Samsung's Q45 laptop
The Samsung Q45 is not the cheapest portable business laptop on the market but the higher price tag is justified by the significant power housed within the machine’s small footprint.
Rather than shed everything unnecessary in the laptop in the name of cost-cutting like some manufacturers have done, the Q45 appears to be Samsung’s attempt to find the middle-ground between form, function and cost.
Despite sporting a small and relatively light frame, this laptop manages to fit a DVD/CD-RW optical drive, a PC Card slot, SD/MMC/XD card reader, a firewire port as well as a very comfortable keyboard and mouse track pad – many or all of which are lacking from some of the smaller business ‘netbooks’ on the market today.
Under the hood the specs are just as impressive with 3 GB of RAM, 320GB of HDD storage space and a 1.83GHz dual core processor powering the machine – more than enough to run the very demanding Windows Vista operating system should you wish to do so. In addition to the standard WiFi chip, the Q45 also houses a Bluetooth connection for further connectivity, as well as a built-in web-cam and microphone for online conferencing.
However there is a trade-off in packing so much into the body and this laptop is not without its downsides. While it is as light as such a feature list is going to allow at the moment, the inclusion of so much powerful hardware bumps the weight up to around 1.9kgs – twice that of some of the more feature-bare competitors available today. By no means should this be considered a heavy laptop but its weight does mean it will begin to strain once carried non-stop in a bag for a while – that extra 1kg may also prove vital for users looking to travel light by plane.
A more general fault, which may be a design error or simply a glitch in the model tested, is the hinge connecting the two parts of the laptop’s body which was loose enough to allow the screen to tilt forward or backward when the machine is moved in any way.
These niggles aside the Q45 does a fine job of providing a very versatile laptop that is easy to pack away and carry when needs be; the high spec should be enough to satisfy most user’s needs while the small footprint and glossy casing makes it as nice to look at as it is to play with.
An edited version of this review appeared in Business & Finance magazine in August 2008.
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