So a bit more digging, some forum trawling and posting, plus an email or three to Averatec has yielded me a bit more info. Firstly I'll just write-off the Averatec 2200 series for now. Its based on a VIA chipset rather than an ATi one. The upside is that it seems that its a bit more power friendly, offers similar features and I'm still running on the assumption that its part of Microstar's Megabook S270 series, thus is a very similar base notebook. General consensus is that the VIA chipset is OK, but the ATi one is better from a performance standpoint, especially in the graphic department which is important to me.
Price wise you can pick up the Averatec 2155 (Turion64 MT-30, 512Mb RAM, 80Gb 5400rpm HD, WinXP Home) for $870 at Newegg - that's about £500. Its not a bad deal really, but its not a fantastically fast configuration as it uses fairly slow components. For comparison, I tried building a very similar spec'd system based on the Microstar 1013 reference platform and appropriate components, using eWiz.com as my US shop. I came to a final value of about $950 (£550) and that's without an OS. I also built a meatier version (Turion64 MT-34, 1Gb RAM, 7200rpm HD) which came in at about $1100 (£625).
My concern with the Averatec version is that it is white (I prefer black) and it has slightly slower than preferable components (especially the HD), however it's better value for money, includes an OS and software, plus I can upgrade the RAM by all accounts. When everything is considered it comes down to how much cash I have when getting it, but I'd lean towards a self build for purist reasons. Plus I can get a spare battery in the UK, which seems to be cheaper for those for some reason.
For now I'm going to step away and think about it. The main questions are "Do I really need or have good use for a notebook?" and "Can I actually afford it?"... 
Comment feed for this post
