Pegasus CTS

TES Online (January '04)

Ready to Rock

What has happened to Rock notebooks in the last two years? Judging by the Rock Pegasus CTS quite a lot. Just looking at the sleek and slim silver beast before you and clocking the weight (2.5Kg with battery), the temptation just to whip it open on the train or bus and show off could be overwhelming. These changes are mainly due to the fact that the Pegasus CTS has state-of -the art Intel Centrino mobile technology which helps reduce the size and power consumption of laptops, as well as adding the latest wires technology. Such technology allows teachers and pupils to get connected through wireless networks.

The keyboard is good too, with normal size keys that have a nice light touch, I was happily typing this review on the train and there was hardly any noise - something that more self-conscious notebook users such as myself will be extremely happy with. Having your cursor keys separated from the main bulk of the keyboard is also a big plus, as cursor keys on some other notebooks have proved annoying.

The 14-inch screen offered good contrast, colour and definition on the Peter Cook tribute DVD I slotted into it drive. The Pegasus CTS also includes a small, built-in video camera situated above the screen which is a nice bonus and could be used for some form of basic video-conferencing if necessary.

Graphic performance, however, is not great as the Intel 855GM board is a poor (but cheaper) relation to graphics processors such as the GEForce4 GO or Mobility Radeon, but this would have hiked the price up considerably and such graphics performance would only affect really serious gamers (it certainly did not affect me)

For review purposes, I was provided with the Pegasus CTS 1.4 with a 1.4GHz Intel Pentium 4 processor that dealt well with most of the multimedia applications I threw at it. It could have done with a bit more than the 256Mb of RAM and 30Gb hard disk, but you can opt to go up to 1Gb of RAM and 80Gb of hard disk, so there is plenty of potential there to give this notebook more clout. It comes with two USB 2 and one 4-pin firewire ports, along with LAN and modem ports - a good solid package.

On the whole I like the Rock Pegasus CTS as I feel it really gives you more bangs for your buck. Again Rock proves it is a solid and good value performer always looking to add as many extras as possible for the price. However, this time it also looks really smart as well.

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