Gigabyte Touchnote T1028X – Sublime is the word

The Touchnote has more features than most of your everyday netbooks around

The Elite!

The Gigabyte T1028X is basically a T1028 with HD ready. It offers you the ExpressCard/34 slot, 2.5” 160GB SATA drive. The brain consists of a 1GB RAM. Connectivity will be taken care of by the Multi-Card Reader, Bluetooth 2.1, 802.11b/g/n and Wi-Fi provided along with the WiMax. It is lightweight in its design and easy to use with the Genuine Windows XP Home OS. Gigabyte throws in a built-in 1.3MP webcam and microphone as well, although at about 1.48 kg, it is certainly not the lightest netbook around. At about $700 – it’s not a cheapest as well.

Folks at Liliputing got their hands on a sample for reviewing. They found it quite feature-rich but pricey. Although the touchscreen looked nice to them, the keyboard will need a bit of getting used to. The 10.1” display panel has a resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels which makes the screen pretty sharp, but at the same time it’s quite sensitive also – in a good sense. This is despite of the fact that Gigabyte ships Windows XP Home Edition instead of Tablet Edition. At times the display gets too sharp for the eyes though.

Although the N280 is a touch faster than the old N270 at 1.66 GHz of clocking speed, which doesnot bring much difference in multimedia viewing. The lid is attached to the base of the computer with a single swivel in the middle, to enable the screen to be able to rotate in different directions. If the interior is as glossy as the exterior, you would have to clean the machine every single day off your own fingerprints. Tucked away in the top left corner of the lid is a compartment for storing a stylus, and Gigabyte was nice enough to ship the netbook with two styluses in case you’re the sort who constantly misplaces pens and other pen-like objects. You have the usual VGA port, USB ports, mic and headphone jacks, and an SD card slot, even an ExpressCard/34 slot.

For day to day tasks like surfing the web, listening to music, and watching videos, the system is more than enough. But just because you have paid more than other netbooks, don’t try it too much, as the Atom will huff and puff in after a few moments. The fan runs only when enough heat is generated, especially when you’re watching videos or performing other CPU-intensive tasks. The sound out isn’t loud enough. The 6-cell 7650mAh, 56.61Wh battery provides about 5 hours of juice – as reported by Liliputing.

There are not many bloatwares in this machine, so Gigabyte leaves the decision up to you to install the softwares of your choice.

The main selling points of the T1028X would be its build quality and the built-in 3G option, but the $700 tag will certainly put many raise fingers at its worth.