The 17-inch G71V gets a stripped down SKU
Asus' 17-inch G71V was launched back at Computex last summer,
and it was one of the first notebooks to feature a 2.5GHz Intel
quad-core and Nvidia's Geforce 9700M graphics. Such a package was never
supposed to be cheap, and when it appeared in European retail, it was
priced at €2300.
However, Asus has released yet another G71V SKU, with a 2.0GHz Core 2
Quad Q9000 CPU, without the Blu-ray drive, and with a low res screen
(1440×900 vs. 1920×1200). Mind you, even crippled, the new G71V can
clobber most notebooks on the market, and it still packs a lot of
goodies, such as 2x500GB of storage, HDMI, eSATA, and the powerful
9700M graphics with 512MB of memory.
At this point you're probably wondering what's so special about it,
well, nothing really, apart from the price. At €1599 it is a bargain,
no matter how ridiculous it may sound. The next closest quad-core
17-incher will set you back €700 more, and that's enough to get a
second, smaller notebook, or a desktop.
The market for quad-core notebooks is quite small, but they are quite
useful beasts in architecture, 3D graphics and video editing. Although
most are marketed as gaming machines, they pack enough muscle to allow
for some serious work in the field. Not that we hacks care much, we
just need something light, cheap and coffee proof, or should I say expendable, but it's just
nice to see you no longer have to pay €2500 to stick a quad core in your
bag.
You can find the listing here.
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