LG R700 Notebook

Stuttering in this modern age is regarded as a treatable condition, with speech therapy being the treatment, and 90% of the time people grow out of it. This is a review of a laptop, so why would I be boring you with the treatment of a speech problem, the answer is simply that the LG R700 stutters - badly.

The Ryoo is a funny little laptop. It boasts a 17" screen, 2.1 speaker setup, and HDMI out, an Intel T/250 Merom running at 2GHz and 2GB DDR2 667 - all in all a very good package. Unfortunately its superb features are rendered mute against its unbelievable drawbacks. The first sign of trouble is the touch pad. The laptop has been around for just under two decades and the touch pad is an integral part of a laptop so how did LG manage to get it all wrong? Quite simply, we aren't sure.

The mouse will actually stop moving even though your finger is still going, and its rather frustrating having to stab at the touch pad in the hope to get a response and if you do get a response you quickly move your mouse around in the hope to achieve as much work as possible before it becomes paralytic once more.

The DVD writer is the next issue, and it's not a small one that can be overlooked. Being a multimedia laptop one would expect a level of audio visual quality, and one of the key aspects would have to be seamless DVD playback. While watching the Special Edition Transformers DVD there were at least five stutters in the playback. The laptop was on high performance mode, with AC power and it still broke the atmosphere every 20 - 30 minutes by reminding us of its limitations as a DVD player. This is something that we cannot abide by, a task as simple as seamless DVD playback can be achieved by some of the cheapest laptops with ease.

In all fairness, the rest of the features are not exactly ugly or unwelcome. The screen is clear and viewable from most angles, the speakers deliver a pleasing noise (although we have heard better) and the webcam does its job without falter making the rest of the package useful to say the least. Memory card slot, gigabit Ethernet port, 802.11n wireless and an 8600GT mobile make the laptop a fairly decent business tool but not a gaming laptop or even a multimedia laptop.