Notebook IRBIS Mobile M51II: the market conqueror
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Date: 07.08.2008 |
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It is rather difficult to cover the announcement of a device in isolation from the current market situation. One may ask - what are marketing strategies and shares for the end consumer? Most important is the consumer properties of a device and its price. Therefore, it looks like there is not much sense in considering the market context.
On the other hand, the buyer's choice is always a comparison of offerings made by other market players. And the notion of a brand to the buyer is not only a factor of prestige for the device purchased - it involves more practical factors like warranty and post-warranty service, for instance. Viewed from these grounds, the emergence of a new Russian manufacturer of notebooks is perceived in some different sense.
But.. let's start from the very beginning. At the very end of May, representatives of "K-Systems" informed the press that starting from Q2'2008 the company is launching production and deliveries under the "IRBIS Mobile" brand. Moreover, "K-Systems" will be just a manufacturer of notebooks (while even some overseas companies are not producing notebooks themselves but are selling standard platforms offered by Taiwanese factories under their own trademark) and has built a huge factory at Mytishchi (Moscow region, Russia) for the manufacture of portable PCs!
All that is even more exciting if we recall the recent events like closing down sales of iRu notebooks, which has proved to be a vivid illustration of failure of Russian trademarks on the market of portable computers. Indeed, merely three years ago Russian player were smashed by the monsters like Acer and ASUSTeK whose produce flooded the store shelves. Any only Rover Computers that has been shipping notebooks for over 10 years managed to retain a substantial market share. As regards the big five of leaders, currently only the largest international players are in it - such as the above mentioned Acer and ASUSTeK who hold the fist and second places, respectively, followed by HP, Samsung, and Toshiba. The sales volumes of Rover Computers are more than two times less than those for Toshiba sales!
The causes of that are evident enough. Personal computers in Russia have been perceived like grey boxes without a brand or trademark. Moreover, since the early 90's there has been a firm opinion that a proprietary PC is too expensive and is not worth the price, so they purchase computers of known trademarks only as corporate devices and solely the image sake. Notebooks are much closer to the market of consumer electronics where the role of a brand is more important. Although Russian largest players on the market of portable PCs knew that well enough and have been actively promoting their own brands (both Rover Computers and iRu devoted no less resources to the advertising than to the distribution chain), they simply had no chance to withstand competition against the largest international brands.
We should note that "K-Systems" is not a new player on the market of notebooks. In 2005, the company presented a series of secure portable computers aimed at corporate customers. However, so far "K-Systems" has not yet shipped notebooks onto the free market. So, what has encouraged the company leaders to play again on this field and invest quite substantial means (according to the company representatives, construction of the factory cost 7 mln dollars)?
The cause of that is in the explosive growth of Russia's market of notebooks. And we should also keep in mind that our computer market still somehow lags behind the world market (where notebooks have already left the traditional PCs well behind) but reproduced the world trends precisely enough. Therefore, we can stay assured that the current annual growth rates 80-90% will retain for quite a long time enough to payback the costs.
What does that mean for for the ordinary buyer? That means the market has seen one more Russian vendor of notebooks that offers a superb distribution chain and, most importantly, all the resources required to provide adequate technical servicing. The demand for IRBIS Mobile notebooks depends on how the company will approach the formation of product lines, whether it will use standard platforms or invest into the development of new models, or will it be able to assure quality. You will find answers to some of these questions in our tests - an IRBIS Mobile M51II notebook has been to our lab.
Package bundle and the specifications
The package bundle of IRBIS Mobile M51II includes only the most needed items. Apart from the notebook itself, the user will find a power supply adapter, a user's manual, and a couple of CDs with drivers and a utility for operating system recovery.
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IRBIS Mobile M51II
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| CPU |
Intel Core 2 Duo T8300, 2.4 GHz |
| Chipset |
Intel 965PM, ICH8 |
| Video |
NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS, 256 MB |
| Matrix type |
15.4", 1280x800 |
| RAM |
2048 MB; DDR2-667 |
| HDD |
Toshiba MK2552GSX, 250 GB |
| Optical Drive |
DVD±RW/-RAM |
| Flash card connector |
MS/SD/SDHC/MMC |
| Interfaces |
4x USB 2.0, 1x RJ45, 1x RJ11, 1x VGA (DVI), 1x S-Video/RCA, replicator |
| Wireless adapter |
Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG, 802.11a/b/g; Bluetooth 2.0 |
| Network adapter |
Marvell Yukon 88E8055, 100/1000 Mbit/s |
| Extras |
Web camera 1.3 Mpix |
| Sound |
Intel High Definition Audio (Azalia), 5.1 |
| Battery |
Li-Ion, 2200 mA*hr |
| Dimensions, mm |
355?255?35 |
| Mass, kg |
2,7 |
| Retail price recommended by the manufacturer, rubles |
23 990 |
| Operating system |
Windows Vista Home |
| Official warranty by the manufacturer |
2 years |
The configuration of IRBIS Mobile M51II can be described as standard and modern. On the one hand, the notebook does not offer any proprietary features or technologies - it is evidently based on a standard platform and no family traits have been introduced into IRBIS notebooks by engineers at "K-Systems.
