Averatec AV5500-EA1 15" Laptop (Mobile AMD Sempron processor 2600+, 256 MB RAM, 40 GB Hard Drive, DVD/CD-RW Drive)

by Averatec

Product Details

Product Manual [632kb PDF]

• Shipping Weight: 10 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B0006H5I3Q
• Item model number: AV5500-EA1
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: November 2, 2004

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

Averatec's AV5500-EA1 offers the power of a desktop without all the bulk, and is a great choice for a portable notebook for the home or for a small businessperson on the go. It features a vivid, bright 15-inch screen--great for watching videos or number-crunching spreadsheets--and a DVD-ROM/CD-RW combo drive. Other features include a battery-saving AMD Sempron 2600+ processor, 40 GB hard drive, multi-format memory card reader, Firewire port for connecting your digital camcorder, and a TV-out connection for hooking up to your TV.

The Basics

• Hard Drive: The 40 GB IDE hard drive is on the small side compared to other notebooks. However, it does offer a decent enough capacity for storing documents and productivity software for road warriors--but not enough for much multimedia storage.
• Processor: The 1.83 GHz AMD Sempron 2600+ processor is good for everyday computing tasks for home and small business users. And with AMD's low-voltage PowerNow technology, you'll experience extended battery life for more productivity when out and about.
• Memory: The AV5500-EA1 is very affordable due to low amount of installed RAM--just 256 MB, which just isn't enough to fully wrangle today's memory-hungry office producivity suites. You can expand this notebook up to 1 GB of memory
• CD/DVD Drive: The combo CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive can write and read CDs at 24x and rewrite at 10x speeds. It can read DVDs at 8x.
• Keyboard & Mouse: This notebook features an 86-key keyboard that offers the functionality of a full-sized 101-key keyboard and a two-button touchpad pointing device.

Sound and Graphics
This AV5500-EA1 has an SiS Integrated Ultra256 video/graphics card with 64 MB of shared video RAM, which offers relatively strong 3D graphics rendering. The 15-inch TFT active matrix screen has a native 1024 x 768 resolution and can drive a 2048 x 1536-pixel external monitor. It also includes an integrated audio card and internal stereo speakers.

Connectivity and Expansion Slots
Keep yourself connected with the integrated wireless LAN that's compatible with 802.11b and the faster 802.11g networks. You get a good offering of external connectivity options:

• 3 USB 2.0 ports for connecting a wide range of peripherals--from digital cameras to MP3 players
• 1 Firewire (also known as IEEE 1394 or i.Link) port for connecting digital video camcorders and other peripherals
• 1 VGA monitor port
• 1 S-Video out
• 4-in-1 memory card reader (MMC, SD, Memory Stick, Memory Stick Pro
• 1 PCMCIA (or PC Card) slot (Type II, 32-bit)
• 1 headphone jack and 1 microphone jack

It also has an integrated 56K modem (V.90) and an RJ-45 LAN network port (for a 10/100 Gigabit Ethernet connection to networks and DSL/cable modems). "\

Preloaded System and Software
This notebook comes with Windows XP Home Edition and PowerDVD among it's large catalog of software.

Dimensions and Weight
Measuring 13.1 x 10.7 x 1.4 inches and weighing 6.8 pounds, the AV5500-EA1 offers easily portable multimedia.

Power
The 6-cell rechargeable lithium-ion battery has an average battery life of 3 hours.

What's in the Box
This package contains the AV5500-EA1 notebook PC, rechargeable lithium-ion battery, AC adapter, and operating instructions. It is backed by a one-year limiited hardware warranty and 6 months warranty for the battery.

Product Description

This Averatec 5500 series Sempron M 2600+ is a powerful and fully loaded 15-inch notebook . This Averatecnotebook includes an Mobile AMD Sempron XP-M 2600+ processor, a 40 GB hard drive with Windows XP Home pre-installed, and features wireless 802.11g technology. A built-in CD-RW/DVD-ROM combo drive both plays DVDs and burns CDs, and is perfect for students, the office, parents or anyone on the go.

