Pegasus
Ti - What Laptop Magazine
(Sep '04)
In
brief: A clean-looking compact chassis that manages to
disguise how powerful it really is.
The
rockdirect Pegasus Ti (£1761 inc. VAT) is the latest addition
to its desktop replacement range. The casing of the Pegasus Ti
has a simple clean look that comprises black and silver toughened
plastic. Build quality is satisfactory, but not as good as some
of the other machines in this review group. Considering this is
the most portable machine here, the protection behind the screen
could have been better.
The
system has a 15.4-inch widescreen display that supports a native
resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels. As you would expect from a laptop
that is intended to be used as a desktop replacement, the graphics
subsystem is at the top end of the market with an Ati Mobility
Radeon 9700 and 128MB of dedicated VRAM. In this machine its test
score sits narrowly above the average with 10187, and it will
handle the latest DirectX 9 compliant games.
The basic design is proving a popular choice with manufacturers,
as the same casing is also available from AJP and Evesham. That
said, the Pegasus Ti is the first version of this chassis that
we have seen fitted with Intel’s fastest Pentium M processor,
the 755, which has a clock speed of 2GHz. The processor is supported
by 1024MB DDR SDRAM and the laptop comes with a 60GB Hitachi hard
drive that runs at a fast 7200rpm. Such a specification is more
than capable of handling tasks previously restricted to a desktop
PC. This was borne out by a MobileMark 2002 score of 232, the
highest of the group. One reason why new mobile processors are
gaining such high benchmarks is that they have a large amount
of high-speed cache memory on-board (2MB in the Pentium M 755
chip), which speeds up data fetching. They are also very power-efficient,
helping this machine to gain third place in the battery life tests
with 174 minutes. At just less than three hours it won’t
let you work all day away from mains power, but when combined
with the 3kg weight = which is modest for a widescreen laptop
- the Pegasus Ti is relatively portable.
Thanks also to the mobile processor, the Pegasus is a quiet machine,
due to very little fan activity. We found that the fan would activate
for no longer than a second whenever the system was taxed, such
as when transferring large files.
The keyboard is of a good size with the keys well spaced. However,
over prolonged use we found that they proved to be slow and unresponsive
- quick touch typists will certainly be disappointed by
the overall quality of the keyboard, this is Pegasus’s weakest
feature. Speakers are located either side of the keyboard, with
one on the bottom of the unit to give better bass. While playback
is still tinny it seems that audio is something that manufacturers
are at least trying to address. S/PDIF, min-FireWire, microphone
and headphones sockets are located on the front of the case along
with memory card reader that accepts SD/MMC and MJS-format cards.
The optical drive bay of the Pegasus feels as though it was designed
for a try drive as opposed to the slot-loading DVD-RW/RAM drive
that is fitted. This is because the drive bay is recessed, creating
an overhang that can make slotting a disc in rather awkward. The
drive itself proved quick and responsive, although it was quite
noisy.
The rockdirect Pegasus Ti is a fast machine. It’s specifications
and performance certainly tell a convincing story, and it’s
the fastest machine in this group. However, the build quality
wad a little below par and we didn’t like the unresponsive
nature of the keyboard. It is early days for this chassis and
we expect that these problems will be resolved, making this a
powerful, compact package.