The ROCK SL (continued)

Opening the unit reveals an extremely attractive glass coated screen, 20” in diameter supporting a native resolution of 1680x1050 (WSXGA+), the same pixel count featured on the 19” XTREME SL model. 3 small green LEDs situated just below the TFT indicate AC power presence, battery status and email alert.

Our review model came with a US keyboard layout, but purely because it’s the first sample in Europe. It features a full numeric keypad, making the most of the space available on the unit, otherwise it’s a typical laptop keyboard, pleasant to use and situated far enough back to make a comfortable wrist rest out of the front of the unit. The touchpad is made by Elantech which has a very nice matt feel to it and features a scrolling function on the right. Accompanied driver software allows you to program funky tapping features and make many other customisations to its functionality. It’s worth noting the pad can be disabled with a hot function key so not to become an annoyance when using the keyboard and an external mouse.

Quite a bit of thought has gone into the SRS WOW speaker system. 5 speakers in all create a reasonable volume and quality – naturally lacking a good range of bass, but certainly adequate even for watching DVDs or gaming. 3 speakers we already mentioned on the bottom of the unit, and 2 larger ones one the top.

SL internal

As far as we could tell, this demo unit was shipped with two reference design custom integrated 7900GTX Go graphics cards. The SL Pro chassis is made by Clevo , renowned to be first to implement latest technology and offering unique configurations.

It’s fantastic to see SATA RAID as an available option, unfortunately we received our unit as a two drive setup, however Rock ensured us they can ship with RAID at no extra cost. 200GB in a laptop is more than adequate, whether you are a keen gamer or CAD professional. Theoretically, it’s entirely possible to configure the unit with a couple of 160GB drives or even 200GBs when they become mainstream, but this may bring spindle speeds down from the 7200rpm featured in the SL Pro.

Removing a huge panel underneath the unit reveals a mass of copper heatpipes and fans, a large attribute to the SL’s mega weight. Everything including graphics, CPU, memory, wireless and TV card (option) can be accessed under this one panel. Hard disks are the only components separated.

The memory is Samsung original, DDR2 667MHz DDR. Being an AMD platform, naturally there is no Intel wireless installed, despite this being a favourite for signal strength and reliability. However, the Atheros 54Mbps 802.11g card installed was impressive, picking up just as many stray access points dotted around the neighbourhood as a Centrino laptop in the same position.

The only piece of the SL Pro we didn’t get to sample was the optional TV Card, which almost makes an no-brainer upgrade, coupled with Windows Media Center Edition 2005 and 20” widescreen, it makes the ultimate portable media player.