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Packard Bell EasyNote M5 255
Price: £699

Features
Performance
Ease of use
Value for money
Overall

Reviewed By: Andy Shaw

This review updated: 29/04/2004
Featured in magazine:
Issue 82
Manufacturer Contacts:
Supplier: Packard Bell
Web Address: www.packardbell.co.uk


Scan through the Packard Bell computers in your local PC World and you'll notice that this one is right at the bottom of the price scale. Although it has a few of Packard Bell's famous frills removed, it has a good hardware specification for anyone looking for one of the cheapest new laptops around.

For your money you get a 2.5GHz Intel Celeron processor, 256MB of memory, a 20GB hard disk, a 15in TFT screen and a combination DVD-ROM/CD-RW drive. It's the case's external trappings that really shine through though, featuring an IEEE 1394 Firewire port for connecting a digital video camera, a memory card reader for popular memory card formats and a whopping six USB ports, two of which are conveniently placed on the side of the case. It also has a PC-Card (or PCMCIA) slot, a TV-out connection (for displaying what's on screen through a TV) and the usual modem, network and monitor ports. The one thing it doesn't have is a parallel printer port, though with all those USB ports available, most modern printers won't need one.

So what's been cut out to get the price down? Well, Packard Bell machines often come with a significant software bundle, and although this one doesn't, it still comes equipped with a handy copy of Norton Internet Security to keep your new purchase safe when you head online. It also isn't the best machine for taking out and about though, as our test model was quite bad at predicting how much juice it had left in its battery, flitting from over an hour left to critical in the space of a few minutes. For sitting at home and running off the mains though, it's a smasher.

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