Kobalt Comanche SLI

The red makes me think "Geeze that guys a tosser". Good specs, ugly in appearance.

IMO a laptop needs to be functional, no SLI none of that fancy crap, that's what desktops are for.

Damn that is ugly.

I also makes my Novatech X80r (8800mGTX based and identical in appearance to the Rock extreme previously reviewed) look tiny in comparison.

Definately not usable on a bed, four fans on the base...

Worse, I tend to find that when I’m gaming the screen is always bouncing back the image of some dashingly-handsome twenty-something who can’t quite grow a proper beard.

You want to tell Bindi to stop looking over your shoulder when you're reviewing.

The problem is that it's *too* red. It's so red it borders on tacky. While it's a no compromise desktop replacement, the battery life makes me cry.

Worse, I tend to find that when I’m gaming the screen is always bouncing back the image of some dashingly-handsome twenty-something who can’t quite grow a proper beard.

I'm not a fan of the glossy screen either. I want to see the game/video/app I'm playing not the reflection of the room I'm in.

if you need that kind of performance, you would be better off with a real pc and a lower spec laptop to take with you, besides, it looks cheap and tacky, certainly something I woudnt want on something that costs more than 2k£.

I think this is an issue of merely prooving who can put together a more powerful nuke in the same space(relatively), rather than who will actually sell more. to make maters worse you spend that much on hardware that you’ll hardly manage to considerably overclock. Never theless at least wer'e getting somewhere in the quest for ultimate(portable) power.

does that come with a choice of colours that red is horrible i wouldent want to bust that out at a cafe,airport etc..thats 2 much power in that little thing man take sum hdd's out and 1 of those gfx cards bring the price down a bit then they might actually manage to sell at least ONE !

2 9800GTX and still can't beat my single 2 year old 8800GTX......

come on, gaming machine belongs to desktop. EEE is more attractive than that red brick

9800M-GT, not GTX wuyanxu. :p

What a fail to understand is why they even bother to put a battery in these things in the first place... I mean no sane person would use this thing (and it's cousins) as a laptop, so why not just save the space and especially weight and make one without a battery?

In fact you could take it one step further and remove the keyboard and trackpad, and maybe make it like this one Warning gamers this is a link to Apple's website.. and before you start flaming me no I'm not saying buy a mac instead (although that might mean other people will start flaming me ).

ofc this way it would no longer be a laptop/desktop replacement... but instead a piece of "light" LAN gaming gear.

It's not a bad idea really Dr. Strangelove, but this is more of a portable-desktop idea, putting it all into one package with keyboard and trackpad means you don't have to lug a kb & mouse around.

The question is "does it blend"? Or even more crucial: Will you be able to pass airport security with it? Which again leads to the question whether it actually exceeds the max weight of carry-on with some companies...

Oh and they should've asked a designer for help on making that coloring work. It really looks like cheap plastic...

Originally Posted by Krikkit
It's not a bad idea really Dr. Strangelove, but this is more of a portable-desktop idea, putting it all into one package with keyboard and trackpad means you don't have to lug a kb & mouse around.

No but as was also pointed out in the article the trackpad is useless for gaming anyway, so from the start you will need to bring a mouse with you... i think there would be a market for the "portable-desktop", problem is that it might be waaay to small for anyone to actually make them.

anyway you could still do away with the battery in the desktop-replacement "laptops"

My eyes hurt after looking at those pictures. I'm fairly sure using that laptop for any length of time would cause a stroke. I really don't understand why anyone would want a laptop that colour. I'll stick to black/silver thanks.

The problem with those is that they are all the same chassis made by the same manufacturer, rebranded. And coloured ugly.
(look at the bottom sticker font,/wording in this one and on the Rock, it's the same thing)

And no HDMI/eSATA ? That's a fail, considering the price.

i really think the pictures dont do it justice. i have know the guys from kobalt for several years and these guys dont build crap!!! look at the spec of the machine nearly 1TB of storage, a quad core cpu. sli graphics, and everybodys comments so far have been on the colour. If people would have read the review properly and i Qoute "Extras: 7-in-1 card reader, three year warranty, CHOICE OF DECORATION". maybe they could see beyond the colour and realise what an awesome machine this is!!!!

Hi Guys,

Thought I'd drop in, say Hi and respond to a couple of points.

I can understand the Red isn't to everyone's tastes. It's very difficult to get a good colour that will appeal to as many people as possible. Most of the other painted cases we've had reviewed were blue so we wanted something different. This Red is actually the offical Ferrari Red and isn't as garish in normal light than it is under studio lights. With the glossy finish the colour can tend to bleech a bit under bright light.

You can actually choose any colour you like, we have a full selection of about 20 colours and other things like colour shift which look amazing. It is not painted as standard and if people don't like the red then that's fair enough.

Originally Posted by sl1xx
does that come with a choice of colours that red is horrible i wouldent want to bust that out at a cafe,airport etc..thats 2 much power in that little thing man take sum hdd's out and 1 of those gfx cards bring the price down a bit then they might actually manage to sell at least ONE !

We offer the Commanche SLI with multiple hard drives and SLI as it's our top of the range desktop replacement notebook. We also offer it with a single card, single hard drive, dual core desktop processor and a single graphics card. At the moment the SLI is actually very popular and I would say about 25% of them go out painted. Demand is currently very strong and many of the people who purchase them are professional users who game and work on them (we're talking Java programming, network administators, running 5 VM's simultaneously etc).

Thanks for the response, always good to hear what people think good or bad.


Brgds
Andrew

Managing Director - Kobalt Computers

Blimey, what a cracking first post. Welcome to the forums, Andrew!

Are you able to post up a pic showing the colour-shift paintjob at all?

Wow, you can spec up a laptop to £6643.78.
Do you do payment terms over 25 years?

Hi kenco,

Thanks for the welcome!

Sure thing. There are various colour shift options with different colour combinations such as Gold-Green-Purple or Green-Purple-Blue etc.. The Gold ones tend to be a bit bling so the more subtle ones are more popular.

Here's one with the Green-Purple-Blue option.

http://www.kobaltcomputers.co.uk/gallery/comanchesli/comanche_colourshift1.jpg

http://www.kobaltcomputers.co.uk/gallery/comanchesli/comanche_colourshift2.jpg

Again it's very difficult to photograph so these were done outside on a sunny day (one of the few we've had this summer :)), this is the same notebook taken at different angles to get the effect.


Payment terms over 25 years?! lol! Alas unfortunately not. We will be offering finance in the near future though.


Cheers
Andrew

"And who watches a dead duck? Nobody, not even its mother. She just flies off, depressed. "

Actually, with ducks and geese, if one dies, its mate will often stay by the body for quite awhile. I've witnessed a male "standing guard" over its dead mate right in the middle of a six lane highway. When something causes a migrating goose to have to land (or it is shot by a hunter), its mate often follows the body down and frequently another pair may also follow them down too.

OK, back to your regularly scheduled comments.

The other colour are far more appealing than the red IMHO.

Rubbish. No, wait, very, very expensive and rubbish.

Hmmm, Red paint job, this belongs to those same morons who would buy a purple Lamborghini or a yellow porsche.....they have lots of money but absolutely no class.

For Dual 9800GT's in Sli and three hard drives, (amongst other bits n bobs) in a laptop, it's not over the top pricing, particularly as the 9800M gpu's have only recently been launched.

Also, why isn't there a hybrid gfx card? The 9800M's support hybrid power. This could have prolonged the battery life somewhat. Also, with the battery being screwed in, why is there the option to buy a 12-cell secondary battery?