Build Quality
On the whole the Xtreme TI is a well built beast, the metal top looks and feels the business, the Xglass screen is a joy to behold however there were a few issues which were more than worrying.

First off the original machine we received just refused to complete a boot. It would turn on however never once reached windows before shutting itself down. Quite how it passed any quality checks at Rock or the factory is beyond us. The replacement machine was initially much better, it booted and the only problem we could see was 3 dead pixels in the bottom right area of the screen. An unfortunate issue but somewhat expected on TFT’s. Rocks guarantee covers 6 or more broken pixels so we were stuck with the 3 broken ones. Even more serious though was the CPU socket. As part of our review process we need to get you high res pics of the internal components of each system/product we review. For this we removed the CPU and to our huge surprise there were around 5 extremely bent/broken pins on the socket. Some of these pins were so bent they were making contact with neighbouring pins or the wrong CPU contact. How the laptop worked at all, and performed as well as it did is a mystery to us. We did find it hang on shutdown a few times however within Windows the machine was flawless. Here’s a few pics of the CPU socket…

Before we look at the rest of the article its probably worth mentioning that our other recent laptop review of the Alienware Area 51m 7700 which comes from the same manufacturing plant as the Rock suffered some huge build quality issues also (see here for alienware review) which means that we would recommend you be very wary when purchasing a system from the same family (that also includes Voodoo PC and a few others…)

Bundle
The bundle that arrives with the Rock Xtreme TI is average at best. Considering you will have just shelled out approx £2000 on this system we would have expected more. Firstly the laptop bag that arrives with the system is incredibly flimsy, there is minimal protection for your laptop against any drop and the straps struggle to take the weight of the system, we suspect that after a few months of use you’ll need a new bag. Here’s an example of how the bag buckles and strains under the weight of the laptop…

On the software side, things are a bit disappointing; you get your recovery CD containing a full copy of XP home, Panda Antivirus, Driver CD’s, Manuals and Ability Office. We’ve mentioned more on the recovery cd in the support section, so remember to check that out… with the other software our drivers installed ok other than wireless networking which was missing, Panda Antivirus was also without problems. Ability office is however a pretty basic office suite and there are far better free alternatives on the market. We would rather Rock offered Open Office and reduced the price of the bundle or included Office XP (or 2003) and increased the price…we can’t see many people sticking with Ability Office.

Support
As mentioned above the kit we received didn’t arrive with wireless network drivers on CD and they were not installed by default on a fresh install, visiting the support website wasn’t any help either as the drivers available to download were not for our inbuilt component. Looking around the support website was easy though and there were some reasonable FAQ’s and easy access to DVD writer firmware. Having still not found the drivers we called the helpdesk for the laptop and were quite disappointed… what we would have liked was a note of the wireless card used in the laptop so we could go and download the correct drivers, the support person was unable to assist with this though as they didn’t know the specifications “as it was a new type of machine”. Poor service. The best solution they could offer was to take our serial number and arrange for a replacement CD.

Another support issue was the restore CD provided with the system, it’s called a “Product Recovery CD Rom”. Generally when you receive one of these CD’s from a manufacturer you expect to pop it in and do a windows install… one problem though. Unless you have a USB floppy drive lying around (or buy one) you cant use the CD as the Promise Raid drivers haven’t been rolled into the install… someone has gone to the trouble of creating a $OEM folder on the CD but haven’t filled it with anything useful (like wireless network or raid drivers)!

On the whole its fair to say not a good experience for the price paid.

 

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