Averatec 2300 Series Ultra Portable

The Averatec 2300 Series Ultra Portable is a great little PC.

Little yes, but not wimpy. In fact, it’s an amazingly powerful ultra compact notebook that makes a perfect traveling companion for summer. At just 4-pounds, you won’t find a lighter model, nor one so fully loaded with features at such a terrific price ($899).

To prove how good the 2300 series is, we decided to “throw caution to the wind” and produce the entire July issue on it. At first, we weren’t sure the pre-installed Windows Vista Home Premium operating system would handle all the necessary software, namely Adobe Creative Suite CS3, but there were no glitches. For backup we plugged in a Buffalo TeraStation.

We averaged two and a half hours on battery power, despite multitasking and using memory-intensive applications like Photoshop. Not bad, but we recommend purchasing a spare battery for extended use. The unit's keyboard is well-designed and was remarkably responsive and able to accommodate our big fingers. We easily moved between documents, layout, graphics, videos, and the Internet, indoors and out.

And speaking of outdoors... the 12.1" wide screen with its built-in "AveraBrite" technology was crisp and viewable even in bright sunlight.

The model we tested (N2371DH1-E1) features an AMD Turion 64 X2 Dual Core Processor, 1 GB DDR2 RAM, and a hefty 120 GB SATA HD. Add to all that power a Dual Layer DVD+/-RW burner, a 4-in1 media card reader, 802.11b/g wireless, and 3 USB ports. What more could you ask for? Well, there’s an additional sweet surprise. This Averatec even has a FireWire port!—something you'll be hard-pressed to find on competing models in this class. Thus, the 2300 is a good unit for mobile vacation video productions.

You can never be too thin, too light, too feature-rich...

But don’t think the 2300 series is all work and no play. With its powerful nVIDIA GeForce Go6100 graphics card it’s a great notebook for watching high definition DVDs. The razor-sharp picture is a real treat. Indeed, when we weren't busy editing we were watching Tears of the Black Tiger.

The Averatec 2300 series was fairly fast on the fly. Not once did it slow up or bog down, even when running a beta of Adobe After Effects CS3. It's not the fastest machine out there, but for this kind of portability it's a definite bargain.

Think of this Editors' Choice award-winner as a jazzy little sports car with black metallic flake chassis. Get behind the wheel and you'll hit the road with joy.