BenQ Joybook S41 (Intel Santa Rosa)

Every revision of Intel's popular Centrino mobile platform is generally greeted with a thorough refresh of existing models from notebook vendors. The reason is rather simple. Intel's consistent use of the Centrino branding notwithstanding, each Centrino 'revision' involves a host of changes, from increased FSB support to newer processors and even reworked wireless and graphics chipsets. With such significant changes, the current and fourth revision, Santa Rosa is vastly different from the first Pentium M based Centrino notebook that debuted in 2003.







Intel has managed to keep these revisions coming along at a brisk pace, with the latest Santa Rosa platform coming slightly more than a year after the previous platform, Napa. Some of the changes are incremental, including draft-n support in the new wireless chipset Kedron and an increase in FSB to 800MHz. Others like the new Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X3100 and Dynamic Acceleration technology have much potential to improve performance while reducing power consumption. Then there are the disappointments like Intel Turbo Memory that have yet to be widely adopted by vendors. In short, it's a mixed bag of technologies from the market leader.








Given its market clout, it's not surprising that vendors have come out in full support of the new platform. The Centrino branding is very powerful in the mobile arena and most consumers are aware of the name, though they may not be certain of its details. Coupled with the timing of the release of the new Windows Vista operating system early this year, demand looks good for these new notebooks and vendors have not been slow to react with their new Santa Rosa notebooks. We have previously seen such notebooks from HP and MSI and now you can add BenQ to the list. The Taiwanese manufacturer known for its affordable but decently powered models has a recent red dot award winner thanks to the new Joybook S41. Can it upset its more illustrious competitors with the bigger marketing dollars and brand recognition?




Those who have seen HP's recent notebooks with its Imprint technology will realize that notebooks nowadays are no longer just in boring black and silver. Patterns and other custom designs can be added underneath the surface thanks to an in-mold process that ensures the designs won't fade with time or get scratched. BenQ has something similar known as Laminated Color Technology (LCM) and this is showcased with the Joybook S41, which has a pattern of squares and circles that BenQ claims to be inspired by pop art. Well, we aren't art critics so while we vaguely know of such an art movement, we can't verify whether this design is representative.

What we do know is that an impromptu and unscientific poll of people who happened to get a glimpse of this design while it was being tested in our labs were unanimous in declaring it ugly. Comments of how the circles looked like water splotches were common. Perhaps we are all a bunch of philistines here but we have no doubts that there will be consumers out there who harbor similar sentiments. On the other hand, there are probably also some who favor such a design. The good news if you're in the former camp is that the design is only obvious up close. At a distance, the Joybook will just look like it's uniformly black, with a contrasting silver strip near the hinge. This is why you can't see that pattern in any of our photographs.