Further thoughts
The limited-edition Pegasus 650 is equipped with a 15.4-inch wide-aspect WSXGA display whose 1680x1050 resolution is just about right, we feel. The screen was crisp, clear and had a decent viewing angle. The keyboard, too, was a high-quality affair, with decent travel and good-sized keys for easy typing. Despite the aluminium look, the chassis is plastic and does become quite warm on the right-hand side when the laptop is put under heavy load.
Bundle and warranty
The bundle included with the rockdirect Pegasus 650 comprises of a backup Windows XP CD, various drivers and accessories on a separate CD, and a number of other utilities found on other models. Specifically, rockdirect adds in CyberLink's PowerDVD, CyberLink's InstantON feature, whereby you can listen to music, play DVDs and MP3s without having to boot into Windows itself. There's also Roxio's Basic VCD Creator 7, the ubiquitous Microsoft Works v8, the ever-so-handy Nero SmartSuite, which provides the interface via which you'd burn DVDs and CDs. Security-wise, there's a full version of BullGuard AntiVirus bundled in, too.
Of course, there's Dungeons and Dragons: Stormreach is bundled in, too.
rockdirect provides a 3-year collect and return warranty on all its laptops, and post-sales support and maintenance is provided by Mobile Support, who can be contacted, in case of any problems, via a national-rate 0871 number. A 20-minute call, then, can set you back around £2 at a time. rockdirect also bundles in a basic nylon laptop carrying case.
rockdirect also adds in a GPRS/3G Vodafone mobile connect kit, which is currently being bundled in with most Centrino-powered notebooks. There's also a £20 voucher added in, which, at the current rate of £2 per MByte of data, provides a free 10MByte. There's no monthly rental and it works on a pay-as-you-use basis.
Overall specification thoughts
Complementing the Pentium M 750 CPU is 512MBytes of DDR2, the aforementioned Mobility Radeon X700 which, sadly, is a generation old and doesn't carry the juicy features inherent on the newer X1K range. An 80GB 5,400RPM ATA hard drive takes care of storage and Intel's 2915ABG card provides 54MBps WiFi support. Bluetooth can be added as an optional extra, as well.For the asking price of £997.58 our view is that the specification is a little long in the tooth. We'd like to see the Pegasus equipped with Intel's Napa platform and a newer graphics card. Something like an Intel Centrino Duo T2300 and ATI's Mobility Radeon X1600, for instance. Further, the near-£1000 pricing usually dictates 1GByte of system RAM from the likes of Dell, and if you intend of upgrading the machine from 512MByte at a later date, be aware that it sports only 2 SODIMM slots.