ECS i-Buddie XP Athlon XP 2100+

Conclusion

We mentioned in our i-Buddie 4 review that we thought that the desknote concept had quite a bit of potential and seeing another desknote system reinforced this notion. A desktop system in the size of a notebook has quite a number of potential applications and could prove to be especially useful for students and business people on the go. Desknote systems take up much less room than desktop ones, are less expensive than a dedicated PC with an LCD display, and can be carried from point A to point B with little effort. But how does the i-Buddie XP fare in the fairly small world of desknotes?

We asked ourselves which desknote we would prefer, the i-Buddie 4 or the i-Buddie XP, and the answer seemed fairly clear: the i-Buddie 4. The i-Buddie XP does offer some advantages over the i-Buddie 4 including a slightly revamped design, a more pleasing paint scheme, and a socket-A design that allows for fairly inexpensive CPU solutions. But for all of these advantages, the performance of the i-Buddie XP just isn't there.

As we mentioned in the test section, we expected the i-Buddie XP 2100+ to completely dominate all the benchmarks. Based simply on the specifications, we expected the system to out perform every mobile system we have seen to date, but this did not turn out to be the case. In fact, we found that in the majority of benchmarks the i-Buddie XP with its Athlon XP 2100+ processor was not all that far off from the i-Buddie 4 with a 1.6GHz Pentium 4 in it. There is little doubt in our mind that an upgrade to a 1.8GHz Pentium 4 or higher would place the i-Buddie 4 on top performance wise in all the benchmarks.

Why is the performance of the i-Buddie XP not there? There seem to be a few reasons. First off, the performance of the SiS 740 does not seem to be all that impressive. We have not done any individual reviews of the SiS 740 chipset but from what we can tell performance of the chipset is not up to par with the performance of, say, the VIA KT333. Also holding the i-Buddie XP back is the integrated video solution and shared memory solution. Not only does the use of integrated video significantly limit the amount of 3D gaming that the system can do (you are limited to 640x480x16/32 in the vast majority of games, if they will play at all) but it also slows down the system on the whole by decreasing the available memory bandwidth.

On top of the performance issues, we were also disappointed with a few kinks that are present in the i-Buddie XP. Although the fan in the AC adapter may not seem like a big deal, it did get quite bothersome quite quickly. Also problematic was the heat that the i-Buddie XP with its 2100+ processor produced. The CPU was never bothered by the temperature of the system (meaning that the cooling solution works well) but our laps were (meaning that perhaps the cooling solution works too well). Obviously going with a slower Athlon XP processor or a Duron would decrease the heat produced by the system.

In addition, our comments made in the conclusion of our i-Buddie 4 review still hold true. We think a PCMCIA slot would make a great addition to the desknote design; we think that a desktop hard drive or at least a 5400RPM mobile hard drive would certainly help performance; we think the use of a nonintegrated video solution or the use of NVIDIA's nForce integrated solution would make the systems much more appealing, and; finally, we think that desknote solutions have quite a bit of potential. Like other new concepts, they just have a bit of maturing to do. However, if you are interested in going with a desknote system now stick with the i-Buddie 4.