7. System Backup And Manual On The Hard Drive

Averatec doesn't ship the AV1050 with any energy saving tools to adapt the system's performance to the user's requirements. The user is therefore limited to the tried and tested - albeit rather limited - energy saving settings offered by Windows XP. In contrast, first tier laptop manufacturers often include special tools with which individual ports can be switched off when they aren't needed, to extend battery life.

We concede that including a laptop's manual only in digital form on the hard drive may help cut costs and save some natural resources. However, it does seem a bit farcical when the instructions for the initial startup and configuration, as well as Windows XP activation, are included only in said manual - on the hard drive.

The recovery and OS installation CDs also fell victim to cost cutting-measures. Instead, Averatec chose to put a local backup right on the system's hard drive. For backup and restoration software, the company chose Firstware's Recover Pro 2004, with which we were quite pleased. The backup resides in a hidden partition on the hard drive that is 2.9 GB in size. The drawback of this approach is that an unknowledgeable user can delete this hidden partition from within DOS or Linux. In our opinion, placing the backup in a low-level area of the drive - within the so-called Host-Protected-Area - would have been the better choice.

The user doesn't have the drive's full 80 GB at his disposal; almost 3 GB are occupied by the system backup.

In this case, the backup would only be lost if the drive died from a head crash. So while we welcome the fact that the company ships its system with a powerful backup and recovery solution, we strongly dislike the fact that the user is left completely without an installation CD for the operating system. After all, the buyer receives a full license when purchasing the system. However, without a physical installation CD, the user is practically barred from upgrading the OS to a newer version, since this usually requires inserting the original CD during installation. Re-installing the system from scratch leads to the same problem.