jshewsbury

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Great value for the price

Nov 5, 2008

Rating: 8 out of 10 (Excellent)
Pros: It's CHEAP, cheaper than netbooks, have optical drive, simple design, reasonable weight 2.5KG, good battery life.
Cons: No bluetooth, no webcam, location of USB ports (3 at the back)
Opinion:
I bought this laptop after I sold my Sony Vaio VGN-C25G (pink) last September. That machine is fine, it's just the battery "dead" and since it is too expensive to buy new battery, so I just sell it. In case if you wonder, the battery cost S$400.

While I looking around for a replacement machine, I found this "black creature" - Hasee Truenote FU420 for just S$799 and after a brief tour of the body and the spec, without further thinking I grab it on the spot.

You can see the full spec here:
http://www.truenote.biz/productdetails/fu420.html

I use Vista Home Premium on this machine now as the default Vista Basic is "too basic" for my liking (just personal preference)

I also spend some small amount to make it 2GB (the maximum this machine allowed) - well DDR2 RAM is cheap nowadays.

Installing the Vista Home Premium is a breeze, for your info they also provide Driver CD for Windows XP (in case if you don't want Vista)

My usage for computer (at home) is basically just for storing all my photos, videos, simple Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Premier and a little Movie Maker just for fun (I'm not a pro of media stuff), normal CD/DVD burning, reasonable amount of web browsing and a little e-mails and maybe once a while Solitaire games as I have my PS2 for serious gaming experience.

So based on the above information, I would say this machine is perfect for me in and the price justified the value.

The lack of bluetooth and webcam doesn't concern me at all as I prefer to use USB Cable to transfer photos from my phone (transfer rate is faster than bluetooth) and I never have the need to use video conferencing (is that what the webcam main usage?) - so the lack of this 2 features is not a problem for me.

WiFi with this machine is good, I have no problem connecting to any WiFi hotsopts.

Battery life - I spent lots of times in Coffee Bean and with "Performance mode" it will last for almost 2 hours but when you use "Balance mode" it will last about 2 hours 15 minutes and "Power Safe mode" can last you over 2 hours 30 minutes.

This machine doesn't come with their own "Power Management", "Customizer" or "System BackUp" functions like any other latops (Acer have their own "Acer E-Management" and Sony have their own "Vaio stuff" and other brands have their own computer management and customization stuff), I just configure everything according to what Windows Vista provide for me and I like that as I have full control of everything.

Keyboard wise.... mmmm, I would say it is almost the same if compared to the size and layout of my previous Sony Vaio VGN-C25G, well maybe the keyboard size is a little smaller but you wont notice it much.

Apart from power button and keyboard, there is no other extra buttons on this machine, it is using the same technique like Asus Eee-PC, activating stuff using the combination of Fn button and F1 or F2 (and so on)

The only thing I don't understand is why they put 3 USB ports at the back - another 1 is nicely located on my left hand side, next to the card reader and Optical Drive (Super Multi CD/DVD-Writer) while the right hand side is empty - no ports whatsoever. The Ethernet network port and VGA port are also at the back.

Nonetheless I'm glad they still give 4 USB Ports.

Performance wise, the machine perform the same as my previous Vaio (which use Vista Ultimate) so I don't see much different (as I am just a basic user)

All in all, if your budget is thin and you want a fully functional laptop, don't think further, this machine should be excellent for you - as long as you are not demanding heavy computer gamers or expert video creators/editors who demand much more horsepower for their graphic stuff.

For a student, this is in fact great bargain - at least its better than buying those netbooks (they use Intel Atom, this one use Intel Pentium Dual Core and this come with Optical Drive)

I am very happy with this machine.... it's cheap and it works fine.