See all Product Description

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

46 of 51 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Averatec Wins Again, December 26, 2004

By 

John D. Clark (Holland, OH) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Averatec AV5500-EA1 15" Laptop (Mobile AMD Sempron processor 2600+, 256 MB RAM, 40 GB Hard Drive, DVD/CD-RW Drive) (Personal Computers)

I shopped for a (under $1000) notebook for my wife basically for her digital photos and her Girl Scout files, I was very disappointed in what the local stores had to offer.

PROS:

This laptop looks great, has a nice large keyboard, and the 15 inch XGA display is beautiful with up to 128MB shared memory!

The front 4-in-1 Media Card Reader is impressive and works flawlessly.

It comes with only 256MB ram, but is easily upgraded with PC2700 type (333mhz) 200-pin DDR memory.

The AMD Sempron 2600+ Mobile Processor is quick and pushes this laptop to achieve the desired results (photo editing and word processing).

I turned it the first time and within a few minutes I was already surfing the web as it easily found my router, and my network.

The sound on this laptop is much better than all of the other similarly (and some higher) priced laptops I looked at.

We watched a DVD the first night and had absolutely no complaints (and this was still using only the original 256MB of memory)!

Comes loaded with Roxio CD burning software and Microsoft Works 7.0, and PowerDVD.

CONS:

A bit larger/heavier than what I was originally shopping for, but I couldn't pass up on the great deal. And at 6.8 lbs, it's really not that heavy.

The video is NOT for gaming! But like I said, you'll have no problems watching movies and if you use the S-Video (TV Out) Port on a flat screen... WOW!


SUMMARY:

We have nothing to complain about.

All around great "budget" laptop.

Doubling the memory to 512MB is a must!

This laptop will do everything except render the latest games.

What a Bargain!

64 of 73 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars OK laptop at this price, January 3, 2005

By 

H. Wang (Santa Clara, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Averatec AV5500-EA1 15" Laptop (Mobile AMD Sempron processor 2600+, 256 MB RAM, 40 GB Hard Drive, DVD/CD-RW Drive) (Personal Computers)

Since there is $150 rebate on this model which brings the pric down to $680, it is a reasonable price to pay to entry level laptop so I just bought one. This is the review after I have used this laptop for several hours. The reason I rate this one as 4 star will be explained shortly. I have previously used IBM T40 so many comparisons will be made against this model (yeah, IBM T40 is far more expensive and supposedly better, but ...).

I will start with the good aspects.

1. 15 inch bright LCD screen. The screen's quality can rival many entry level standalone LCD monitors. The viewing angle is sufficient, although not great (certainly not 170 degree as many LCD monitors exhibit), but better than T40's, which gets a very narrow viewing angel. Narrow angel means that when you look at the screen at certain direction (not straight front), screen exhibits color/brightness distortion.

2. Silver metallic look. Look more cool than a pure black one.

3. 3 USB sockets at parallel placement. T40 has 2 and they are placed one on another (plugging two at the same time will be a minor hassle).

4. Builtin 1396 firewire.

5. Very quiet hard disk operation. I can hardly notice any noise from it - on the down side, I don't know how much disk activity is going on. T40 and many desktops have very noticeable noise.

Now comes the short sides.
1. Very mediocre sound performance especially from the headphone output. There is even noise coming out of that which indicates poor shielding of electronic components and wirings. T40's audio performance is so-so but it does not have noise at least. So don't expect to listen to MP3/CD at high quality from the builtin audio output.

2. The default CPU speed is at around 800MHZ, roughly half of what the CPU can deliver. I have to change power management option to let it run at full speed after I notice it is not that fast.

3. The default memory is only 256MB. It is not really a thing to blame since at this cost, it is unlikely it gets more. Expect to spend another $80-$100 to buy 512MB memory to get a reasonable performance (I noticed the hard disk spins all the time if multiple apps run at the same time).

