March 15, 2009

The Wizbook Gets An Atomic Upgrade
By Luis Anthony G. Oliveros
Published in the December 2008-January 2009 print edition of PC World Philippines

Redfox WizBook1020i
P19,999
www.redfoxtechnology.com

So here we are again, another notebook PC rising from the continuously evolving netbook mist. Industry giants have gone far and wide to deliver the next big netbook to conquer the low-cost ultraportable segment for themselves; each one bringing its own brand of sleekness for maximum portability, while others barely rally around the netbook form factor fringes as they put utmost value on squeezing in better specs. Caught squarely in the middle is RedFox and their Wizbook line of low-cost notebooks unveiled during the third quarter of the year. And now, even before the year ends entirely, the IT manufacturing brand has released the line’s second generation with the Wizbook800lx that features an eight-inch LCD display and the 10.2-incher Wizbook1020i which we got to test drive this month.

For starters, we have been desensitized by the entire netbook movement, so we’ve practically seen pretty much what they have to offer as far as exteriors are concerned. The Wizbook1020i is no different, presenting a matte and glossy hard plastic body, slim at 254x189x39mm and available in white, red and a black-red combo. Needless to say, you won’t really find anything distinct outside of its softly tapered edges, rounded corners and the logo stamped on the middle of the lid.

The only thing we didn’t like about it, which also goes for netbooks in general, is that it’s housed in a rather plasticky shell, a little disconcerting if you plan for this netbook to be a long-term machine. Despite this, it’s solidly built, with no dubious reaking or rattling sounds during handling and even when propping it open.

A Web cam is positioned right at the very top of the unit’s upper half with the 10.2-inch LCD display right below. It offers a 1024×600 resolution which is good for presenting contrasts in your basic word processing applications and pretty decent for viewing colored images, videos and Web pages, although you’d immediately notice the lines that separate the various hues whenever you come across pages and photos with colors in gradient schemes. Under the screen is the built-in speaker that churns out 2W of audio which isn’t really the best out there in terms of bass fullness and sound detailing, plus the quality heads south whenever you turn up the volume. Utilizing the 3.5 audio port on its left side panel to connect to a set of good quality external speakers or a pair of headphones would be a better option.

The keyboard is bigger and a lot spacious compared to the cramped one in the seminal EeePC’s, but not as expansive and as comfortable as the MSI Wind’s (reviewed in last month’s issue) or HP’s Mini Note. This is not to say that you’d have a hard time getting your inputs across the machine, it just means that you’d have a slightly longer period getting used to it before typing starts feeling natural and comfortable. This, in our case, was about a day or two. However, just like the Wind’s keyboard, the function keys here can also be used to adjust some of the settings like the volume, screen brightness and for enabling and disabling the Web cam and the Wi-Fi connectivity. This lessens unnecessary clutter like volume controls and switches which leaves only the essential ports to the side panels, including an RJ45 outlet for wired Ethernet connectivity, three USB 2.0 ports, two audio jacks and an SD/MMC/MC card reader slot.

As borderline dull as its exterior make it appear, it’s really no slouch with fine inner workings helmed by an Intel Atom 1.6GHz processor. RedFox’s clients in the past may actually be surprised with this as they have been known in the past for carrying AMD processors, but as the brand has expressed, they have no exclusivity deals with AMD and the decision to include an Atom chip is a highly ingenious strategic move in our opinion, bringing the Wizbook line up to par with its more familiar peers. An 80GB hard drive is built into the machine which is fairly more than enough for your personal files and additional applications, considering the primary functions netbooks have been set out to accomplish, for communication and content consumption rather than content creation.

The Wizbook1020i comes preloaded with Linux Linpus Lite that comes with a handful of open-source goodies like the Open Office word processing suite, Mozilla Firefox Web browser, Skype for IM and VoIP, and an entire slew of productivity applications for work, study and games. As it was in the past, this operating system offers two types of user interfaces; a tab-based one that organizes each application in tabs tagged as Internet, Work, Learn, Play and Settings, and one that emulates the traditional Windows desktop. Navigation on both interfaces are a cinch to use, employing a completely user-friendly environment even for the common Windows or Mac user, letting you get to your desired application or setting in as few clicks as possible. And with the Linux OS comes a very fast startup and good operation speeds even during multitasking, propped up by a gigabyte of memory. In addition, you can also shell out an extra couple of thousand bucks if you want Windows XP running the show instead.

Sure we may have seen it all before when it comes to its physical attributes, but with a good spec and features list, an array of connectivity options, the Wizbook1020i is easily a good netbook you can rely on for your daily needs and basic multimedia playback. We can easily see this as a good secondary notebook road warriors and students can lug around and probably even as a dependable kitchen communication and computing device for the homemaker.