Low On Frills, High On Price

The Sahara AL 096 is very solidly built and has a business-like look, with a grey-black finish and no decorations. The hinges are well-built and offer little play, which is a good thing. It weighs over 2.5 Kg—making it a little heavy to carry around.

Equipped with an older Core Duo processor and 1 GB of RAM, of which 256 MB is reserved for sharing, there is still enough power to handle normal office applications. The 120 GB hard drive offers ample storage space. A DVD multi-write drive takes care of backups. There are three USB ports for expansion, but no FireWire. WiFi and Ethernet ports are there, but Bluetooth is absent. A D-Sub port lets you hook up a projector for presentations.

The 17-inch widescreen LCD looks good and has a wide horizontal viewing angle, the vertical angle is a bit narrow. It has a matte finish, so it is easier to view it even if the light source is at the front, as there is very little distracting reflection. The ATI RADEON Graphics label (mis)leads one to believe that there is discrete graphics inside, but it’s really an onboard ATI XPRESS 200M graphics chip—good for 2D display, and decent for 3D (not for any new generation games, though).

The keyboard has a very positive feedback and feels good to type on for long download. A separate numeric keypad would be more than welcome, and there are just a few shortcut keys. The touchpad has a slippery finish, which is a bit irritating to move your fingers over. As far as response goes, though, the touchpad does fine.

The Sahara AL 096 costs a surprisingly high Rs 36,999. It lacks a webcam, a card reader, and even a microphone (so you need to connect an external one). Even the sound level of the speakers isn’t audible even when there isn’t much ambient sound. The battery life lasts two and a half hours—again, not impressive. The steep price isn’t justified by Windows Vista Home Basic; there isn’t any worthwhile bundled software either. To sum it up, the price is just not right.

Specifications
Intel Core Duo T2250 1730 MHz; ATI Radeon XPRESS 200M (256 MB shared); 1 GB DDR2 533 MHz RAM; 120 GB 5400 rpm SATA hard drive; DVD multi-writer; Ports: 3xUSB 2.0, D-SUB, RJ-45, Modem; WiFi: 802.11g; Windows Vista Home Basic

Contact : Sahara Computers & Electronics Ltd
Phone : 95120-4397235
E-mail : info@saharacomputers.co.in
Web site : www.saharaglobal.com
Price : Rs 36,999