Killer Notebooks Assassin

Author:  Rafael Rios Date:  2007.01.29 Topic:  Notebooks Provider:  Killer Notebooks Manufacturer:  Killer Notebooks

Features:
When we received the Assassin model, we stood in awe at the sheer size of this notebooks display. The 20" Samsung 1680x1050 native display looked absolutely impressive. Lets just say that I have seen some very nice digital displays in my experiences, but this one is the best yet. The vibrant colors, fast response times and crystal clear images coming from it looked substantially better than the same exact images coming from our 17" and 21.3" digital displays. Here is a side by side image of the Assassin Notebook alongside a 17" wide-aspect Notebook and a cell phone, DVD, and ipod for size comparisons.

 

The instruction manual provided with the notebook was quite substantial, and we highly recommend reading it since it has some very nice "secrets" within it that will help keep things under control on your notebook. A few things that we noticed right away were the hotkey / special key functions on this notebook. Pressing the Fn then F2 key sequence toggles the Assassins SRS WOW Surround Sound on or off. Other mentionable hotkey / special keys are those that enable/disable the wireless ethernet signal (for those times when you are wired to the network); enable / disable the touchpad (for those that use a mouse and for gaming... How many times have you accidentally hit the touchpad with your thumb while either gaming or typing which draws your cursor completely away?!); enable / disable the built-in Web-Cam, and the keys to enable / disable the bluetooth module should you order one with your notebook.

As we open the notebook, we are greeted by the large 20" display screen which makes everything look richer in color and depth than we have ever seen before. At the top center of the display frame sits the built-in 1.3 MegaPixel camera that can be used to take pictures, and as a webcam for conversing and sharing over the internet.

At the top of our unit, we find four hotkeys that with just one touch quickly enable the e-mail, the internet homepage, bluetooth and the built-in web camera. The full size keyboard and separate number pad clearly stand out as being the right size for big hands. Across the top of the keyboard, the function keys are clearly displayed with icons that allow for quick reference of the commands they store. At the top corners of the keyboard are the two round speakers which are part of the five total speakers (of which one is a woofer) making up the AC'97 SRS WOW surround sound system.

Below the keyboard and centrally located is the large touchpad with side scrolling bar area. Just below the touchpad are two large rectangular shaped buttons. The two large buttons perform the same functionality of the left and right mouse buttons of a normal mouse.

Below the touchpad /button area and on the front edge is the location of the Consumer Infrared Transceiver (enabled with TV tuner), and in the event you have the tv tuner installed, you should be able to control things through this port using your remote.

Along the right side we come to the Type II PCMCIA slot, followed by a mini IEEE-1394a firewire port, three USB 2.0 ports, a TV-Antenna jack, the built-in 7-in-1 card reader, an Infrared Transceiver (perfect placement for that IR Mouse you may have), and finally the RJ-45 LAN jack.

Along the left side we see the CD/DVD-RW 8X dual-layer burner (tray type, too bad they don't offer this in a slot type as it takes less space ejecting and are less prone to breakage), we also see the headphone-out and microphone-in jack ports, line-in jack and the S/PDIF-Out jack.

Across the back of the Assassin from left to right we have the 7-Pin S-Video-Out jack, the DVI-Out Port, the DC-In jack, vent/fan grills, the RJ-11 phone modem jack, 2 vertically stacked USB 2.0 ports, a serial port and the security lock slot.