Notebook IRBIS Mobile M51II: the market conqueror

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.

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.

Design, usability

Those users who need a portable PC because "it is trendy these days" should choose a different model (e.g. one made by Apple) because IRBIS Mobile M51II is meant for work and not for image-making. As is should be for a "workhorse", its design of fairly modest. The housing of the notebook is made of black and dark-grey plastic, and although the developers tried to liven up the design with a combination of these two colors, it looks like a business suit for a mid-level manager - strict and reserved. As the tie, the only bright item of a business suit, there are audio connectors on the front panel made of blue, rose, and green plastic. As the pin for the tie, there is a sliding latch of the light-grey lid.

Under the keyboard, there are five silvery programmable buttons, and near them there is a power on-off button made in the same style but of a bit larger size. The four LED indicators are on the rib of the front panel - they are visible with both closed and open lid of the notebook.

From the usability viewpoint, IRBIS Mobile M51II deserves the highest of praises - all the components are positioned in an almost ideal way. On the rear wall of the notebook there are no connectors or ports - they are all positioned on the side and front panels. All the most actively used items - the bay of the optical drive, sockets for the adapter of flash memory cards and ExpressCard expansion boards - are on the right-hand panel. The rarer used connectors - VGA and S-Video outputs, RJ-45, a port replicator -on the left-hand panel. The USB ports are positioned on both the panels - two on each.

Keyboard

The keyboard makes a substantial contribution to the high estimate of the usability. IRBIS Mobile M51II is equipped with a standard (for notebooks) keyboard with 19-mm key spacing. It offers a complete set of function keys, large [Shift] and [Backspace] keys, easy to access [PgUp], [PgDn], [Home], and [End] keys positioned vertically in line from the right-hand side of the keyboard.

Due to a perfect tactile feedback, the blind typing does not bring any discomfort. The keys are distinct to click, and at the same time the keyboard is soft and not noisy at all.

The only shortcoming that we noticed is that the cursor keys (arrows) are not gathered into a separate block. However, that does not create much of inconvenience - the keys are large, located where they should be, so that is no more than a formal shortcoming.

Dimensions and mass

The dimensions of IRBIS Mobile M51II are typical for a portable PC with a 15" LCD - 355x255x35 mm. However, this model may be perceived as large enough - it may even seem that it has a wide screen. At the same time, the housing is thin enough, and the perception is enhanced by the shape narrowed towards the edges.

As regards the weight of the notebook - the manufacturer declared the mass of 2.7 kg. To this mass you should add the mass of a rechargeable battery and the power supply adapter, so the full mass exceeds 3 kg. On the whole, the model can be recommended to those who don't have to often work on the fly (also because of the short time of standalone operation, of which we are talking below). IRBIS Mobile M51II will not bring much inconvenience if used as a permanent portable personal computer, but travelers should choose a more compact model.

Tests

The performance test results did not bring in any surprises - this notebook offers a powerful albeit not a record-breaking configuration, and the level of all the subsystems is high enough. This also applies to the graphic controller - the result demonstrated at 3DMark06 is not bad indeed for a portable PC.

However, the tests have revealed one weak side of the notebook - relatively short time of standalone battery operation. The battery operation time was under 2 hours while running office applications in MobileMark 2007. With the maximum computational load upon all the subsystems (the Battery Eater PRO test), the battery charge was not enough for more than an hour. Also, during the tests the battery sometimes ceased to charge at all and lost the remaining charge completely. It is highly probable that the problem was in the battery of a specific test specimen, but even if the mentioned issues are found in only a single specimen, the capacity of the bundled battery - 2200 mA*hr - is evidently small for such a powerful configuration.

Summary

The goal IRBIS Mobile M51II (as well as other portable computers by "K-Systems") faces is quite challenging: already in 2009 to expel Toshiba from the fifth place on the Russian market of notebooks. These are just the plans the company management are declaring. However, the history of IT industry states that even the most technically advanced solutions were unable to withstand competition. Although the model that we tested deserves a firm "good" mark, it definitely not up to the mark to get an "excellent" mark. What is it that "K-Systems" relies upon, what are the methods for achieving the challenging goal?

Evidently, through the market methods, with attractive prices. From this viewpoint, IRBIS Mobile M51II is fully prepared for competition battles. The cost of this notebook, albeit not offering an outstanding design but distinguished for the perfect and powerful configuration, is just a little bit over 1000$! That is undoubtedly one of the best offerings on the market - you can hardly imagine another model offered at this price and equipped with a 2.4 GHz CPU, 2 GB RAM, a 250 GB HDD, external graphic adapter, and a complete set of high-speed communication devices.

We only have to hope that in future the IRBIS Mobile notebooks, apart from the combination of low price and powerful configuration, will be complemented by interesting design and various proprietary technologies. All in all, these are compulsory stages towards the way of building a recognizable brand so needed on the market of portable computers.