4. The keyboard does not feel as good as T40's, but not too far away and too bad. Just acceptable. Location of PgUp/PgDn/Home/End is very different from others, so it takes sometime to get use to.

5. The default action for the laptop to enter into hibernate mode when you close lid is very inconvient. It should just turn off LCD monitor and do nothing else (that's T40's behavior). So I have to change that through Control Panel.

6. It does not have similar thing as tracking button like IBM T40 does. It is a small button you can massage to get very quick mouse movement - an extremely useful feature if you don't want to use an external mouse.

7. The mouse tracking area's default behavior is very counter-intuitive. When you tap on the tracking area, it takes that as a click on the mouse button. I got this wrong almost everytime and had to redo many stuff. It is difficult to use and easy to get wrong. This is a feature that should not be turned on by default. Fortunately I can turn this off.

8. The LEDs for disk/battery/wireless/etc. information is locatedd at left bottom side (if you face the screen). This is an area usaually covered by your left hand and you can not see them if you are typing. Why can't they be put on a forward location? That would be much easier to see.

9. Again on the same area - like most other people, I wear a watch on my left wrist. And the metal band just wears down that area quickly - only after a couple hours' use, I can see scratches. Either Averatec should use a stronger paint on this or they should just put a plain stronger plastic without paint.

So given the money I paid, I will keep this laptop since none of them are critical, and I will get use to them eventually. I have not used the service so can not comment on it. A 4 star rating should be what this laptop deserves. If you are just looking for an entry level laptop, and don't care about these shortcomings, then this model is just right for you.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars CPU Speed is Easily Fixed - Great Computer!, January 15, 2005

By 

Shawn M. Matthews "Korea Life Blog Author" (Seoul, Korea) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Averatec AV5500-EA1 15" Laptop (Mobile AMD Sempron processor 2600+, 256 MB RAM, 40 GB Hard Drive, DVD/CD-RW Drive) (Personal Computers)

I can't believe someone would return this fantastic bargain of a computer over the CPU speed before doing a couple of searches on the web. Granted, I do find this to be weird and I think Averatec should put a guide to doing this on their site. Anyway, let me explain how to fix your CPU speed. Are you excited?

1. Go to the Averatec website and click on "customer care" on the bottom left side. Then go to downloads and download the CPU driver and run the program.

I think this is where some people, including me, got confused and Averatec is to blame. It turns out you're not done installing. You have to goto the next step:

2. Go here: C:\AVERATEC\DRIVERS\CPU and click setup.exe for the driver. This installs the driver.

3. Reboot the computer.

Now check control panel/system/general and the CPU speed should read 1.6 GHz as it does on mine now. I'm not sure if it's pyschological or not, because I didn't find it to be that slow before I did this, but it really does seem to be running quicker now - though I'm no expert and didn't do official tests before and after.

If that didn't work, you may also need to do the following:


Goto the power management section of the control panel and change the setting to "always on".

Goto control panel, add/remove programs, and click add/remove Windows components to the left. Wait a minute, then you just click next next until it's finished...

Or try rebooting a couple of times after installing the driver. It didn't work the first time I rebooted but it did the second for some reason.

Anyway, that's it. After that you have nothing else to worry about. I've been using this sweet machine for the past week and have been quite impressed. I can't believe all you get for the money.

The con: the graphic card is awful. Don't plan to play games on it.

The design. This is a beautiful machine. Very bright, sharp screen. And it's ultra thin. It's not ultra light, however, but not overly heavy either. I can't get over the bargain price, really. Amazing.

It's quick, especially after the adjustment, and seems very stable using a variety of applications including Photoshop 8.

The 802.11g 54 MB/s built-in Wireless. This thing is flying online right now.

The built in card reader is very nice. Goodbye external card reader.

My personal favorite is the fan button. You can turn off the fan on this machine whenever you want and the machine becomes dead quiet. That's one of the reason I sold my Compaq, which was so noisy.

TV Out. You can watch all those special, downloaded movies on the TV...

I hope this was helpful. I highly recommend this unit.