Eurocom D900F Panther
Sporting a 17” 1920x1200-pixel display, the D900F is designed to provide moderate portability with little sacrifice in performance. Its 14.4 pound transit weight (including adapter) almost tops the 17” notebook class, but much of that weight is concentrated in the extra cooling and power required for its Core i7-965 Extreme desktop processor. A sore shoulder is the price we pay for performance, and its certainly easier to lug around than a desktop, monitor, and peripherals.
Eurocom provides custom metallic paint on the display lid, highlighted with an inset brushed-aluminum panel. The base is also framed in custom high-gloss paint.
Power and DVI connectors are found on the rear panel, while HDMI is located on the left side. We would have preferred to see both connectors on the back to ease clutter on the sides, but the Core i7 processor’s extensive cooling demanded additional ventilation slots instead.
Desktop users might be surprised to see that high-end notebooks still come with telephone modems, but business travelers might find these useful for sending faxes. A high-speed path to external storage is provided in eSATA, while high-end legacy devices can instead use the 400 megabit FireWire port.
Also found on the left side are Gigabit Ethernet, an ExpressCard slot, a multi-format flash card drive, and the Blu-ray Disk player/DVD burner. Our configuration did not include a TV tuner, though the connector is still present.
The D900F Panther's right side connectors are limited to four USB 2.0 ports.
Front panel connections include line-level audio input, digital audio out, microphone, and headphone jacks. We prefer to see these on the left side, since cable clutter at the front of a notebook can be difficult to manage.
An 11A, 220W power brick almost resembles an actual brick in size, but this sort of large adapter is a requirement for the combination of Core i7-series processor and high-end graphics.
