The Weight of Convenience

by Jennifer Doran

KDS Valiant6480I Laptop
Rating 81

The first thing we noticed about the KDS Valiant 6480iPTD is the size of the screen — it’s a formidable 14-inch beauty. Formidable also describes its performance, but be aware that this notebook sacrifices portability for size and power.

The KDS 6480iPTD comes with a Pentium III processor and 120MB of RAM. It includes the Windows Me operating system and omits Office 2000 — great for consumers, but inappropriate for corporate professionals.

The KDS 6480iPTD adequately tackled such daily tasks as document creation and Internet connectivity. Its quick processor moved us from application to application with little delay, and downloading several different files off the Internet was as speedy as a dial-up connection would allow.

The screen size of the KDS Valiant also allows for programs and documents to take up the full screen, without any black surrounding the window.

The mousepad offers a different challenge entirely, the cursor occasionally floated off into space unbidden or froze entirely for several seconds.

Also, the entire keyboard and the left and right buttons on the touchpad are very noisy. Another issue we had was with the printer input — when we hooked it up to printer it took three reboots to recognize our HP LaserJet. It also would not start while the printer was attached.

Overall, this machine functioned quite well. The 6.8-pound weight of the laptop makes it less than portable but for telecommuting or as a desktop replacement, the KDS6480iPTD will get the job done.

KDS
800-533-7515
,A href=”http://www.kdscomputers.com”target=”_new”>www.kdscomputers.com
$1,399

PROS: Large screen

CONS: Very heavy; sometimes jittery; mouse freezes easily