Review: NEC Versa S9100 notebook PC

Ultraportable notebooks have been given a kick up the innovation backside with the arrival of the Macbook Air.

NEC proudly boasts that, despite it including an optical drive (something the Air doesn’t), its Versa S9100 weighs 110g less than the Air; on our scales, we measured it in at 1.27kg.

That’s not a particularly fair comparison though, since the Air has a 13.3in screen while the S9100 has a 12in display.

Its main features include a lightweight magnesium alloy chassis, an LED backlit display to prolong battery life and “self-repairing” paint.

This paint is made from numerous glossy layers, which means a new layer of paint will come to the fore if the surface is scratched.

In practice, the piano-black coating is a nice touch but it’s on the LCD cover only and scratches and smudges are still visible. The rest of the laptop has to make do with a standard matt-black finish.

The Versa S9100 has a Core 2 Duo U7600 1.2GHz processor, a Santa Rosa chipset, 2GB DDR2 Ram and Intel GMA X3100 integrated graphics.

It also includes 1GB Turbo Memory and a 160GB Seagate hard disk with “G-Force protection”; this means the hard drive has a smaller and lighter head as well as increased clearance between the head and disk so it can withstand heavier bumps and bruises without failing.

It scored a reasonable 2,874 in PCmark05, with a respectable 4,532 in the hard drive section. Vista Business comes pre-installed, and it ran very smoothly.

Battery life, courtesy of a mighty 7,800mAh battery and the miserly CPU, was very good, lasting over three hours in our DVD rundown test.

With the arrival of the cheap and frugal Atom processor, it’s interesting to see how Intel’s premium low-voltage Core 2 Duo U7600 stacks up against it.

The U7600 used here has a 10W TDP (thermal design point), compared to the 2.5W TDP of the 1.6GHz Atom appearing in Acer, Asus and MSI miniature notebooks, but is derived from the more expensive Core 2 architecture. The U7600 is also twice as fast as a 1.6GHz Atom in PCmark05’s CPU test.

While in intensive single-threaded multimedia applications, which our Cinebench 9.5 single-CPU test exploits, the NEC S9100 managed to score 208 – dwarfing the 90 achieved by the Atom 1.6GHz processor. And when you take into account the Core 2 Duo has two cores while the Atom has only one, the S9100 is two to four times faster across the board.

As such we’re comfortable recommending U7600-based systems for users who will be running more than one or two applications at once, while those wanting to surf the net and do basic office tasks will be fine with a low-cost Atom notebook.

The touchpad on the Versa S9100 is good and the keyboard spacious, although we found the function key sits where the left control key should – something you’ll eventually get used to, but it’s an irritation.

Ultimately, the S9100 looks rather ordinary alongside its closest competitors, namely the Toshiba Portege R500 and Panasonic Toughbook CF-W7.

The Versa S9100 is heavier than the Portege R500, but sturdier too. It’s cheaper than the Toughbook, but it doesn’t have the same tough-guy credentials or water resistance. The Versa S9100’s lack of webcam, pathetic mono speaker and slightly smaller screen makes it less desirable than a Macbook Air.

The TMP 1.2 chip and fingerprint reader will endear itself to business users, but otherwise the Versa S9100 doesn’t stand out in any way.