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Today, we take a look at a sub 30K laptop from a South-African manufacturer 'Sahara Computers and Electronics Limited (SCEL)' that's been advertising a lot these days about their low-end PCs and laptops. The Sahara NB5610-L1 laptop is based on the Intel Celeron M platform. The laptop has simple looks indicating the product made on a tight budget. There's no slick finish or even a fancy sticker. It just has the necessary keys and LED indicators. 
The front end of the laptop sports three LED indicators and two speakers. One of the LED indicates the status of the laptop in ON or OFF mode. The second LED indicates the battery status of the laptop, which changes color according to the amount of the battery charge left, and the last LED indicates the Wi-Fi status. The last indicator is a waste as of now, since this laptop lacks Wi-Fi. The catch over here is that the laptop supports Wi-Fi with a help of an add-on card, which will generally cost you Rs. 1,500 more. The stereo speakers totally lack bass, but that's quite common among the laptops. 
The laptop has a DVD/CD RW combo drive and an USB port on the right side of the laptop. On the left side of the laptop, there's a PCMCIA slot, Audio IO ports, and one more USB port. On the back side, there's a VGA-OUT port, S-Video port, LAN 10/100 Ethernet connection, a modem port and two USB ports. That adds up to four USB ports in all. The laptop has an average looking 14.1 inch TFT-LCD screen with a small built-in microphone just below the display. The screen supports a max resolution of 1024*768 at 60 Hz. There are three buttons below the touchpad, with the middle one acting as a scroll button. 
The laptop is preinstalled with Red Hat Linux OS. Well, for our evaluation purpose, we formatted and installed Windows XP Professional SP2. The laptop also comes with a driver CD, which contains drivers for both the OS; Linux and Windows. Specifications Processor: Intel Celeron M Processor 360 (1 MB L2 Cache, 1.40 GHz, 400 MHz FSB) Operating System: Red Hat Linux PRELOADED Core Logic: SIS M661 MX+SIS963L Memory: 256MB DDR1 333 MHz, upgradeable up to 2 GB Display: 14.1 inch TFT-LCD XGA Graphics: SIS M661 integrated Audio: AC97 Stereo Hard Drive: Fujitsu 40 GB Optical Drive: Combo Drive (DVD+CDRW) Interface Ports : Audio Jacks (Microphone in & Headphone out) VGA Out 4 * USB 2.0 1 * RJ- 11 1 * RJ-45 S-Video Out One Mini PCMCIA Slot (Type A) Built-in Stereo Sound Speakers AC Adapter: Input 100-240 V / Output 19 V- 3.42 Amps Battery Life: Li-Ion Battery pack Weight : 2.45 Kg with Battery There is also a pre-programmed application launch keypad with functions including Internet browser, volume mute, WLAN activation plus email. Performance Sisoft 2005 
PC Mark 2004 
PC Mark 2005 
3D Mark 2001 SE 
The scores are well above the average mark, which is good enough for budget notebooks. The laptop is not ideally suited for gaming but can be used for an occasional dose of Unreal Tournament and Quake 3. Battery Life The laptop has an 8 cell 11.1 V - 4400 mAh battery. This should give a good amount of usage before the cell discharges completely. We used Battery Eater v2.60 to test the battery life of the notebook under full load. The programs put both the CPU and the GPU under full stress. Because of the lack of DirectX 8 support in the graphic card, we were unable to test the laptop under the usual conditions. So, we tested the laptop by running UT2004 in bot mode. Well, the game ran for nearly two hours after which the laptop started giving alarm about battery going low. Well, that should translate to a battery life of nearly three hours of standard usage. Conclusion The Sahara Laptop NB5610-L1 sells for Rs. 28,000 with one year warranty. That makes it one of the cheapest portable computing devices in the market. The kind of performance it showcases is pretty much justified for the price it sells at. The only major drawback is the lack of the Wi-Fi module. There is a slot for the Wi-Fi card, but the card is not provided with the laptop. One has to buy it separately. Instead, the company should have provided the card and hiked the price accordingly. It would have been better for the company and the end users as well. To sum it up, if you are looking for a decent notebook PC and have a shoe string budget, your prayers have finally been answered with the Sahara Laptop NB5610-L1.
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