Centrino 2 laptops have been devilishly hard to come by since Intel launched the redesign.
Novatech has, however, fitted the core components of a Centrino 2 laptop into its Solo Pro all-in-one PC.
New components include the GM45 chipset, GMA X4500HD integrated graphics and on of the latest Core 2 Duo processors.
Centrino 2's new Wifi card (the 450Mbit/sec Wifi Link 5000) doesn't feature in the Solo Pro, which instead uses Intel's older 300Mbit/sec card. There's also no DDR3 Ram onboard (which Centrino 2 supports), with Novatech instead opting for 2GB 667MHz DDR2 Ram.
The Core 2 Duo P8600 beats at the Solo Pro's heart, running at 2.4GHz with 3MB L2 cache. It's one of five new processors to launch with Centrino 2, featuring a 1,066MHz front side bus (FSB). The P, rather than T, at the beginning of its name indicates it has a 25W thermal design point (TDP) rather than the 35W TDP mobile Core 2 Duos usually have.
The P8600 is no faster than previous 2.4GHz Intel mobile CPUs in our PCmark05 CPU test, but it is around eight per cent quicker in our Cinebench 9.5 test. The graphics, meanwhile, are around 45 per cent quicker than Intel's previous X3100 chip in 3Dmark06, which is still a long way off discrete cards from Nvidia and ATI. Centrino 2 machines with DDR3 Ram should have improved graphics performance, due to increased bandwidth.
Centrino 2 laptops with X4500HD graphics are not recommended if you intend to play lots of games, but the X4500HD does add HD hardware decoding. We tested this by installing PowerDVD 8, attaching a Blu-ray drive and watching a Blu-ray film - all with no problems.
It's rather amusing that although this Montivena platform is Intel's fifth generation chipset to carry a Centrino badge, Intel has chosen to call it Centrino 2. It can only be seen as an incremental upgrade in terms of performance over Santa Rosa but, with little competition from AMD, Intel still has the fastest and most frugal platform money can buy.
As for Novatech's Solo Pro, it is a 19in monitor with its PC components housed in a thick stand. It features a black and grey paint job, with a DVD-writer built into its right edge and a card reader, 54mm Express Card slot, HDMI, Firewire, USB and audio ports on its right edge.
The bottom is difficult to access, but it completes a superb set of connections, including two USB, one Ethernet and an eSata port. The rear-facing speakers, however, sound rather poor.
The entire system drew just 44W when idling, which is less than half what most desktop PCs draw; this is even more impressive considering 19in monitors on their own can draw close to 30W. Power draw increased by just 8-9W during Blu-ray playback, so Intel's claims that Centrino 2 laptops can last the duration of a Blu-ray film seem plausible.
All-in-one PCs are extremely convenient, but you have to live with the inbuilt display for the life of the system, so getting the monitor right is important. The Solo Pro's 19in monitor produces a bright (322cd/m2 in our tests) and contrasty (671:1) picture, but competing all-in-ones (Dell's XPS One and Apple's iMac) feature 20in monitors with higher resolutions.
The Solo Pro is £20 more than the cheapest iMac and £180 cheaper than the Dell XPS One, both of which are more stylish and have similar specifications.
If you happy to sacrifice the slightly bigger, more detailed monitor on the Dell and Apple in return for great connectivity and very lower power consumption, then the Solo Pro is a very good buy.
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