2. Initial Impressions

Mayhem G1 with lid closed. Look at the shiny, happy red paint job.

This notebook is beautiful. The metallic red paint job has a quality mirror finish, similar to a fine automobile. I must confess... this has been the only notebook I have ever waxed. You will have to pay extra for the paint job (if you want it). ABS has a wide selection of colors and styles to choose from.

The notebook has a solid heavy feel to it. Instead of calling the Mayhem G1 a notebook, perhaps a better name would be "desktop replacement", as it weighs a little more than eight pounds, or 10 pounds with the power adapter.

Left side with two USB ports and the memory card reader

USB ports are on the left and back sides. The memory card reader on the left side accepts Secure Digital (SD) Cards, MMC Cards and a Memory Stick. This is a great feature, as digital pictures can be transferred without lugging around a USB card reader and requisite wires.

The display is very bright with a large viewing angle. We were able to view the notebook screen clearly from all angles. No dead pixels were seen. At 15.4 inches wide, with a native resolution of 1280X800, the Mayhem provides enough screen real estate for web designers, video producers and gamers.

Some typical LCD screen ghosting was seen during our game testing with Halo, and Quake III Arena. However, it did not greatly impact our gaming experience.

The Mayhem G1 review model comes with WindowsXP Home SP1 (you have the option to upgrade to XP Professional), Ahead Nero Express 5.5 and PowerDVD XP pre-installed. ABS doesn't install much bloat software like other notebook companies. The taskbar is relatively uncluttered.

The hard drive is split into two partitions. The C: partition is 45 GB and is formatted in NTFS. The D: partition is 10 GB, which is formatted as FAT32. The D: partition contains a backup image, which we will discuss in the Recoverability section.

Three "hot-buttons" are located next to the power button in the upper right corner of the keyboard. These hot-buttons provide great functionality with one-touch access to favorite programs. The first button will call up Internet Explorer when pushed. The second will call up Outlook Express. The third hot-button toggles the wireless adapter, which, by pushing it, turns the adapter on and off.

The speakers are louder than any other notebook that we have tested. The bass was not so great, until we changed the speaker settings in Windows (Control Panel/Sounds/Advanced) from desktop speakers to notebook speakers. Audio jacks are conveniently located in the front side of the notebook.