eMachines D640

Our office laptop budget for the past 3 years have hovered around PHP 23000 to 27000. That's a fairly entry level price, but we're primarily business users not into heavy graphics or video work.  Our newest purchase is an eMachines D640 which can be found for PHP 23 - 25K at retail.

Technical specs are:
CPU: AMD Athlon II P320 (Dual-core 2.1Ghz, 1MB L2 Cache, 25W TDP)
Chipset: AMD M880G
RAM: 2GB DDR3
Hard Disk: 250GB
Display: 14" HD 1366 x 768
Graphics:  ATI Mobility Radeon HD4250
Touchpad: Supports Multi-touch 
Ethernet: Broadcom BCM57780 Gigabit Ethernet
Wireless: Broadcom 802.11 b/g/n; Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
Optical Drive: DVD Writer
Memory Card Reader: SD, MMC, MS, MS Pro, XD

Webcam: 1.2 Megapixel

Weight: 2.2 kg (4.85 lbs)


For our operating system, we use Ubuntu, one of the most popular Linux distributions.  Installation of Ubuntu 10.04 AMD64 went smoothly.  However, on boot up, there seems to be a steady video frequency bug that makes the display quite a strain to the eyes.  Ubuntu will automatically suggest the installation of AMD's non-open source video driver, which doesn't have the video problem, but leads to an annoying but otherwise harmless boot splash bug.  Boot time ranges between 16.87 to 17.87 seconds.

Ubuntu will also offer a Broadcom device driver for the wireless device.  After installation, wireless seems to work fine.  However, the wireless activation function key is somewhat confusing.  Fn + F3 is the documented shortcut for the wireless.  Fn + F3 however controls both Wifi and Bluetooth.  If both Wifi and Bluetooth are initially turned off,  pressing the shortcut key follows the following sequence:

1. Activates Bluetooth
2. Activates Wifi and Turns off Bluetooth
3. Both Wifi and Bluetooth are activated
4. Both Wifi and Bluetooth are deactivated

When it comes to laptops, I give special attention to the keyboard and trackpad.  Overall, the keyboard of this laptop not only looks good but is also very comfortable to use.  Left Control Key is at the lower left corner, Home, Page Up, Page Down, and End are aligned to the right, the inverted-T cursor keys at the lower right of the keyboard, and the Del key at the upper right.  Although the cursor keys are half-height in size, I've found it quite easy to get a hang off, especially since there are no PageUp/PageDown/Euro/Dollar keys too near to add confusion.  The spacebar is just long enough not too miss both thumbs.  Also a plus is that the Right-Shift key does not share its space with a back-slash.

There is one glaring problem with the keyboard however.  There are no indicator lights for Caps Lock, Num Lock and Scroll Lock.  It's the first time I've encountered a keyboard without those, and it caught me bad already trying to enter some password on a website without knowing Caps Lock was activated.

As for keyboard durability, I can't really say much at this point.  It doesn't feel the sturdiest that I've used, but it's not so bad compared to a lot more budget laptops I've tried before from MSI and ECS.

The touch pad features Multi-touch.  But it's not supported by Ubuntu out of the box so I am unable to test it.  I've gotten used to the vertical scroll edge function of a lot of touch pads, but it doesn't work properly with this laptop -- I can use it to scroll down, but not up.

The laptop features both HDMI and VGA output so we can still connect this easily with our VGA only projectors.

If you're into sound recording, a minus point is the lack of a Line In connection.  I used to connect my piano to the computer through the Line In connection, but I might not be able to do that with this laptop.  I haven't yet tried connecting through the MIC connection.

I tested the webcam using Cheese and it works out of the box.

Summary

Among laptops available at its price range of 23 - 25k, I've found its feature and performance set to be the best value so far.

Pros:
1.  For the price, very well-rounded specs
2.  Well designed Keyboard
3.  Still has VGA out

Cons:
1.  No Line Out connection
2.  Scroll Edge of touch pad doesn't work in Ubuntu
3.  Open source video driver from Ubuntu 10.04 does not work