On the other hand, the level of the configuration meets modern requirements. This notebook is built on the Centrino platform (its most up to date modification is Santa Rosa Refresh) with a powerful 2.4 GHz CPU Core 2 Duo T8300. The CPU is based on the dual-core Penryn architecture produced following the 45-nm process technology. The CPU offers L2 3 MB cache memory shared by both the cores, and the system bus speed is 800 MHz. It is easy to calculate that the nominal multiplier used in the CPU is 12. Although the processor is compatible to 64-bit extensions, we used the 32-bit version of Windows Vista in our tests. The frequency multiplier can vary as the CPU switches to the power-saving modes (the EIST technology) and, besides, the CPU is able controlling the clock speeds of each core independently and even raising the clock speed of one of them above the nominal in order to raise performance while running single-thread tasks.
The motherboard of the notebook is based on the Intel PM965 (Crestline) chipset with the "south bridge" ICH8-M. To plug in an external graphic adapter (not integrated into the chipset), the PCI Express x16 interface is used. Besides, there are up to six PCI Express x1 lanes to plug in additional controllers.
The notebook is equipped with the widescreen 15.4" screen, 1280?800 pixels (aspect ratio 16:10). The screen has a glossy coating which unfortunately suffers from glare. On the other hand, the image brightness and sharpness are worth of praise - we liked the image while both watching video and working with office applications.
The good-quality image is due to not only the screen but the graphic adapter. IRBIS Mobile M51II is equipped with the external graphic controller NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS. This controller runs at 400 MHz, it is equipped with 16 streaming processors of 800 MHz frequency and a 64-bit memory bus that runs at 600 MHz. The video memory capacity amounts to 256 MB. The graphic adapter GeForce 8400M GS belongs to the group of lower-end controllers, it substantially improves video playback and is capable of coping with most games. It is unable to handle with the most recent and resource-intensive games.
The specimen that we tested (the manufacturer offers a number of modifications of the notebook, and some parameters may differ) had a 2.5" Toshiba MK2552GSX hard disk with the 300-MB/s Serial ATA II interface, rotational speed 5400 RPM, and a 8 MB buffer. The capacity of the HDD is 250 GB. The optical drive IRBIS Mobile M51II allows writing and reading data from any types of CD and DVD, including DVD-RAM. But the Blu-ray storage mentioned on the manufacturer's web site was not installed in the specimen that we tested. The last component of the disk subsystem of the notebook - an adapter for flash memory cards that allows using Memory Stick (including MS Pro), SD (including SDHC), and MMC cards.
The transfer rate of communication channels is continuously going up, and many modern notebooks are equipped with Gigabit Ethernet adapters already. IRBIS Mobile M51II is no exception - it is equipped with a 1 Gbit/s Yukon 88E8055 controller made by Marvell and plugged in over the high-speed PCI Express bus. There is also a modem - perhaps manufacturers of notebooks simply give tribute to the tradition equipping modern portable computers with software modems for dial-up lines because today in the era of dedicated lines and wireless networks they are hardly in demand by a somehow essential group of users. As regards wireless communications, the Centrino notebook IRBIS Mobile M51II is equipped with the Wi-Fi controller PRO/Wireless 3945ABG made by Intel. Besides, there is a Bluetooth module.
The audio controller is also made by Intel - it is an integrated Intel High Definition Audio (Azalia) chipset that provides operation of multi-channel acoustic systems (up to six channels). However, in the case with IRBIS Mobile M51II only stereo sound is available - the notebook is not equipped with audio connectors which output sound to multichannel systems.
Finishing the description of the notebook's configuration, we should mention one more device - a web camera integrated to the LCD frame. Its resolution is 1.3 Mpix.
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