Design
The Xbook, whose name vaguely resembles a famous game console is a good portable size which is similar to a desktop replacement. Its measurements are as honorable measure 33 inches wide, 27.5 cm long with a height of 3 cm and weighing approximately 2.7 Kg The exterior of the laptop is dressed in a gray aluminum siding the middle of which is a logo Xbook not very enticing for that matter. The hinged mounting of the screen is surrounded by white plastic inserts of the most beautiful effect when the slider to open the screen is also coated in white. Unfortunately the latter seems slightly … Once open the screen shows that the TFT panel is surrounded by an ordinary plastic housing that clashes with aluminum mentioned above.

Despite this point of detail the opening of the screen reveals the presence of a rather original design and pleasant thanks to a surface using the same material as the screen to find a silver plastic. The keyboard has 86 keys translucent black and is highlighted by a brushed aluminum rim that includes the touchpad and two buttons. At the top of the keyboard there are a transparent black window hosting the button start the laptop and two button shortcuts. But this is not its only purpose, besides the look she gives the high-tech system, it reveals to the start the presence of beautiful blue LEDs that will cracking more than one!

There are three other LEDs on the front of the laptop: they also have the particularity of light up blue. The touch keyboard is a bit too soft as the buttons on the touchpad that are quite unpleasant because they offer no dynamic. The sliding surface of the touchpad is manufactured by Alps comfortable and it is fairly accurate. Made by Compal, the Xbook board two loudspeakers placed on each side of the device. The right side of the laptop has a connector for the power sector and the door to change the hard disk. On the other hand there is a single PCMCIA slot, a interrpteur to activate or not the WiFi adapter, an infrared port, a headphone jack and a microphone jack.



More original, the left edge of Xbook is equipped with a USB 2.0 port but also a memory card reader Secure Digital format. The back of the laptop includes various connectors including a parallel port, VGA DB-15, two more USB 2.0 ports, an RJ11 port, RJ45 port, video output and a 4-pin FireWire connector (not supplied then). Side connections the laptop is fairly well armed and it is what is more scalable. Thus Xbook has two memory banks that can accommodate SODIMM and the optical unit is also interchangeable.11

The successor to Compal CL56 was unveiled a few weeks ago, and just beginning to be available. The Compal IFL90 is he as strong and powerful that are brother and a worthy successor?! The Compal IFL90 is a Barebone laptop type, using the SOMA by integrators.
I tested version of the integrator Littlebit Switzerland, the IFL90 is known as Stingray Z84 home. The machines can be fully configured on the manufacturer’s website (memory, hard disk, CPU, OS, security, and soon the TurboCache and TV tuner). The test machine runs with an Intel Core 2 Duo 7500 (2.20GHz), shoulder 1Gb DDRII-667 Corsair and a 120Gb hard drive. The main asset of this notebook is its graphics card, a Geforce 8600M GT with 512Mb dedicated. We shall see later that what was in the belly.

Configuration  for the Compal IFL90 is the following one:
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo T7500 (2.20GHz)
Memoirs: DDRII-667 1Gb (1 barrette)
Graphics card: NVidia Geforce 8600M GT 512MB
HDD: 2.5 “Sata 5400rpm
Display: 15.4 “1280 * 800 Glare
Optical Drive: DVD +-RW DL
Battery 9cells
Communication: Wifi A / B / G / N, 56.6 Modem, Ethernet 1Gbps, 4 * USB 2.0, 1 * Firewire, 1 * VGA-Out, 1 * SVideo, 1 * Express Card, 1 * Mic, 1 * Audio-out , card reader (SD, MS, MMC)
Webcam: 2mp
OS: Windows XP or Vista
Weight 2.9kg

Compared to its ancestor CL56, he lost it for a blue dress entirely black. The plastic cover is brilliant (The photo does not really reflect reality). Inside it is a solid black plastic and granular. It gives a nice effect of strength and not leave too many fingerprints, in contrast to the hood and the band just above the keyboard where we can see very easily all the finger marks.

The screen of the Stingray is a 15.4 “Wide Glare with a resolution of 1280 * 800, there are also other resolutions. The 1280 * 800 is a resolution which is enough for office use, or for people without perfect eyesight. For games, it depends on the resolution chosen, with a small resolution will gain FPS, but lose quality display. By cons it is clear that development is really too small as a resolution. Hopefully Littlebit includes an option to purchase power to choose another resolution.
The touchpad is a Elantech it can change one of Synaptics, nothing wrong, he is precise and neat. The touchpad is a smooth plastic. It allows you to scroll through pages like a wheel with the right side. The buttons are the same as the granular plastic hull.

The keyboard is in line with Compal, good to very good, it is held down by 2 clips under the hull and top with 2 screws on each side. It is very stable and quiet. Above the keyboard there is a tab with the button to put under tension. There are 2 buttons for shortcuts, browser and email client by default, 2 others that are marked-wow video and audio management TV-tuner (absent in this test machine) and a button “Mute” for the Audio. Missing 2 buttons for volume, one is forced to use the FN key + F7/F8 to change the main volume.

The program that manages the fingerprint reader is “Protector Suite” He can manage the Windows login without a password. It manages up to 10 fingerprints per user.11