any length of time, like holding a ream of paper instead of a legal pad. Indeed, at 5.5 pounds, the C3500 is just a few ounces lighter than Gateway's M275 convertible, which offers a bigger 14.1-inch screen and uncramped keyboard (at, to be sure, a higher price of $1,900 comparably equipped).

Second, it's no fun to take notes on a system whose battery conks out halfway through a meeting. In our usual disk- and multimedia-intensive test sessions (installing software and watching DVDs), the Averatec's lithium-ion pack averaged a miserable one hour and 15 minutes. We did stretch that to an hour and 45 minutes by turning the screen brightness a notch lower than we'd like and just typing and scribbling, with no optical-drive and almost no hard-drive use.

But we've said in review after review that we consider 90 minutes an unplugged minimum, even for a desktop-replacement portable that's rarely unplugged; for a Tablet PC, supposed to be your carry-around companion during a business day, such battery life is unacceptable.

Unless you're on an ultra-tight budget and seeking a notebook you can mostly use at your desk, then carry in clipboard mode to a single, short-duration conference or client visit, it's hard to be as enthusiastic about the C3500 as we were about Averatec's bargain-DVD-theatre 6200 model last August.

Pros: